Leaked Intel Atom Roadmap Suggests 22 nm Smartphone Chip Delayed Till 2014

From DailyTech: Back in 2011 Intel Corp. (INTC) made the bold promise that it would accelerate its release schedule on the mobile front to push out 22 nm smartphone system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs by 2013. Dubbed ValleyView, the chip was expected to feature between one and four of Intel's new Atom core design, dubbed Silvermont. As recently as the 2012 Intel Developer Forum, the company indicated that the 22 nm mobile platform (core: Silvermont; SoC: ValleyView; chipset: Bay Trail) would air by "late" 2013.

Now, according to leaked decks of slides, which were posted by a user named Ronny145 in a German forum and first picked up by 3DCenter.org, the launch may have been punted to 2014.

The deck shows the beta of ValleyView chips wrapping up in Q4 2013, along with the start of full production. But the chips won't actually hit the market, according to the deck until Q1 2014 at the soonest.

The lowest-powered ValleyView chips are expected to hit under 3W, according to one slide from the deck. This version (ValleyView) is likely the smartphone variant, while the other variants ('M' and 'D') are more likely to see use in tablets, netbooks, and budget laptops.

To be fair, it did seem overly ambitious to somehow be able to jam out ValleyView/Silvermont in 2013. Not only is the release a die shrink, which adds the FinFET "3D" transistor design first employed in 2012's Ivy Bridge personal computer chip release, but it also adds other features like a seventh generation graphics core (with DirectX 11 support). Also added is support for DDR3L (the low powered version of DDR3 for mobile devices), USB 3.0, and on-die security/authentication features.

View: Article @ Source Site