Pine Trail-M Atom 2010 is smaller than current Atom processors

Intel has in mind to roll out Pine Trail-M mobile netbook platform in the Q1 2010. Good news is that the chip is going to be around 64% smaller than the current slew of Atom processors. Interestingly, it needs less power and its somewhat more cheaper to manufacture.

It is commendable that Intel managed to bring down the package footprint by 64 percent. Reason behind this is the fact that it has switched over from three chips to (CPU, Northbridge and Southbridge) to just two chips (CPU and Southbridge) in the Pine View processors.

When measured with Mobile Mark 05 office productivity Pine Trail-M platform will get you 20 percent lower power reduction, which in other words means even better battery life in Windows XP.

• reduced motherboard realeastate: 2174mm(Atom)->773mm(Pineview).
• Better memory support from N270’s DDR2 533 to DDR2 667
• GPU core frequencies increased from 133MHz to 200MHz
• PCB design now uses only 4 layers compared to 6 layers, which was previously used by Intel Atom
• TDP dropped from 8W to 7W

Commentary: Although the overall size will be smaller, but it is highly unlikely that manufactures are going to produce smaller netbooks. It is all about the market demand and most of the consumer want bigger displays and spacious keyboards.

Atom N470-equipped Netbook can have 2GB RAM – Atom N450 left in dark

Finally, it will be possible to use more than 1GB memory in netbooks. Intel’s upcoming Pine View processor, N470 is faster than the current Atom N280/N270 and runs at 1.83GHz clock speed. It is set to make its debut in March. Based on Pine Trail-M two chip platform has N470 CPU coupled with integrated graphics and NM10 southbridge that has the rest of the chipset.

But this is not the case with N450, an Atom processor scheduled to be launched on January 3rd next year. It will come with Condor Peak Wlan and with 1 to 2GB of DDR2 memory.

Intel suggests to use 20GB to 32GB SSD or 160GB hard disk. The choice of OS is Moblin Linux, but it is not mandatory to use it. The OEMs and manufactures are free to opt other operating systems.

Interestingly, you have to use battery with 4-cells or less and allowed screen sizes are upto 10.2-inches.

Commentary: This is not a good news for the netbook market. Here is few reasons:

1. 4-cell battery: Currently, plethora of netbooks are using batteries with 6-cells or some even use 9-cells. Excellent battery life has been one of the core reasons netbooks are so popular. If Intel throws-in such a limit to the mix, it can be hazardous for the netbook market.
2. 160GB HDD: It has been just few weeks that manufactures have started to churn-out netbooks that have 250GB or 320GB hard disks.
3. 32GB SSD: Imagine the huge Windows 7 installation on that small SSD. Add in the space for pagefile and hibernation and you will be left even less space!
4. 10.2-inch screen limit: Not allowing the netbook vendors to use the Atom N470 processor in netbooks using more than 10.2-inch display will hurt Intel only as it will allow the vendors and manufactures to instead use the AMD Neo CPUs. Foolish move, Intel