Intel’s move to mobile is picking up steam. The company has unveiled Silvermont, a new architecture that Intel says delivers three times the peak performance of its current Atom processors. Silvermont will be made using Intel’s 22-nanometer process. The company says it has already shipped 100 million 22-nanometer chips, and is on track to ship 14-nanometer chips in the “back half of this year.”
Silvermont went head-to-head with ARM-based processors in tests, and according to Intel those tests showed that Silvermont will lead the industry in performance-per-watt efficiency. The company admits that, “Numbers may be subject to change once verified with the actual parts.”
Actual parts are of course the next important step for Intel in its quest for relevance in the mobile marketplace. Right now Intel’s mobile microprocessor market share is in the low single-digits, with Qualcomm, Nvidia and other designers of ARM-based mobile processors still winning most of the business. But Intel did score a big win earlier this year with ZTE, the Chinese company that now ranks No. 5 worldwide in overall smartphone shipments.
Intel says Silvermont will scale for up to eight cores, will be able to execute instructions out of order, and will use “intelligent burst technology” to manage power resources. The company noted that while the new architecture is appropriate for mobile devices, it could also be a fit for other market segments. The Silvermont architecture will enhance the next generation of Intel’s Bay Trail microprocessors, and variants of Bay Trail will be used in laptops and desktops in “innovative form factors,” according to the company. Brian Krzanich, Intel’s newly appointed CEO, said last week that while mobile is a priority, he does not agree with those who are predicting the demise of the personal computer.
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