“Silvermont” -New architecture dedicated to Atom Processors!

Intel has just lifted the veil on Silvermont, which a new architecture is dedicated to the Atom processors that will be used on chips engraved in 22 nm. But we learn very little and no details are given on the graphic part of the beast. As expected, Intel continues to announce new products in the field of low consumption chips that are the Atom. But in this field, efforts remain to be done in terms of performance and consumption. Silvermont was thought in this direction and this generation SoC receive a fine engraving by 22 nm, which remains one of Intel's benefits. They will be at the heart of the Bay Trail chips (Merrifield platform), which are expected for the last quarter of the year and should be an opportunity to see the emergence of new products, including tablets and hybrids running Android or Windows 8.1, but it seems planned to integrate as in desktop PCs.

For the moment, the company did not mention in detail the new architecture or few details that we already knew. The execution of instructions will be so "out-of-order", the CPU can rearrange to maximize its efficiency. Management 64-bit, virtualization, security features (Secure Key) and other instruction sets are part of, as finer management energy via new "C-states" and Burst 2.0 is a specific version of the Turbo Atom. In addition, up to four modules of two cores can be integrated. In the end, we are promised performance multiplied by three or five times less than at present consumption. We cannot wait to check these numbers in practice as it sounds optimistic.

 The side of the graphics chip, nothing officially filtered to the time or the level of performance hoped, either in its composition. At last, there was talk of an Intel IGP capable of handling HD video streams in encoding as well as decoding. But we should know more in the coming days. Anyway, the mobile market is not the sole target of Silvermont since the NAS should also take advantage of this new architecture with dedicated SoC, like Atom Avoton to replace the S1200 that are currently available.