New Intel Atom Chip in the Works

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Intel has a new microarchitecture in the works. While Atom combined power efficiency with a reasonable level of performance, Intel’s new Atom with the Silvermont architecture will be even faster and yet more power-efficient.

Intel is getting into the 3D transistor design with its upcoming Ivy Bridge architecture, which means processor chips are no longer laid out on a two-dimensional planar configuration, but on a”tri-gate” transistor structure. The miniaturization of chips necessitated this move–you can only cram so many transistors on a small plane of wafer chip. With Intel’s upcoming Silvermont architecture, the company will be moving beyond Moore’s Law, which says silicon designs will have double the number of transistors every two years for a given area.

Intel’s new Atom series will start shipping in 2013, and will feature a system-on-chip design, and will likely use a 32-nanometer design, which means the chips will be smaller and–more importantly–more power efficient.

It can be noted that this move will likely bring Intel head-to-head with AMD in the tablet and smartphone business. Intel is sorely lacking in viable smartphone and tablet processors, as most of these small devices use ARM-based architectures. With the upcoming Silvermont architecture, will Intel also dominate smartphones and tablets?