Atom N2800 launched

The Intel Atom N2800 is a dual core entry level processor for netbooks and tablets. It came up on Ark Intel website in December 2011 and features a PowerVR SGX545 integrated graphics at 640MHz and a video decoding engine for MPEG4 Part2, VC-1, WMV9, and H.264. Furthermore, the chip now also supports DisplayPort 1.1 and HDMI 1.3a outputs.

The processor core should be still similar to the old Atom processors. Therefore the CPU performance of the N2800 is comparable to an older Atom D525. But the GPU is supposed to be 3 times more capable than Intel GMA 3150 used in earlier Atom processors (Atom N450).

The integrated 64bit Single-Channel DDR3-800/1067 memory controller supports two SODIMMS and a maximum of 4 GB RAM. Netbooks featuring Atom N2600 and Atom N2800 will be available in January 2012.

Atom Netbooks manufacturers

Asus

When Second Generation Atom processors were launched they made market for a new devices called as netbooks. With around 10 to 12 inch screens, 6 to 8 hours battery life they became very economic choice for those who are always on the move and require a basic computing device with long battery life.

Many companies made Atom powered netbooks some of them were Acer, Asus, Dell, Samsung, Toshiba, lenovo. But According to CPU world Samsung and Dell may exit netbook market in 2012. Only Acer and Asus will manufacture Atom netbooks using the third generation Atom processors.

HP Mini

Asus will make two netbooks one with Atom N2600 that will be priced at around 240$ and the other will be using N2800 which may cost upto 280$. Although the specifications may vary but the basic features like 10 inch LED back lit screen, USB ports, Card slot etc will remain the same.

There will also be Atom powered netbooks from lenovo which will also have optional upgrades like 32GB SSD and USB 3.0 ports etc.

Atom D-series processors

The Atom D series processors are made for low cost desktops and nettops. They usually are manufactured as embedded processors in mini ITX form factor motherboards. They can be bought at very cheap rates like the Atom D410 boxed processor-motherboard combo which costs around 60 to 65 dollars. Due to very low power consumption they usually do not require extensive cooling.

Zotac ION motherboard

 The main differences of the Atom N series and D series are-

•     D series has higher clock speeds (and correspondingly higher power consumptions)
•     D series do not have Enhanced Speed Step clocking facility
•     D series GPU run at higher clock speeds and somtimes support higher frequency RAM modules.

Back panel

Second generation D series were Atom D410(1 core, 1.6 Ghz) and D510(2 core, 1.6Ghz). The third generation Atom D series consists of D2500(2 core,1.86 GHz) and D2700(2 core,2.13 GHz) and have intgrated PowerVR Graphics processor running at 400 MHZ and 640 MHz respectively.

Prospective Buyers of Atom netbook

As you can infer from the details of Atom processor it seems that there may not be large market for Atom powered netbooks. A typical netbook configuration is like -

•       10 to 12 inch screen,
•       2.5 inch hard disk
•       1 or 2GB RAM
•       3 to 4 USB port
•       3-in-1 memory card reader, 
•       Fast Ethernet (10/100)
•       Wi-Fi networking (802.11b/g/)
•       4 to 8 hours battery backup

This kind of device would be required by someone who does not require running processor hungry applications but requires a device which is extremely easy to carry and has basic processing capabilities. However slow it may be, in worst case, devices such as these are capable to run complex applications. And the most favored point is very low price range of these devices which makes it easy for most people to have them.

Comparison of a regular laptop with a netbook.

Intel designed Atom for low power portable computing devices. Even more efficient Atom processors may be found tablets in the future. Google and Intel are working to optimize Android OS for Atom processors. As processor manufacturing technology continues to shrink Atom would soon find its way into smartphones. There's also possibility of an out-of-order execution Atom processor in the future.

Manufacturing Atom N2800

Third generation Atom (Cedar Trail-M) processors use 32 nm chip manufacturing technology. The Cedar Trail-M platform will include two new CPUs -
                                                          Price (US $)
      Atom N2800 (1.86GHz)                    $47
      Atom N2600 (1.6GHz)                      $42

they will replace the existing Atom N475 and N455 used in netbooks. In addition to the netbook platform, Intel's two new CPUs, Atom D2700 ($52) and Atom D2500 ($42), are to be used in nettops.

General information -

• Intel Atom Model                 -             N2800
• Frequency (MHz)                 -            1867
• Architecture / Platform         -             Cedar Trail
• Manufacturing process         -             0.032 micron (32 nm)
• Number of cores                  -             2 (4 threads)
• Level 2 cache size               -             Shared 1 MB

U135

Features and instruction sets -

• MMX instruction set
• SSE
• SSE2
• SSE3
• Supplemental SSE3
• Execute Disable Bit
• Hyper-Threading technology

On-chip peripherals -

• DDR3 memory controller
• On-chip graphics controller

Electrical/Thermal parameters Thermal Design Power (W) 6.5

• Graphics controller operates at 640 MHz
• Memory controller supports DDR2-1066 memory

click for more details on CPU world

Comparison of Atom and Pentium 4

It would not be nice to compare atom processors with the latest high power processors like Intel core i3 or AMD A4 etc. But it makes sense to compare the performance of 5 year old Pentium 4 processors with Atom series.

There is performance test data on Tom’s Hardware which compares an atom 230 (single core) , Atom D510 (dual core) and two old Pentium 4 at 2.0 GHz and 3.2 Ghz. Atom D510 beats old Pentium 4 in almost all tests where both the cores are used. Passmark benchmark result according to its website is as follows (click through to get details of each processor on CPU world) -

  

                                                               Passmark CPU mark
                                                                  (higher is better)

Core i3 2330M  (2 core,2.20GHz)                             2504

Pentium B940    (2 core,2.00GHz)                            1942

Atom D525       (2 core,1.8 GHz)                               715

Atom D510       (2 core,1.66 GHz)                             659

Atom N450       (1 core,1.66 GHz)                             318

Pentium 4         (1 core,3.2 GHz)                              524

Pentium 4         (1 core,2.2 GHz)                              279

As obvious core i3 nukes Atom in performance tests. But for those who find old Pentium 4 (3.0 GHz) sufficient for their day to activities Atom may look better performing. The important thing to note is that applications that do not use multi-threading (use only single core) may not run fast on Atom. Atom N2800 which is clocked at 1.86 GHz is definitely more powerful than the second generation Atom processors (D510 or N450) shown above.

Integrated Graphics

Initially some first generation Atom variants were 32 bit and without integrated graphics. Newer releases support 64 bit instructions. In 2009, Intel announced the second generation Atom processors N450, D510 and D410 with integrated graphics built using 45 nm chip manufacturing technology.

Intel GMA 3150, a 45 nm shrink of the GMA 3100 with no HD capabilities, was included as the on-die GPU. This reduced power consumption and cost as compared to having separate graphics processing chip on motherboard. Earlier Atom variants like Atom 330 used Intel 945 series chip-sets on motherboards.

Benchmark results show new Atom N2800 has much better graphics as compared to it's older brothers but it cannot compete with DirectX 11 compatible AMD E-350 graphics. More benchmarking results can be accessed at VR-Zone website.

The graphics subsystem in Atom N2800, up to now it was known that Intel to build its new GMA 3650 HD, it would adopt the core PowerVR SGX545, with support for DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.0, the hardware decoding MPEG-2 , MPEG-4 part 2, VC1, WMV9, H.264. CPU world published that intel is facing problems with DirectX drivers for N2800 more on CPUworld.

Bonnell micro-architecture

Intel Atom processors are based on Bonnell micro-architecture which can execute up to two instructions per cycle. Like many other x86 microprocessors, it translates x86-instructions (CISC instructions) into simpler internal operations (sometimes called as micro-ops, i.e., effectively RISC style instructions) before execution.

Processor logic is implemented on silicon chips according to the kind of operations it has to perform(instructions). CISC instructions or complex instructions needs more chip area. More chip area increases power consumption. RISC are simpler type of instructions which require less chip area for implementation. It also reduces power requirement.

In Atom processors the majority of instructions produce one micro-op when translated. Around 4% of instructions used in typical programs produce multiple micro-ops. The number of instructions that produce more than one micro-op is fewer than in P6 (Pentium 3) and NetBurst (Pentium 4 and related) micro-architectures. The Bonnell micro-architecture therefore represents a partial revival of the principles used in earlier Intel designs such as P5 and the i486, with the sole purpose of enhancing the performance per watt ratio. However, Hyper-Threading is implemented in an easy (i.e., low power) way to employ both pipelines efficiently by avoiding the typical single thread dependencies.

Intel Atom processors

Intel Atom is the brand name for a line of ultra-low-voltage x86 and x86-64 CPUs (or microprocessors) from Intel, used mainly in netbooks, nettops (table top computers used usually for net surfing), embedded application ranging from health care to advanced robotics and Mobile Internet devices (MIDs). Intel Atom processors are based on the Bonnell micro-architecture. You can read more on Atom processors on Wikipedia.

Atom processor family list can viewed on ark Intel site.

Intel Atom  N2800 (Third generation Atom processor)

• Frequency                                   1.86 GHz
• Manufacturing process                 0.032 micron (32 nm)
• Number of cores                          2 (4 Threads)
• Level 2 cache size                       Shared 1 MB
• Thermal Design Power                 6.5  W

Brief history of Intel processors

If you go through the history of intel processors you will find that starting form intel 4004  (first 4 bit complete CPU on one chip) to Intel 80386 to pentium P5 (microarchitecture) the processors where in order execution processors (executed instructions in the order they are provided). As processors speed continued to increase developers felt the need to utilize CPU time efficiently so they developed out-of-order execution, speculative execution more pipelining.

Intel Atom N280 (First Generation)

In out-of-order execution if one instruction requires operand to be fetched from memory then CPU can execute next instructions in the instruction queue which are ready for execution. The processor logic is designed such that instructions are re-ordered after execution of all instructions in queue are done. Thus processor clock cycles are not wasted for waiting for operands to be fetched from memory.

More pipelining increases the number of instructions that can be processed per clock cycle. Speculative execution and branch prediction helps processor to execute instructions which are more likely to be executed next. After execution of these the results are discarded if they are not needed (depending on branching condition) otherwise they improve efficiency of processor greatly.

As Atom processors need to be very power and cost efficient they do not use out of order execution. Even so they give better performance than 5 years or more old Pentium processors at same clock speeds. That is why they are used in low cost netbooks.