Tech

New quad-core Intel Atom SoCs target PCs, servers, and tablets

The Bay Trail platform is an aggressive push into ARM’s territory.

Andrew Cunningham – Aug 28, 2012 3:55 pm | 46

The Bay Trail platform will be available for just about any application you can think of. Credit: Intel via Baidu

Leaked Intel documents have revealed details of the company’s next-generation Atom platform. Codenamed Bay Trail, various versions of the platform are slated to replace the Cedar Trail platform for desktops and netbooks, the Queensbay platform for embedded devices, and the Oak Trail platform for tablets when they launch at the end of 2013.

According to the leaked documents, the heart of the platform is the Valleyview system-on-a-chip (SoC), a 22nm part that brings greatly increased performance and features on both the CPU and GPU sides of the fence. Valleyview will be available in four flavors: D- and M-series chips for desktops and netbooks, I-series chips for embedded and industrial devices, and T-series chips for tablets. We’ll break down all of the improvements to make them easier to digest.

The CPU: Silvermont brings big changes

The Valleyview SoC brings big changes to Atom. Credit: Intel via Baidu

The CPU side of Valleyview is codenamed Silvermont, and it represents the most substantial change to the Atom architecture since it was introduced in 2008. Silvermont brings out-of-order execution to Atom, which allows the CPU to process different instructions as soon as resources to execute them are available. The present Atom uses in-order execution, which executes instructions in the order in which they are received, leaving CPU resources potentially unused during a given CPU clock cycle.

Out-of-order processor designs are much faster than in-order designs, but the feature requires a significant number of transistors to implement, which raises power usage and heat output. AMD’s Bobcat architecture, for example, is faster than Atom, but can’t reach the same low TDP values as the Atom processors can.

Intel’s 22nm manufacturing process is used in Ivy Bridge processors to lower power consumption while increasing performance, and it will finally allow Intel to implement out-of-order execution in Atom without sacrificing too much battery life in devices. Silvermont will also be available in quad-core flavors in addition to the single-core and dual-core designs, a first for Atom, and clock speeds will range from 1.2GHz to 2.4GHz. Hyperthreading, a feature available in past Atom processors, isn’t mentioned in the leaked document, but it’s possible we’ll find out whether the feature is included as we get closer to Bay Trail’s launch.

The GPU: Atom meets Ivy Bridge

Recent Atom processors have opted to use graphics processors licensed from PowerVR, the same company responsible for the GPUs in iOS devices and other smartphones and tablets. But Valleyview brings things back in-house: it will offer a seventh generation Intel-made GPU with four execution units.

In plain English, this is the same graphics technology used in Ivy Bridge’s HD 4000 and HD 2500 GPUs, though those parts have more execution units—16 in the HD 4000 and just six in the HD 2500. The GPU should support the same APIs as the Ivy Bridge graphics parts: that means DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.0, and OpenCL 1.1 should all be present.

With Valleyview’s GPU, you’ll get all the media-related features of a modern GPU—Valleyview’s GPU can decode H.264, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG 4, and VC1/WMV9 video and encode H.264 and MPEG2, and an included VXD392 coprocessor can also decode H.264, JPEG, and VP8, but the reduced number of execution units means you’re not going to get staggering 3D performance in desktop games.

What you do get is a GPU that can decode a 1080p stream at 60 frames per second while using just five percent of the CPU’s power, which will be very useful for video playback—the GPU also supports Intel’s Wireless Display technology to enable AirPlay or Miracast-like streaming to a TV from mobile devices. The GPU’s two display pipes support up to two simultaneous displays at once over HDMI, DisplayPort, DSI (for the tablet versions), and VGA (for the desktop and mobile versions).

Other platform features

Since the Bay Trail platform is replacing so many of the older Atom platforms, it has to be versatile: to that end, it supports a plethora of interfaces, including SATA 2.0, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, Secure Digital Input Output (SDIO), the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) bus, I²C, I²S, and UART, which covers just about all of the major input and output interfaces across desktops, netbooks, and tablets. The non-tablet versions of the platform also sport gigabit Ethernet and four PCI Express 2.0 lanes for connecting other peripherals.

Bay Trail also supports up to 8GB of 1066MHz or 1333MHz DDR3, an upgrade from Cedar Trail’s maximum of 1066MHz, while the tablet versions support the lower-power 800MHz LPDDR2. Intel Virtualization Technology is also supported, which will be useful for low-power Atom servers—with 64-bit support and quad-core chips, the new Atom will give the server-oriented ARMv8 chips a run for their money.

What it all means

From many, one: Bay Trail replaces several older Atom platforms. Credit: Intel via Baidu

Bay Trail is eventually going to replace the Cedar Trail Atoms common in today’s netbooks and tiny desktops, but the platform is more important for its viability in the tablet space. The Medfield platform we’ve seen in the Xolo 900 smartphone and the upcoming ThinkPad Tablet 2 have served as the company’s warning shots, but Bay Trail will be Intel’s answer to the Cortex A15-based ARM processors that we’re going to see on the market later this year and continuing into 2013.

If OEMs can use Bay Trail to make true x86 Windows tablets that are comparable in cost, battery life, and performance to their ARM counterparts, Windows RT and the tablets that run it won’t have a niche left to hide in. That said, Intel’s competitors aren’t standing still: to pick one recent example, the next iteration of Samsung’s Exynos SoC is going to combine a higher-performing ARM CPU, a more powerful GPU, and support for many of the same APIs and interfaces as Bay Trail.

Intel is also faced with the task of booting ARM SoCs from market segments that they dominate—iOS and Android and all of the apps that run on those platforms are all developed for ARM first, and while Intel’s binary translator does a pretty good job of running Android applications on Intel’s processors (see AnandTech’s analysis here), there are still cases where things aren’t working quite yet.

Intel has three things in its corner: a lot of money, a lot of experience, and a clear manufacturing advantage. Intel already has a working 22nm manufacturing process while its competitors are still working predominantly with 45nm and 32nm chips, and the Silvermont CPU is already scheduled to be superseded in 2014 by the 14nm Airmont architecture. Intel faces an uphill battle for mobile devices, but Bay Trail and Valleyview may just help them to realize some of their mobile aspirations.

Listing image: Intel via Baidu

Andrew Cunningham Senior Technology Reporter

Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue.

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