Intel has officially unveiled a new line of low power processors designed for mobile devices including smartphones and tablets. The Intel Atom Z6xx series chip (PDF Link) has a 45nm processor core, and 3D graphics and video capabilities.The chip has 512K of L2 cache, 24K of L1 Data and 32K instruction cache.
Intel says the Atom Z6xx series will support Google Android, MeeGo and Moblin Linux. Interestingly, there’s no mention o fWindows support.
The Z6xx series will include several different chips, including a 1.5GHz version for handhelds and smartphones and a 1.9GHz version for tablets.
The chips will feature Intel GMA 600 graphics, with a 400MHz graphics core and support for hardware decoding of H.264, MPEG4 part 2, WMV, and VC1 video, as well as hardware support for encoding MPEG4 and H.264 video. GMA 600 also features OpenGL support for 3D graphics and supports internal displays with resolutions of 1024 x 600 or 1366 x 768 pixels.
While it looks like the new chips are single core processors, they do support hyper-threading, which means that you should see improved performance with apps that support multithreading — and your operating system may report that you have 2 CPUs even though you don’t.
One of the most interesting features is that the Z6xx series supports always-connected technology that will let you receive incoming phone calls, email messages, or other data on a smartphone or tablet even when the device is idle. There’s support for WiFi, 3G, and WiMAX connections.
Laptop Magazine reports that Intel is promising devices using this chipset will be able to last for up to 48 hours of continuous audio playback or 10 days of idle power. Video playback is another story, topping out at just 5
