Stefan Mileschin

Leaked slides from Intel have been posted on the 3DCentre forum and show what Intel wants to be its ARM challenger, Bay Trail, in all its glory.

Bay Trail will be hitting the shops in 2014 and is expected to cause ARM a headache in what is left of the netbook and nettop space. This is the sort of headache which ARM will worry about. The netbook and nettop space will be non-existent by then, but the question is whether or not the spec will make it into new form factors or cause a resurgence in the netbook market.

Intel is trying to run the segment with Cedar Trail, which is a 32nm dual-core platform

Bay Trail means a shift to a quad-core, 22nm, out-of-order design. It speeds up the CPU with burst modes of up to 2.7GHz. It will also feature Intel's own graphics processor instead of a licensed core from Imagination Technologies.

The slide suggests that TDPs will be 4.6-5W range at the low end, with 10W parts at the upper. It will also have full HD encode/decode, DDR3-1333L (low-power) support, and external resolutions of up to 2560x1600.

Bay Trail will give AMD's Kabini a run for its money. Kabini is a 28nm, quad-core, expected to appear in the middle of this year.

Overall performance could jump by 50-70 percent which might mean that moves by Asus and Acer to kill off netbooks were premature.

The upgrades, however late they are, could breathe life into the dying market. If AMD tries something similar with Kabini then there would be pressure for the hardware makers to start to push something like a netbook onto the world.

http://news.techeye.net/chips/intel-...-slides-leaked