Intel has announced an array of new mobile processors and an LTE solution at the Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona.
The new Atom processor platform, codenamed Clover Trail+, is designed for smartphones, with long battery life in mind. There are three initial 32 nanometer dual-core processors to choose from, the Z2580, the Z2560, and the Z2520, with speeds at 2.0 GHz, 1.6 GHz, and 1.2 GHZ respectively, which is up to double the computing speed of previous Atom processors.
With many rivals already jumping to quad-core, Intel will soon follow with the Atom Z2760 processor, codenamed Bay Trail, the company’s first quad-core SoC. Intel is teaming up with Compal, ECS, Pegatron, Quanta and Wistron to help bring this chip to the market, in addition to its previous partnership with top computer makers like Samsung, Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, LG, HP, and others. It will be available around Christmas of this year.
“Today’s announcements build on Intel’s growing device portfolio across a range of mobile market segments,” Hermann Eul, vice president and co-general manager of Intel’s Mobile and Communications Group, said in a statement. “In less than a year’s time we have worked closely with our customers to bring Intel-based smartphones to market in more than 20 countries around the world, and have also delivered an industry-leading low-power Atom SoC tablet solution running Windows 8, and shipping with leading OEM customers today.”
Intel officials said the new Atom platform offers twice the performance and up to three times the graphics abilities of its “Medfield” predecessor, all in a low-power envelope. They said that Asus, Lenovo and ZTE are among the first OEMs to offer smartphones and tablets based on Clover Trail+. Lenovo at the MWC was showing off the K900 smartphone running on the new Atom platform.
The company is also jumping on the 4G LTE bandwagon with the unveiling of the XMM 7160 multimode-multiband LTE solution, which it claims is the smallest and lowest-power technology of its kind, making it ideal for smartphones, tablets and Ultrabooks. Its modem can support 15 LTE bands at the same time, more than any rival, and the RF architecture can run real time algorithms for envelope tracking and antenna tuning, which results in cost-efficient multiband configurations. This is due out in the first half of the year, in time for an expected major boom in 4G connectivity.
