Intel has revealed more details of Silverthorne -- its smallest x86-compatible processor for more than a decade -- at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco.
Intel says the tiny 64-bit multithreaded chip, based on its new 45nm Hi-k low power microarchitecture, is aimed at MIDs or "mobile internet devices". (That's an acronym I got from Psion-founder David Potter in the late 1990s, but I thought it would never catch on.) As such, it's seen as competition for the ARM chip used in most smartphones and PDAs, but that's taking a long term view. It's not going to displace ARM chips any time soon.
The two main points are that it's a low power chip (0.5W to 2W) and that it can run Windows and other desktop applications. It should therefore find a natural home in UMPCs (ultramobile PCs) rather than mobile phones, though the next generation version, codenamed Moorestown, may well get closer.
Either way, users will get more speed and longer battery life with Silverthorne, while Intel will make more money. (Since Silverthorne is about a quarter of the size of a Core 2 Duo, Intel can make roughly four times as many chips per wafer. I'll bet it won't be a quarter of the price.)
About a dozen years ago, many of us reckoned Silverthorne couldn't be done, and Microsoft decided to write a whole new operating system for low-end portable devices -- Windows CE, and derivations such as Windows Mobile. CE started out running on any processor but soon became focused on the ARM chip.
Intel also went into the ARM chip business: it picked up Compaq's (formerly DEC's) StrongArm development and turned it into Intel XScale. In 2006, however, it did something "absolutely shocking": it sold XScale to the Marvell Technology Group. With hindsight, that was probably a signal that Intel reckoned x86 really did have a future on MIDs,
And since MIDs might suddenly become a booming market, thanks to devices like the Nokia Internet Tablet and Asus Eee PC, Silverthorne now looks quite well timed.
There's more on Silverthorne at Ars Technica (Inside Intel's Silverthorne ultramobile CPU), CNet (Intel sheds a little more light on Silverthorne) and the usual places.
