Intel prepping 22nm Atom for 2013 debut, report says

Intel is working on a 22nm refresh of its low-powered Atom platform with the intention of launching it in 2013, according to a report.

Quoting "industry sources familiar with Intel's plans", ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com reported on Wednesday that the future Atoms will use a new architecture called Silvermont — the first architectural change to the Atom platform since it came out in 2008, targeting the then-new netbook class of small laptops. According to the report, Silvermont will be used on top of the Tri-Gate transistor design Intel unveiled earlier this month.

The sources are quoted as saying Intel will fast-track the future Atoms, in the sense that they will represent the passage of three process generations — from today's 45nm Atoms through 32nm to 22nm — and one new architecture in just three years, much faster than Moore's Law dictates.

Atom is facing stiff competition at the moment, being outperformed in HD video playback by AMD's rival x86-based Fusion platform. ARM's architecture is also a challenger, dominating the tablet market — one of the biggest threats to netbooks — through processors such as Nvidia's Tegra system-on-a-chip (SoC), among others. The upcoming Atom will also be a SoC design, the report stated.