Intel Was Slow to Embrace Low-power Chips, Exec Says

Intel engineers first began toying with a low-power microprocessor almost a decade ago, but their initial design was rejected by the company’s top executives and the effort stalled soon after, an Intel executive said on Wednesday.

The initial concept behind Atom, Intel’s new family of low-power chips for mobile devices, had its genesis in a research project at Intel’s labs in 1999, but the idea was not “received enthusiastically” by Intel’s senior staff, said Justin Rattner [CQ], Intel’s chief technology officer, during a speech at Intel’s “research day” in Santa Clara, California.

Sunday, June 15th, 2008

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Next-gen Eee PC to launch without Intel Atom?

Taiwanese sources say that Asus’ second-generation 8.9-inch Eee PC won’t have Intel’s new Atom processor inside. Instead, they will use older low voltage chips in an attempt to get the machine out before rival machines. We’re currently finding out from Asus whether the rumour is true but it seems certain it will be out at the beginning of May.

The second coming of Asus’ mini marvel has been inextricably linked with Intel’s new ultra-mobile Atom architecture since the two companies shared a stage together at CES 2008 to unveil initial details of the new model - which we have on good authority will be called the Eee PC 900 series.

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Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

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