Intel unveils official details on first Cedar Trail CPUs

Intel is finally gearing up for the launch of their next series of CPUs in the power-conscious Atom lineup.

As the successor to Pine Trail, Cedar Trail will kick off with the launch of three initial processors: two for netbooks (N2600 and N2800) and one for desktops (D2700). All Cedar Trail-based chips are to be manufactured in a 32nm process, a first for the Atom series, with greatly improved integrated graphics from PowerVR (more specificailly, the SGX 545).

The extra graphical power will be used to include native support for a number of connectivity options, sucn ash HDMI, DisplayPort, 1080p playback with H.264 acceleration and even WiDi streaming. All this is to be achieved with even lower power draws than Pine Trail chips, at least for the N2600 and N2800.

Systems based on the new Cedar Trail platform are presumably already in production from manufacturers such as Acer, HP, Lenovo and Samsung. Asus, for example, may be equipping the Eee PC 1025C and 1025CE with N2600 or N2800 CPUs. Cedar Trail netbooks are expected to start for as low as $199. Whether this will be enough to keep the netbook market alive is anybody’s guess.

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