Intel announces low-power Silvermont processors

With an increased emphasis on low-power chips as a result of smaller tablets and smartphones, Intel's Atom processors have lagged behind offerings from competitors such as NVIDIA's Tegra and Qualcomm's Snapdragon. That could be changing however, as the company has just taken the wraps off their new low-power System-on-a-Chip.

Using a 22nm manufacturing process, the Silvermont line of SoCs is touted as offering three times more performance than the Atom CPUs, while using five times less power. The processors also include enhancements such as power sharing between GPUs and SoCs, 3D Tri-Gate transistors and support for up to eight cores. 

This latest announcement comes amid a busy couple of weeks for Intel, where a new CEO was announced and details of their upcoming Haswell generation was unveiled. Unfortunately, the new Silvermont architecture is still in its developmental stages and no date has been set, but it should take over for Atom within the next couple of years.

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