Intel Announces New Atom Mobile SoCs, LTE Modems, And Telco Infrastructure

Opcode · March 6, 2015

As Intel’s diverse product lines continue to grow, get more competitive and intersect with each other, the company is looking for ways to make their mobile parts more recognizable to consumers and protect positioning for the higher-end, more profitable PC parts. In the past, Intel’s Atom chips have carried the Atom branding followed by N or Z and a three or four digit number to denote the model of Atom processor. Right ahead of MWC 2015, Intel announced their plan to rebrand The Atom Z series branding and break it down into Atom x3, x5 and x7 in a similar naming scheme that their Core brand of processors have with the Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7, with 7 being the fastest. Atom x5 and x7, formerly Cherry Trail was officially announced, too. Intel also announced their latest Category 10 LTE modem in the Intel 7360 modem series with 3x carrier aggregation and 450 Mbps speeds. Intel is also harnessing some of their experience in security and enterprise to strengthen their mobile plays in order to drive differentiation and more chip sales.

Finally bringing LTE integration with Atom x3

With the new Atom x3, x5 and x7, Intel is announcing a multitude of new features. First and foremost, the Intel Atom x3 (formerly SoFIA) will be Intel’s first chip with LTE integration, something that only Intel SoFIA had with a very low-end Atom part and 3G only. This was mostly deemed as a somewhat dated part as many devices nowadays support LTE out of the box. So, it comes as little surprise that with the Intel x3, they are once again introducing an integrated modem, except this time it will be LTE CAT 4 with potential future support for CAT 6 LTE. Interesting, Intel is not using their own GPU nor their common license for mobile GPUs, Imagination with PowerVR. Interestingly, the GPU they’re using is actually Intel’s biggest competitor in the mobile space, ARM Holdings. This is certainly a different world under the pragmatic CEO, Brian Krzanich, and I applaud Intel rejecting NIH (Not Invented Here) and embracing the optimal technology for the solution. The Atom x3 will come in three flavors, each with different CPU configurations, GPUs, memory support and connectivity.

Intel designed the Atom x3 to be put into phones that are pretty much under $200 in price, with the 3G SKUs being targeted towards the sub-$150 segment, which is pretty great. Intel already has competition from some of their competitors in this segment with phones like the Moto E, which are already $149 and have 4G LTE. The top-end Atom x3 with LTE will also have NFC support as well as an ARM Mali T720 MP2 GPU paired with a 1.4 GHz 64-bit quad core CPU.

Intel has a plethora of partners, mostly in China, that will be building devices with the Atom x3 in them and those should be available in 6-8 weeks from about 20 partners, some of whom are already showing devices on the MWC floor in the dozens. This is partially due to their recent relationships with Chinese SoC companies Spreadtrum and Rockchip.

Atom x5 and x7 bring 14nm FinFET to Atom

Intel’s newest Atom x5 and x7 processors are part of Intel’s Cherry Trail 14nm FinFET platform, which is the successor to the 22nm Moorefield. These processors are expected to be even more power-saving than their predecessors and to bring even more performance and I’m looking forward to third party independent device benchmarks to validate this. The improvements are possible thanks to their new CPU cores based on the Airmont architecture as well as new GPUs based on Intel Gen 8 graphics.

In fact, Intel is touting that their newest generation of graphics in their new Atom x7 processors is 2x better in benchmarks like GFXBench and 50% better in 3DMark. Intel already has most of the top PC manufacturers like Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Lenovo onboard with their Atom x5 and x7 series and expects to have products coming out in the first half of this year. These SoCs are targeted towards tablets and convertible form factors for both Windows and Android, not premium phones. Neither the Atom x5 nor the Atom x7 have any connectivity built-in like the x3 and customers will look to Intel’s XMM 7260/7360 series of modems for 4G LTE connectivity. Now that Intel has between 10-15% tablet market share, I’m really interested to see what they do with a much improved product.