Like solid-colored spandex leggings and Guns N’Roses albums, things from the ’80s tend to pop back into theВ zeitgeistВ pretty regularly these days. It’s a similar case with Commodore USA. On Wednesday, the company announced the Commodore PC64, an all-in-one desktop computer that’s built into a replica of the original beige Commodore C64 case.
Besides sporting a stylishly retro exterior, the PC64 sports an Intel Atom N525 CPU, Nvidia ION2 graphics, a 1TB The storage device that holds your OS, programs, and data. Learn Morehard drive, HDMI output, 4GB DDR RAM, optical drive (with optional Blu-ray) and more. According to the company, a line of Commodore-branded All-In-One computers is in the production pipeline, and the PC64 is expected to hit shelves this holiday season.
Intel has begun shipping its latest Atom processors for nettops and low power desktops. The Intel Atom D425 and D525 will gradually replace the D410 and D510 CPUs already on the market.
The Atom D425 is a single core processor with a clock speed of 1.8GHz, while the D525 is a 1.8GHz dual core chip. They both support up to 4GB of DDR3 memory, while earlier chips could only handle DDR2 RAM.
The Intel Atom N550 processor is the first dual core Atom chip built specifically for netbooks. Up until now all dual core Atom processors have been designed for low power desktops. While there aren’t any netbooks shipping with the N550 chip recently, the folks at Notebook Italia got a chance to spend a few minutes with a pre-release Asus netbook with an Atom N550 chip recently, and they ran a simple benchmark to see how the computer stacked up against PCs with several other processors.
The long and short of it is, the Atom N550 is pretty darn good and performing tasks that can take advantage of the chips multithreading capabilities. While the chip technically has only 2 cores, thanks to multithreading, it can run as many as 4 threads simultaneously. And so when using the file compression app 7Zip’s built-in benchmarking utility, Notebook Italia found that the 1.5GHz Atom N550 was twice as fast as a 1.66 Intel Atom N450 processor. It was also a little faster than systems with Intel Atom 330 and D510 desktop dual core processors.
One interesting sidenote is that the Atom N550 also trounced the Intel Core 2 Solo SU3300 processor in this benchmark. That’s likely because the core 2 Solo chip is a single core processor that doesn’t support hyperthreading. But I suspect that for many tasks, that processor will actually offer better performance than the Atom N550. I’d expect to see the multi-core, hyperthreading Atom N550 take the lead when it comes to running multiple applications simultaneously or running apps that are designed to take advantage of multiple threading capabilities.
That said, if you’ve been lamenting that Intel has been pumping out Atom chips for netbooks for over two years with almost no perceptible difference in performance, it looks like the Atom N550 could be the first chip to change that.
Toshiba is giving its 10 inch netbooks a slight spec bump today, by introducing models with support for DDR3 memory.
First up is a new version of the Toshiba NB305, which has a new 1.66GHz Intel Atom N455 processor and 1GB of DDR3 memory. Like its predecessors, this mini-laptop comes with Windows 7 Starter Edition, a 250GB hard drive, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, and a 6 cell battery.
Toshiba has also introduced a lower priced model called the Toshiba Mini NB255. It’s built of less expensive plastic and has a different keyboard design than the NB305. But it features the same basic guts including an Atom N455 CPU and DDR3 memory.
Both netbooks have 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel displays. The new Toshiba NB305 will sell for $379, while the Toshiba NB255 will run just $299.
Low power Intel Atom chips have changed the way we think about battery life and “good enough” performance in low-cost laptops. But it turns out that these chips which were designed for low power laptops are also useful in other areas typically dominated by expensive, power-hungry chips. A company called SeaMicro is building servers that use just a quarter of the energy of a typical server, by using Intel Atom processors.
We’re not actually talking about “low power” here, so much as lower power. What SeaMicro is doing is putting a whole bunch of Atom processors together in order to achieve the kind of performance you would expect from a more powerful chipset.
How many Atom chips does that take? Around 512 of them. Even with a fairly tiny power draw per chip, that’s still a lot of energy — but it’s a lot less than you’d use with a more traditional server setup.
SeaMicro plans to start offering its Atom-based server products next month. You can find more details at Wired Magazine or the SeaMicro web site.
Last I’d heard, Intel was hoping to phase out the Intel Atom 230 single core and Atom 330 dual core low power desktop chips in April. That didn’t quite happen, but now that Intel’s new Pine Trail Atom chips for low power desktops have been on the market for close to half a year, Fudzilla reports that the company plans to stop selling the Atom 230 and 330 processors by the end of this month.
Intel has largely replaced these first generation Atom chips with newer Intel Atom D410/425 single core chips and D510/D525 dual core processors. The newer D425 and D525 chips are some of the first Atom processors to support DDR3 memory and will likely remain on the market through at least the end of the year.
We first saw Intel’s Moorestown mobile chip way back at CES in January powering an LG GW990 smart phone, but a fuller picture of its capabilities emerged today at the Intel Ultra Mobility Group conference at Computex in Taipei.В While today’s event covered much of the same information we previously learned about the new Atom chipset, we’re still impressed that the forthcoming Moorestown chip bests its Menlow predecessor (the Atom Z5xx series) with 50 times less power consumption. Plus, it’s still able to provide up to two days of continuous audio playback or up to five hours of continuous 720p video playback.
Intel showed off this Atom Z6xx serious chipset in both the Aava smart phone and the Open Peak tablet– both running the Meego OS– which is destined for netbooks, tablets and other devices. Speaking of MeeGo, Intel used this event to promote the fact that both Acer and ASUS have vowed to back Meego with devices to be released in 2010 and 2011, respectively. Expect to see the Linux-based OS on Acer netbooks and on multiple ASUS devices.
It’s only a reference design, but after spending a few minutes with Intel’s amazingly slim Canoe Lake netbook prototype, we’re hoping some OEM will step up and produce this product exactly as it was shown. Simply put, it has the best look and feel of any 10-inch netbook we’ve touched, from its attractive metal trim to its responsive keyboard and sexy touchpad.
The Canoe Lake design features a high-resolution 1366 x 768 10-inch screen, a dual core Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, and a 120GB 1.8-inch The storage device that holds your OS, programs, and data. Learn Morehard drive of indeterminate speed. Of course, these specs – particularly the RAM and the storage drive – are subject to change when someone buys the design. What’s not subject to much change, we hope, is the chassis which is less than an inch thick, and sports an amazing chrome and black color scheme.
A number of small design touches make Canoe Lake feel futuristic, from its amazingly thin frame to its real chrome accents. The font on the keys even looks like Sci-Fi typeface. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to benchmark the device, but we noticed that it felt extremely responsive when opening applications or navigating around the desktop. It also stayed completely cool throughout our filming.
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Intel may have introduced its new Intel Atom Z6xx Moorestown platform in early May. But it’s going to be another 6 to 12 months before we start to see tablets, smartphones, and other Moorestown-based devices hit the streets. That’s according to Intel vice president Anand Chandrasekher, speaking at an event in Taiwan today.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that Moorestown chips still need time in the oven. It could simply mean that Intel still has to send samples to device makers for testing, ramp up production and distribution, and then wait for device makers to ramp up their own production before we’ll actually be able to walk into a store and buy a Moorestown tablet.
The Intel Atom Z6xx series chips will be available with clock speeds ranging from 1.5GHz to 1.9GHz. They include GMA 600 graphics with support for 3D graphics and video acceleration while using significantly less power than the Atom Z5xx chips they’ll replace. Intel is promising users will get around 8-10 hours of run time out of a Moorestown tablet, although that will clearly depend on the batteries that OEMs end up using.
Intel is introducing a series of new chips destined for netbooks, tablets, and other portable computing devices. Some won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been reading this web site for a while. Others are brand spanking new.
Pine Trail Dual Core
First up we’re going to start to see netbooks with dual core Intel Atom chips. These are part of the same Pine Trail platform as the Atom N450 and N470 chips that are available today. But the new first new chip will be a 1.5GHz dual core processor called the Intel Atom N550. We’ve already seen at least one computer that will use this new CPU.
It’s not clear what kind of performance boost a dual core Atom chip will provide. After all, simply having two cores doesn’t necessarily make every computer function faster. But at the very least, these systems should be better at multitasking than current netbooks — which are already pretty good thanks to hyperthreading technology.
Pine Trail chips with support for DDR3 memory
This has been one of the worst kept secrets in the netbook space, but Intel is giving the Atom N450/N470 chips a slight update to add support for DDR3 memory. The clock speeds, memory cache, and other features won’t change. Just the names and the memory.
The new chips will be a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N455 and 1.83GHz Intel Atom N470.
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Last I’d heard, Intel was hoping to phase out the Intel Atom 230 single core and Atom 330 dual core low power desktop chips 
