Intel Launches New Multicore, Low-Power SoCs for Tablets

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Intel Corporation today launched its latest family of low-power systems-on-a-chip (SoC), codenamed "Bay Trail," that will fuel a wave of highly powerful and energy efficient tablets, 2 in 1s and other mobile devices to market for consumers and business users in the fourth quarter of this year from leading OEMs including AAVA*, Acer*, ASUS*, Dell*, Lenovo* and Toshiba*.

The "Bay Trail" family of processors is based on Intel's low-power, high-performance microarchitecture "Silvermont," announced in May 2013. The Intel® Atom™ Z3000 Processor Series ("Bay Trail-T") is the company's first mobile multi-core SoC and its most powerful offering1 to date for tablets and other sleek mobile designs. It delivers a fast and fluid experience and a powerful balance of performance, battery life, graphics and rich features.
 
TheBuzzer said:
so how much power does it use?
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http://www.anandtech.com/show/7314/intel-baytrail-preview-intel-atom-z3770-tested

"Whether we’re talking about Cortex A15 in NVIDIA’s Shield or Qualcomm’s Krait 400, Silvermont is quicker. It seems safe to say that Intel will have the fastest CPU performance out of any Android tablet platform once Bay Trail ships later this year.

The power consumption, at least on the CPU side, also looks very good. From our SoC measurements it looks like Bay Trail’s power consumption under heavy CPU load ranges from 1W - 2.5W, putting it on par with other mobile SoCs that we’ve done power measurements on."
 
Oh come on heatlesssun, where art thou?
Bay Trail processors are here, the Microsoft Surface market is saved! :D
 
I really like the idea of more power efficient processors that are enough for most computing chores. It's sort of silly to have 500 watts of hardware just to check e-mail and order stuff from Amazon. We need less worrying about making stuff faster and more worrying about making things that don't need like a huge-gigantic metal thing stuck on the top of it to keep it cool.
 
Microsoft Surface wont' use Bay Trail.

Bay Trail should put a few more nails in the Windows RT coffin.

Though it looks like it might only be Microsoft that is trying to sell an RT machine this time around.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I really like the idea of more power efficient processors that are enough for most computing chores. It's sort of silly to have 500 watts of hardware just to check e-mail and order stuff from Amazon. We need less worrying about making stuff faster and more worrying about making things that don't need like a huge-gigantic metal thing stuck on the top of it to keep it cool.
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I want MOAR power.

Just give me a portable nuclear power plant and I will be happy.. until I need a second one. :D

Any your computer is NOT going to be pulling 500w of power if all you are doing is browsing the interwebs.

Tablets suck for email and shopping. Too small of a screen. I hate having to zoom in so I can read stuff.
 
Red Falcon said:
Oh come on heatlesssun, where art thou?
Bay Trail processors are here, the Microsoft Surface market is saved! :D
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Would be nice, but as Snowdog pointed out Microsoft isn't using Bay Trails in Surface. Indeed I pointed out last year that I thought it was odd that Microsoft wasn't offering a Clover Trail tablet, though that sort of makes Surface RT superfluous.

Bay Trail and its successors are absolutely critical to the success of Windows 8 and its successors. Not only in tablets but hybrids, convertibles and even conventional clamshell devices because of the price, performance and battery life of devices powered by these SoCs. And so far it does look very promising.
 
Any idea how they stack up to AMD's offerings in this area? I thought AMD's saving grace was that they had an edge here.
 
heatlesssun said:
Would be nice, but as Snowdog pointed out Microsoft isn't using Bay Trails in Surface. Indeed I pointed out last year that I thought it was odd that Microsoft wasn't offering a Clover Trail tablet, though that sort of makes Surface RT superfluous.

Bay Trail and its successors are absolutely critical to the success of Windows 8 and its successors. Not only in tablets but hybrids, convertibles and even conventional clamshell devices because of the price, performance and battery life of devices powered by these SoCs. And so far it does look very promising.
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Maybe Windows 8 doesn't perform so well on such a low processor. (I don't have any experience there but Windows always seemed a bit... ahem... heavy or something.)


Regarding the AnandTech benches... don't take them too seriously. He does mostly JavaScript benches which are kinda worthless, and the power measurements are always winging it. Intel loves him. It's basically free ad copy.
 
jwcalla said:
Maybe Windows 8 doesn't perform so well on such a low processor. (I don't have any experience there but Windows always seemed a bit... ahem... heavy or something.)
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To this date no, that's the point of Bay Trail as far as Windows 8 is concerned. And there was a lot of work done to Windows 8 specifically to optimize it for low power devices. I've had my Clover Trail tablet for a year and while far from fast, for a 1.6 lbs Windows device with an active digitizer with close to 10 hours of battery life, it's not that bad for routine desktop duties in Office. Bay Trail looks to get performance past ULV Core 2 Duo levels of three years ago and that's actually a big achievement if that's how it pans out.

At any rate it looks like there's going to be a flood of Bay Trail devices, Dell just announced the new Venue, an 8" Windows 8.1 tablet, 1080P screen. If the price and performance are there these things are going to sell well.
 
Red Falcon said:
Well, how unfortunate for Microsoft.
Can't imagine why they want a new CEO to "turn the company around", lol.
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This is probably intentional in that Atom Windows 8 tablets are the bulk of the market and they are leaving that for now to OEMs.
 
heatlesssun said:
This is probably intentional in that Atom Windows 8 tablets are the bulk of the market and they are leaving that for now to OEMs.
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That is some heavy rationalizing, though pretty much expected from you.

The reason there is no Microsoft Surface with Bay Trail is that it would make it even more obvious how pointless Surface RT is.

Until Microsoft is ready to stop flogging the dead horse that is Windows RT, they won't build a proper low end Windows machine, with Bay Trail.
 
Snowdog said:
That is some heavy rationalizing, though pretty much expected from you.
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So I guess this was expected of me as well:

heatlesssun said:
For the price of a Surface RT I think that Clover Trail Atom Windows 8 represent a better value as they aren't a lot more expensive than the Surface RT and can do all the RT does and much more. I do think competition with similarly priced Atoms is part of the Surface RT's problem that a number of IT bloggers have actually mentioned.
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http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1039744222&postcount=3

I've been saying for a year know that proposition of Windows RT is difficult but it is a technical necessity to have Windows on ARM given ARMs current dominance of SoCs and Microsoft not knowing how Intel's low power efforts were going to fare. It looks like Intel has indeed done a good job and it does further case problems for Windows RT. I don't think that Windows RT will remain as is and will be rolled into Windows Phone as many are thinking.

Snowdog said:
The reason there is no Microsoft Surface with Bay Trail is that it would make it even more obvious how pointless Surface RT is.

Until Microsoft is ready to stop flogging the dead horse that is Windows RT, they won't build a proper low end Windows machine, with Bay Trail.
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Even with Windows RT's problems and it being kind of redundant with Atom SoCs, I do think that there is some intent on Microsoft's part not to enter the market with their own hardware at this time with what is no doubt the sweet spot for Windows tablets. It certainly would be something of a disincentive for OEMs to develop Bay Trail products and Microsoft needs OEMs to come up with some nice and price competitive products and it looks like they actually are doing decently in both regards from what we have seen of Bay Trail devices thus far.
 
heatlesssun said:
At any rate it looks like there's going to be a flood of Bay Trail devices...
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Looks like mostly 8" models so far, except for the Asus T100 which is a ridiculously low res 1366x768. Give me a 1080p version of that and I'd pull the trigger in a heartbeat.

Anyone know of any 10"+ Bay Trail tablets with 1080p res that have been announced?
 
Parja said:
Looks like mostly 8" models so far, except for the Asus T100 which is a ridiculously low res 1366x768. Give me a 1080p version of that and I'd pull the trigger in a heartbeat.

Anyone know of any 10"+ Bay Trail tablets with 1080p res that have been announced?
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None that I know of definitely but there are some that have been mentioned. 1366x768 actually isn't a bad resolution for what this is, a hybrid that people will run desktop software on. 10.1" at 1080P would require scaling to be usable for most with desktop apps. It's a higher DPI than a the 11" MBA. If the thing can get 11 hours of battery life for $350- $400 running desktop software the resolution isn't much of a problem. But it would be nice to have upgrade options like a 1080P screen and active digitizer.
 
Parja said:
Looks like mostly 8" models so far, except for the Asus T100 which is a ridiculously low res 1366x768. Give me a 1080p version of that and I'd pull the trigger in a heartbeat.
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Well the official curtain was just pulled back on Bay Trail, so it is very early days.

Some manufacturers might want to clear older Atoms before announcing the MUCH better Bay Trail products.

Given everything we have seen/heard from manufactures so far, I would expect that there will be nearly no third party RT machines, and that void will be mostly filled with Bay Trail machines. So I also expect a fair bit of Bay Trail machines.
 
TheBuzzer said:
so how much power does it use?
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It seems to be competitive with ARM chips, and a big leap in efficiency for x86 processors. Anandtech, Tech Report and PCPer have reviews up. I linked those here.

In one test, the Z3770 running Cinebench 11.5 multi-threaded (a typical desktop high load test) was consuming 2.5W at the SoC level. Anand estimated the Kabini A4-5000, having pretty close to the same performance in that benchmark, was using around 6W at the SoC level in Cinebench 11.5 multi-threaded.
 
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