bit-tech.net

Intel Atom Bay Trail-T, Valleyview-T details leak

Published on 20th November 2012 by Gareth Halfacree

Intel's latest Atom design is alleged to feature out-of-order execution, DirectX 11-compatible Intel HD graphics and four physical processing cores.

A leaked slide deck has provided hints as to Intel's plans for low-power system-on-chip processors over the coming years, as the company seeks to beat Cambridge-based low-power chip giant ARM at its own game.

According to slides obtained by smartphone specialist site Mobile Geeks, Intel is planning to upgrade its current-generation dual-core Atom system-on-chip design with a quad-core part some time in 2014. Built on a 22nm process, the quad-core Atom is based on the Bay Trail-T core and is currently codenamed Valleyview-T - the suffix standing, it would appear, for Tablet.

According to the slides, on which Intel is refusing to comment, the Valleyview-T system-on-chip packs four Bay Trail-T cores and is designed to take over from the dual-core 32nm Clover Trail platform for tablet devices. Despite dropping Hyper Threading support, meaning the chip is capable of running the same four simultaneous threads as the dual-core Cloverview, the processor is claimed to draw around half the power for the same level of performance while scaling to an overall performance improvement of 50 per cent or more.

The chip includes support for low-power DDR3 (LPDDR3,) something missing from the LPDDR2-based Cloverview design, with a 64-bit data bus width offering up to 17GB/s throughput to Cloverview's 8.5Gb/s peak figures. The Imagination PowerVR SGX545 from Cloverview has also been ditched, with Intel 'dogfooding' its own seventh-generation Intel HD graphics processor for a claimed three-fold performance boost. As a result, high-resolution displays - like the one found in Google's ARM-powered Nexus 10 tablet - are supported, with both MIPI-DSI and eDP connections providing 2560x1600 support alongside an in-chip HDMI 1.4 connection.

Additional features in Bay Trail-T include lower power draw leading to a claimed 11 hour video playback battery life in Intel's reference platform, a new microarchitecture with full out-of-order execution (OoOE) support, DirectX 11 support under Windows, and new security features for the platform.

Intel, naturally, has refused to comment on unannounced products, but while Bay Trail-T sounds like an extremely impressive chip it could prove too little too late: ARM's multitudinous licensees are already shipping quad-core parts, and with the slides pointing to a 2014 release timescale for Bay Trail-T the company could find itself playing catch-up once more.

9 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

GuilleAcoustic 20th November 2012, 12:06

Hope they won't do the same joke than with the cedarview SGX545 (win7 32bits only drivers, no 64bits, no xp, no linux, only w7 32bits). Well played Intel, good cpu and useless graphic drivers.

azazel1024 20th November 2012, 13:38

If you read, it is Ivy Bridge Graphics in it, expected to be 4 EUs to HD2500 6 EUs, with no information on clock rates or anything like that. Drivers might be slightly tweaked due to the difference in interconnects for it, but at its core, it is Ivy Bridge graphics.

So unless Intel wants to change the support, it should fully support 32 and 64 bit as well as XP, Linux, Vista, 7 and 8.

Hustler 20th November 2012, 14:16

" with Intel 'dogfooding' "

dogfooding..#&*!!!

They're destroying our language....

Gareth Halfacree 20th November 2012, 14:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by azazel1024
So unless Intel wants to change the support, it should fully support 32 and 64 bit as well as XP, Linux, Vista, 7 and 8.

Oddly, the only operating system support mentioned anywhere in the slides is Windows 8 32-bit. I'd ask Intel for clarification, but I can tell you what their response would be: "We do not comment on industry rumour or unannounced products."

GuilleAcoustic 20th November 2012, 14:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by azazel1024
If you read, it is Ivy Bridge Graphics in it, expected to be 4 EUs to HD2500 6 EUs, with no information on clock rates or anything like that. Drivers might be slightly tweaked due to the difference in interconnects for it, but at its core, it is Ivy Bridge graphics.

So unless Intel wants to change the support, it should fully support 32 and 64 bit as well as XP, Linux, Vista, 7 and 8.

I already knew it was an "HD" IGP ... just hope Intel won't make the same sh!t they did with the previous gen Atom. They promised a 64bit driver but finaly abandonned it to focus on "HD" line, promised a Linux driver, but .....

Bought a Slim Shuttle with Atom D2700, having faith in Intel promises .... time taught me to NOT trust them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gareth Halfacree
Oddly, the only operating system support mentioned anywhere in the slides is Windows 8 32-bit. I'd ask Intel for clarification, but I can tell you what their response would be: "We do not comment on industry rumour or unannounced products."

Think It'll be the same thing happening again and again. They'll just throw a beta Win8 32 bit driver at us, and we'll have to do with it.

fdbh96 20th November 2012, 17:16

This looks alright actually, considering how fast the atom processor is in the razer i, I still think x86 has a place in mobile computing.

fluxtatic 21st November 2012, 06:16

I think their weak spot here still will be graphics. They've got more than enough money to solve it - either farm it back out to the PowerVR people, or actually get serious about it and hire some real engineers. If they wanted to be dicks, I bet they could steal some of the former ATI engineers from AMD for the right price (unless, of course, those engineers are under non-compete agreements.)

Seems like it might even be time to ease back on the hyper-aggressive tick-tock strategy in the mainline x86 market and start pouring a whole lot of money into mobile - they've gotten more serious, but they're still not that serious if they're talking about Win8-32 in 2014 - that'll be less than a year left before Win9 drops, and it isn't like ARM is standing still.

The Bay Trail-T doesn't like a revolution - they're doing what ARM already did. Arm went to quad core what, a year ago or more? And Intel still won't have an honest-to-god OoO Atom for nearly another 2 years?

I'd guess they're already taping out Broadwell - ease back on that and turn the tick-tock monster on for Atom - Intel's going to get crushed if they don't get serious about mobile a lot faster than they have so far.

iwod 21st November 2012, 12:02

Doesn't sounds that impressive to me at all. 2014 we will be talking about SoC with ARMv8 Cortex A57 @ 20nm. Or at least some derivative work from QualComm or Apple. An Atom with same performance but half the power usage is just about as good Cortex A57. So Intel will finally catch up the performance / power metrics compared to ARM camp. But it will still be too expensive to sell. The only way Intel can win this is by having a chip that perform a lot better then ARM but with equal power usage.

Not sure if 2014 will be too late. Or has Intel already started thinking about transitioning to a Fab business model for Apple and Qualcomm

mclean007 22nd November 2012, 10:27

Quote: