atom

Prior to the Silverthorne announcement, outside sources had speculated that Atom would compete with AMD's Geode system-on-a-chip processors, used by the One Laptop per Child project, and other cost- and power-sensitive applications for x86 processors. However, Intel revealed on October 15, 2007^[1] that it was developing another new mobile processor, codenamed Diamondville, for OLPC-type devices.

"Atom" was the name under which Silverthorne would be sold, while the supporting chipset formerly code-named Menlow was called Centrino Atom.^[2] Intel's initial Atom press release only briefly discussed "Diamondville" and implied that it too would be named "Atom"^[3], strengthening speculation that Diamondville is simply a lower-cost, higher-yielding version of Silverthorne with slightly higher TDPs at slightly lower clock speeds.^[4]

At Spring Intel Developer Forum (IDF) 2008 in Shanghai, Intel officially announced that Silverthorne and Diamondville are based on the same microarchitecture. Silverthorne will be called the Atom Z series and Diamondville will be called the Atom N series. The more expensive lower-power Silverthorne parts will be used in Intel Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) whereas Diamondville will be used in low-cost desktop and notebooks. Several Mini-ITX motherboard samples have also been revealed.^[5] Intel and Lenovo also jointly announced an Atom powered MID called the IdeaPad U8.^[6] The IdeaPad U8 weighs 280 g and has a 4.8 in (12 cm) touchscreen providing better portability than a netbook PC and easier Internet viewing than a mobile phone or PDA.

In April 2008, an MID development kit was announced by Sophia Systems^[7] and the first board called CoreExpress was revealed by a German company Lippert.^[8][9] Intel offers Atom based motherboards.^[10][11]