Atom started with “A” series, which I think was a very quick hack of an existing Celeron family. They announced the “Z” series and the “N” series. The “Z” series is Silverthorne, which was designed first for power and then for cost. The “N” series is Diamondville, which was diesigned fist for cost and then for power. That’s why the “Z” series has < 2W TDP and the "N" series has 4W TDP (and slightly bigger and cheaper, I assume). However, both the "Z" and the "N" series are based on a same core/ALU design. It's just that they were optimized differently.

Intel’s marketing has been playing a game. They introduced the “Z” series first (I don’t think they officially announced the “N” series) which was smaller and consumed less. But I think all the low-cost netbooks (MSI, Dell, etc.) that are coming out are indeed using the “N” series (mostly @ 1.6 GHz).

I think Nano @ 1.0 GHz (5W) should be comparable to or even better than the “N” series Atom @ 1.6GHz (4W). The prices (to the manufacturers) matter, so that and the manufacturing capacity would matter.

Oh dear god! Will someone PLEASE make the brands easy to distinguish! Why are there Silverthorne and Diamondback (or wtf) for Atom?! I thought seeing Atom = Atom, 1 CPU. Now there are frikkin flavors?! Why should we have to keep track of this madness?! Why couldn’t they have done Atom-S and Atom-D to make it easier?!

Atom’s lowest TDP of 0.65W is for the Z500 clocked @ 800MHz, but the Z510 clocked @ 1.1GHz jumps to 2W TDP. Weird…

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080402-new-atom-cpu-marks-intels-baby-steps-into-embedded-world.html

Anyways, with 1.6GHz not being able to outperform 900MHz Dothan Celeron M, I really don’t think you’d want 800MHz or even 1.1GHz Atom anywhere near your XP install, let alone Vista.

As for the Nano and Atom not meant to be competing in the same space, you should tell that to the OEMs. They’ve already decided that those two will be competing in the same space. Many Atom announced devices are far larger than their 2W TDP would suggest. Many are planned for 7″ UMPCs and 9~10″ EeePC competitors. That’s exactly where VIA want Nano to compete in.

Do Atom and Nano have offerings at the same TDPs? If I remember Atom’s TDPs correctly, the lowest Nano TDP is still higher than Atom’s highest TDP. If that’s the case, the two products do not really directly compete against each other. Having said that, I also have to note 5W-8W is squarely within OQO’s target TDP. So the idea of a U-series Nano in a device which fits in your pocket isn’t out of the question.

Since Nano is out-of-order and Atom is in-order, I would expect Nano to perform better cycle for cycle. However, for a given TDP, Intel may be able to clock Nano faster. The results of independent, fair, competitive benchmarks may be really interesting.

Also, TDP only starts to tell the power story. We have very little independent information about the power consumption of either one of these chips. That will be interesting too.

So what exactly are these chips going to be used for? Would any be of any competition to intel’s dual core ulv processors?

Yes. It’s a different variant of Atom, but the point I was making to Jkr was that the only dual core Atom planned is the Diamondville core, and that indeed, dual core version has twice the TDP of the single core.

But then again, this has always been the case with Intel’s dual cores. Twice the core, twice the TDP. He can check it out for himself at Intel’s website:

http://processorfinder.intel.com/Default.aspx

Oh, btw, the Atom processors that will be used for most of the ULCPCs are not Silverthorne (“Z”) ones, but Diamondville (“N”) ones. I think Diamondville has slightly higher TDPs than Silverthorne. (~2W vs. ~4W).

Quoting Jkr
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Shogmaster is full of BS, just by the way you word it it’s obvious you have no undertsanding of what your talking about. besides, you havent used any of the Atom devices you claim you have. your just speculating based on what youve read that other bloggers have posted but admitted they were prebuilds.

besides anybody who makes a statement like this has no credibility whatsoever, twice the cores doesnt mean twice the everything (not even performance).

“And with twice the core, you are talking twice the TDP. 5.2W for 1.6GHz dual core Atom.”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverthorne_(CPU)

“Diamondville

On March 2, 2008, Intel announced the new processor (code-named Diamondville) to be used in Classmate PC/Netbook. It is used in Intel’s low-cost Mini-ITX motherboards (code-named “Little Falls”).[14][15][16][17] It will supersede Conroe L by using Diamondville as single-core Silverthorne core (4W TDP) or dual-core Silverthorne core (8W TDP) running at 2.2Ghz each.”

Actually, I am glad to see that they are launching with ULV options (they would have been very stupid without one). I think the “L” is for larger budget laptops or desktops.

I am quite excited about U2300 (1.0GHz) and U2500 (1.2GHz). I want to see HP 2133 with U2500. That should perform better than one with C7-M @ 1.6GHz. From the benchmark numbers, Nano @ 1.0GHz should be comparable to (or even slightly better than) C7-M @ 1.6GHz.

As for the competitions, from the benchmark numbers, I think Diamondville @ 1.6GHz seems to be comparable to Celeron @ 900MHz. I think Nano @ 1.0GHz should be comparable in terms of the ALU performance. I don’t think Via is going to beat Intel in terms of TDP anytime soon, but considering the contribution of CPU to the total system power consumption (and what kind of batteries the systems come with), Via might be able to win quite a few design wins with Nano.

Shogmaster is full of BS, just by the way you word it it’s obvious you have no undertsanding of what your talking about. besides, you havent used any of the Atom devices you claim you have. your just speculating based on what youve read that other bloggers have posted but admitted they were prebuilds.

besides anybody who makes a statement like this has no credibility whatsoever, twice the cores doesnt mean twice the everything (not even performance).

“And with twice the core, you are talking twice the TDP. 5.2W for 1.6GHz dual core Atom.”