The Intel Atom Thread

[jdubs03]

I like what I see with those guidance numbers for Q3, and full-year. $400mn over consensus for Q3, with spending flat should yield some nice EPS and cash flow numbers. I hope Broadwell can give a nice Q1/Q2 2015 boost.

I haven't seen the transcript yet unfortunately, but I've seen a smidgen of talk about Skylake maybe getting pushed back not due to implementation but due to the device manufacturers wanting to have a decent product life-cycles. That seems logical to me, I think they may have wanted Skylake out in Q3 2015 for mobile, but I still think it'll be a Q4 2015 release. No 10nm push-out.

Edit: Here is the CC.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2316625-intels-intc-brian-krzanich-on-q2-2014-results-earnings-call-transcript

 

[witeken]

Well, they're targeting 40M. 30M should be easy to hit, but they're going to need some solid quarters to get 40M. Should get fairly close, regardless.

With Moorefiel, Merrifield and Cherry Trail (?) in H2 with more products released, I think they're indeed on track. They are expecting higher higher revenues in H2 than in H1.

By the way, it's interesting to see that the PC Group's revenue was up by 6% Y/Y. Laptop and desktop volumes up by 9% and 8%.

 

[Arachnotronic]

With Moorefiel, Merrifield and Cherry Trail (?) in H2 with more products released, I think they're indeed on track. They are expecting higher higher revenues in H2 than in H1.

By the way, it's interesting to see that the PC Group's revenue was up by 6% Y/Y. Laptop and desktop volumes up by 9% and 8%.

Cherry Trail according to the CC launches in late 2014 but ramps during the first half of 2015. For tablets shipping this year, it's all about Merrifield, Moorefield, and Bay Trail.

 

[Shivansps]

Just take a look at that USB powered ECS liva, it can even mantain CPU+IGP turbos.

 

[Nothingness]

Just take a look at that USB powered ECS liva, it can even mantain CPU+IGP turbos.

The micro USB port can provide 15W which is way too high for tablets.

PS - That still is a very nice device. Too bad they only support Windows now.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Well, there is some good news and some bad news. On the good side, the Best Buy weekly ad is featuring both the Asus Transformer T100 and the new Acer Switch 10.

On the bad side, I saw an article in Tom's Hardware that Lenovo will no longer be selling the Mixx 8 inch windows tablet in the US. I also dont think the Dell Venue 8 pro has caught on either, since microcenter has a bunch of open box models in stock but no new ones. It looks bad for a major manufacturer like Lenovo drop the 8 inch windows tablets.

 

[blackened23]

Windows 8.1 is just not a great mobile / touched based operating system, that's all there is too it. Now I like Windows 8.1. But not with it being touch driven, because it's maddening. Applications just aren't designed with touch in mind for the most part and then there's the DPI situation in Windows 8.1 which is simply maddening. Android and iOS are better touch driven mobile operating systems, and are better suited for smaller form factors. And then there's the DPI scaling nonsense with Windows 8.1 which android and iOS do not have problems with. This is why we're not seeing extremely high resolution Windows tablets. I could not imagine a 7 inch windows tablet with a retina type resolution. It would be practically unusable. What we're seeing (FOR THE MOST PART) is either full HD or less than full HD resolutions. Even 1920x1080 would be difficult @ 7 inches with Win 8.1, more than likely. Unless you want everything scaled and blurred to a mess.

Now if I were getting an ultrabook, no question, android and iOS are not suited for a bigger form factor ultrabook. Think something with a touchpad and full keyboard. I would want windows on this. But a smaller touch driven device? Windows 8.1 just isn't as good in terms of the application ecosystem. So it isn't surprising that smaller form factor windows "tablets" aren't taking off. People like, and are used to, android and iOS for touch driven tasks. It doesn't mean that I don't like Windows, because I *do* like windows on certain form factors.

There's only so much MS can do here as well. I mean, Windows biggest attribute is backwards compatibility. This also means that 90% of applications which are backwards compatible with Windows have 0% compatibility with touch driven operation or tablet form factor operation. Contrast this to android and iOS where pretty much all applications are completely developed with touch driven and smartphone/tablet form factors in mind. This makes all the difference when android apps are developed for the smaller form factor and touch driven operation in mind. Windows does not have this. And it shows. But, Bay Trail is fully android compatible now anyway so i'd expect to see more dual or pure android bay trail based tablets in the future.

 

[Sweepr]

Interesting article by Eurogamer:

What if every PC game could run on your tablet?

Windows 8: despised at launch by gamers, written off by Valve's Gabe Newell as a catastrophe for PC gaming. It was the upgrade nobody wanted, or seemingly needed - a misbegotten attempt to meld tablet and desktop interfaces into one OS. Two years on, things are looking up. Microsoft has finally got its act together and in combination with new Intel silicon, some remarkable mobile products are emerging that show the OS in a more favourable light. Indeed, while it won't be the best choice for everyone, Windows 8.1 is swiftly becoming our favourite tablet operating system - mostly because of the tantalising options it offers for the core gamer.

[...] More specifically, it's the Asus T100 Transformer Book that delivers the goods. It's a machine with a range of attractive attributes: full Windows 8.1 as opposed to the more limited ARM 'RT' version, along with the Bay Trail chipset and its revised Intel quad-core Atom architecture along with a pared back version of the same GPU found in Surface Pro.

Visit YouTube, search for T100 and the game of your choice and be prepared for a lottery of both delight and disappointment. We'd peg the T100's Bay Trail processor as equivalent to a mid-range 2004 gaming PC - and with that in mind, from a performance perspective, you're at the mercy of the games you choose to install on it.

But one thing's for sure - the T100 provides something closer to the mobile Half-Life 2 and Portal experiences we were yearning for with Tegra 4, and then some. Forget 600p resolution and reduced settings - 720p, 30fps or thereabouts and high presets are all on the cards with the Asus T100. Indeed, what we're looking at is Half-Life 2 and Portal running with arguably better image quality than the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions with the same ballpark frame-rates - though you should seek our a frame-rate limiter to cap update at 30fps, otherwise things can go a bit haywire.

...In the immediate future, it won't be too long until we see what Intel has come up with to replace Bay Trail for inexpensive tablets like the Asus T100. There are rumours that the GPU in the new chip - dubbed Cherry Trail - has been upgraded to the full Intel integrated graphics solution found in the Surface Pro, while retaining a more power-efficient iteration of the quad-core Atom CPU component.

www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-what-if-you-could-play-pc-games-on-a-tablet

Well, there is some good news and some bad news. On the good side, the Best Buy weekly ad is featuring both the Asus Transformer T100 and the new Acer Switch 10.

On the bad side, I say an article in Tom's Hardware that Lenovo will no longer be selling the Mixx 8 inch windows tablet in the US. I also dont think the Dell Venue 8 pro has caught on either, since microcenter has a bunch of open box models in stock but not new ones. It looks bad for a major manufacturer like Lenovo drop the 8 inch windows tabelts.

According to them ThinkPad 8 is no longer being sold in the U.S. but Miix 2 is sold out and they will launch new 8'' and 10'' models this holiday. I personally really liked the Thinkpad 8, can't wait for a Cherry Trail-T version of this tablet (or something similar).

"We will continue to bring new Windows devices to market across different screen sizes, including a new 8-inch tablet and 10-inch tablet coming this holiday. Our model mix changes as per customer demand, and although we are no longer selling ThinkPad 8 in the U.S., and we have sold out of Miix 8-inch, we are not getting out of the small-screen Windows tablet business as was reported by the media. In short, we will continue to sell both 8 and 10 inch Windows tablets in both the U.S. and non-U.S markets."-Lenovo statement

www.slashgear.com/lenovo-isnt-ditching-small-windows-tablets-it-just-has-none-to-sell-you-19337862

 

[monstercameron]

Lenovo denied that story.

 

[ninaholic37]

On the good side, the Best Buy weekly ad is featuring both the Asus Transformer T100 and the new Acer Switch 10.

Do these actually feel like laptops on your lap? I hear they are a bit top-heavy.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Here is the link to the TH article link .

The author of the article says in the first paragraph that Lenovo has decided to not sell either the Think Pad 8 or Mixx 8 inch tablets in North America. Later he says that the Mixx is listed as "sold out" with no indication sales will resume in North America, which is a bit more vague. So it seems for all practical purposes, neither will be sold any longer in North America.

 

[monstercameron]

Here is the link to the TH article link .

The author of the article says in the first paragraph that Lenovo has decided to not sell either the Think Pad 8 or Mixx 8 inch tablets in North America. Later he says that the Mixx is listed as "sold out" with no indication sales will resume in North America, which is a bit more vague. So it seems for all practical purposes, neither will be sold any longer in North America.

http://www.umpcportal.com/2014/07/l...all-windows-tablet-market-new-devices-coming/

which is more likely?

 

[frozentundra123456]

Cameron, how is the wi-fi on the Venue 8 Pro? The Microcenter near me has a bunch of open box models at 160.00 and I have been thinking of picking one up for checking e-mail in several different labs I go to during my work. (I dont have a smart phone and am reluctant to get one because of the data plan cost.)

I currently have a 7 inch acer android tablet, and am continually frustrated by the absolutely terrible wi-fi connectivity. I can connect with my home wi-fi, but even though they have wireless in all the labs I work in, the Acer will not connect or is so slow that it hangs up loading pages and will never fully load.

 

[jdubs03]

Cameron, how is the wi-fi on the Venue 8 Pro? The Microcenter near me has a bunch of open box models at 160.00 and I have been thinking of picking one up for checking e-mail in several different labs I go to during my work. (I dont have a smart phone and am reluctant to get one because of the data plan cost.)

I currently have a 7 inch acer android tablet, and am continually frustrated by the absolutely terrible wi-fi connectivity. I can connect with my home wi-fi, but even though they have wireless in all the labs I work in, the Acer will not connect or is so slow that it hangs up loading pages and will never fully load.

I know you didn't address your question to me, but I have a V8P and have had no issues with wifi since I purchased it in October.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I know you didn't address your question to me, but I have a V8P and have had no issues with wifi since I purchased it in October.

Thanks for the feedback.

I addressed the question to Cameron because he said he had just purchased one. Anyone else who has one, please comment as well.

 

[dahorns]

Thanks for the feedback.

I addressed the question to Cameron because he said he had just purchased one. Anyone else who has one, please comment as well.

It doesn't have the strongest antenna in the world, but I haven't had any issues with it.

It works well with my 802.11ac router, but the range at 5ghz is pretty bad. In my two bedroom (1400sqft) house, the router and the master are at opposite corners of the house. If I'm in the master, though the venue 8 pro may show three bars, it isn't able to establish a connection of any reliability. Of course, this may be more a function of the router (and the 5ghz band).

The 2.4 ghz band works fine at that distance.

 

[Roland00Address]

Of course, this may be more a function of the router (and the 5ghz band).

The 2.4 ghz band works fine at that distance.

Sounds like issues with the 5 ghz band. The 5 ghz ban has no problems with distance if you are in an open field. The 5 ghz band though is horrible at penetrating things such as walls. There is a reason why it is unlicensed spectrum and thus allowed for things such as wifi.

The 2.4 ghz is much better at penetrating things such as walls but it hast a lot of interference from things such as microwaves. Generally the lower the wavelength the better at penetrating stuff. This is why cell phone companies really want 700 to 1000 mhz spectrum.

 

[monstercameron]

Cameron, how is the wi-fi on the Venue 8 Pro? The Microcenter near me has a bunch of open box models at 160.00 and I have been thinking of picking one up for checking e-mail in several different labs I go to during my work. (I dont have a smart phone and am reluctant to get one because of the data plan cost.)

I currently have a 7 inch acer android tablet, and am continually frustrated by the absolutely terrible wi-fi connectivity. I can connect with my home wi-fi, but even though they have wireless in all the labs I work in, the Acer will not connect or is so slow that it hangs up loading pages and will never fully load.

yes the WiFi is ok. when I first got it, it would disconnect randomly but a firmware update fixed that. It also exhibits a weird throttling characteristic when downloading games from steam, although that might just be steam. For youtube, Hulu and Netflix I don't experience any issues though.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Semi related to the thread. Broadcom fired 2500 people and gave up completely on modems.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/22/us-broadcom-results-idUSKBN0FR2BS20140722

Apple for example use Broadcom.

Intels baseband development for its tablet/smartphone products just got a lot more important.

 

[witeken]

But not faster.

 

[tarlinian]

Semi related to the thread. Broadcom fired 2500 people and gave up completely on modems.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/22/us-broadcom-results-idUSKBN0FR2BS20140722

Apple for example use Broadcom.

Intels baseband development for its tablet/smartphone products just got a lot more important.

Apple does not use Broadcom basebands. (Broadcom has close to zero baseband design wins, which explains the shuttering of the business.) Broadcom is a big player in Wifi+BT combo chips and are in most of the big sockets (including the iPhone) in that market and have no plans to exit that business.

 

[ams23]

So is Cherry Trail (with 16 EU's) expected to have roughly HD 4000 graphics performance? If so, it should have roughly comparable graphics performance to mobile Kepler in Tegra K1.

 

[Roland00Address]

So is Cherry Trail (with 16 EU's) expected to have roughly HD 4000 graphics performance? If so, it should have roughly comparable graphics performance to mobile Kepler in Tegra K1.

We have no clue of the performance of cherry trail for we have no clue on the clocks of cherry trail. Furthermore intel is moving to a new architecture with cherry trail and broadwell called Gen 8 and we have no clue on the performance of gen 8 at Y clock speeds compared to gen 7 at X clock speeds.

-----

We do know that cherry trail will have 4 times the execution units. If they kept the execution units the same generation, and if the memory was fast enough to feed those 4x execution units, and the clock speed were the same we would get 4 times the performance. Then again intel may reduce clock speeds to get better energy efficiency at load, or they may be thermally limited anyway so they may want to reduce clock speeds and you will not get 4x performance.

For example with gtx 580 (fermi) to gtx 680 (kepler) nvidia tripled the amount of execution units. Nvidia though at the same time dramatically reduced the shader frequency at the same time, and made some changes at the front end to make the chip much more energy efficient. Thus the final product of gtx 680 vs 580 the 680 was only 15 to 65% faster depend on the game and settings, but it also shaved 50 watts off the gtx 580 power consumption making it use about 80% the power to achieve that 15 to 65% higher frame rate. Personally I consider what kepler did compared to fermi to be awesome, and nvidia did the same thing again with maxwell, but some people are mighty mad at nvidia for they want the ultimate performance not better efficiency.

 

[TrulyUncouth]

So, after a long time waffling about what type of tablet I wanted to get I ended up settling on the updated Asus T100(s) with the bump in speed(It has the z3775 processor). I ordered it a few days ago and have been playing with it a ton since. I have a lot of comments on its performance from cpu/gpu to wifi so I figured I'd put them here in the most active discussion of Baytrail.

I was torn between the new shield tablet, an ipad mini, or the Asus. After watching a ton of videos showing full PC games running reasonably well on the slightly slower T100 and reading the eurogamer article I rolled the dice on the windows tablet.

I have primarily tested it with Steam streaming and natively installed games along with a few games from the windows market. Overall I am extremely impressed.

Streaming

Steam streaming is just damn near perfect. Assuming you run at 1280x720 it feels like playing native. I consider myself very sensitive to latency and even use a 120hz monitor on my desktop so I am a stickler for responsiveness. First, I should say I run a 5ghz network which might help it run without hiccups. However assuming your router can provide the thoroughput its really mindblowing. Even twitchy games like Rogue Legacy(a great game by the way) are essentially indistinguishable from playing locally. Just a few more games I remember trying without any issues- Skyrim, Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Portal 2. Long story short, if you haven't tried steam streaming do it.

PC Games

As for native games, of course I had to temper my expectations knowing the SOC is very low power and not really meant for what I intended. However, its really not that bad. Fallout new vegas was the main game I tried on the tablet and it ran reasonable well on lowest settings at 720p- however, I found myself playing at 800x600 with a few settings turned up because I enjoyed the higher framerate and a bit higher view distance more. I haven't tried skyrim yet because I was so impressed with it streaming I kinda got sidetracked and haven't gotten back to it yet.

Quick rundown of other native games-

Rogue legacy- for some reason has lag when fullscreen even at 320x240 res but feels like solid 60fps in a 720p window- not sure what causes the fullscreen issue, clearly the horsepower is there maybe a drive issue.

Mount and blade warband- runs at full res, directx9 code path with all settings but shadows to high(Never tried with them on) with absolutely no distinguishable lag or issues. I only did battles up to 50 units because I haven't had time to get to the really big battles- but this game is a treat and has built in xbox-360 gamepad controls, strongly suggest it.

Dungeons of Dredmor- other than needing a keyboard to start a new game, this one seems to play well. Full res and all that jazz it had no issues. I only loaded a game quickly to check it and haven't gotten back to it yet.

MS store games

I have installed about 10 games from the windows store and have had a handful of performance issues and one game that required the keyboard to put in a name for my character even though I was playing with just the tablet at the time. While there were many more titles than I thought there'd be on the market it feels very much like the Android market when its second wave of tablets came out. Things seem a bit disorganized and the many of the apps even in the top categories are of very questionable quality. Also pay to win seems even more rampant than on android- especially in the one MOBA I tried, Heroes of Order and Chaos I actually liked the game until after the training it asked me to pay money so I could have a mana potion in game- immediate uninstall.

Performance

The performance of the z3775 seems more than adequate for every day use. Other than a few issues with 1080p youtube in the IE touch browser(same video seemed to run fine in desktop IE- and this was before I installed all updates) I have run into no real stops or hitches.

I have only run a handful of benches so far-

3dmark

Ice Storm
18926
Cloud Gate
1427
Sky Diver
526

Cinebench R10 32bit

Single
1228
Multi
4098
Multi speedup
3.34
OpenGL
2264

From what I can tell from some quick numbers I pulled online it looks like both the 3dmark ice storm and Cloud gate are ~18% higher than the 3740 that was in the original T100. Cinebench single is 30% higher than the 3740 and multi is 21% higher. Altogether not a shabby increase.

Conclusion

I have owned a large number of tablets in my life, from an HP convertible tablet running winxp/7 on a turion x2, to the original Asus transformer, a nexus 7 2012, and finally an ipad 2- and I must say I am personally very happy with the T100(s) and it feels like a hell of a value. Not only does it work great browsing the web and all other media consumption sides of tablets including running the only non-amazon tablet OS able access to Amazon prime videos(Prime member here).

However, the real icing for me is it also enables me to feed my gaming addiction very well. Unless you are dead set on only using games from the app store I think this is hands down the best gaming tablet. The on-board SOC is no slouch when it comes to running games reasonably well but Steam streaming just takes it to the next level.

The biggest negatives I can think of are definitely the weakness of the Windows store and some intermittent wifi issues until I rolled back then reinstalled the newest wifi driver. If you are on the fence about buying this tablet, I can only say I am rarely this happy with tech purchases and would recommend it to anyone.

If anyone has any questions or wants me to run any other benches/games just fire away.

 

[Roland00Address]

Intel Atom z3775 1.46 ghz base, burst up to 2.4 ghz

Cinebench R10 32bit

Single
1228
Multi
4098
Multi speedup
3.34

Just for comparison here is the 1st generation core i3 330um (ultramobile 18w chip+3.5w chipsett) at 1.2 ghz 2 cores 4 threads

Single
1297
Multi
2982
Multi speedup
2.30 (remeber it is just a dual core, hyperthread added a little over 15%)

I used to own an acer "netbook" with that cpu which I got almost 4 years ago (3 years 8 months ago) for $450, 3 gbs of ram 250gb hard drive 1366x768 ram. Less than a year later you could get the 2gb ram model for $350. I eventually put a ssd in there (sandforce) but I do not recall how much I spent on the ssd.

This was about the same time amd was comming out with the e-350 (1.6 ghz amd dual core) for they came out about 4 to 6 months later. Here is the amd e-350 scores

Single
1048.3
Multi
1997
Multi speedup
1.90

So in cinebench the new atom is double the speed in multithread but only 17% faster in single thread. And this is the top atom. Now intel is doing this in a tdp of less than 4 watts and it is targeting a 2 watt sdp. This is compared to an amd design that is 3.5 years old but is an amd 18watt tdp chip and a 5.9 watt southbridge.