Intel Atom 22 nm multicore SoC processors

The Intel Atom 22 nm 64-bit multicore processors feature USB 3.0 and graphics support, targeting high-performance, low-power applications ranging from smartphones to intelligent embedded systems. The SoC processors are manufactured using Intel’s Tri-Gate CMOS technology. They are claimed to bring improved performance and energy efficiency compared to competing processors using planar transistor technology.

Present 22 nm Atom SoCs contain up to four 64-bit low-power Intel processor cores with each core attached to 56 KB of L1 cache; in addition, each pair of cores shares 1 MB of L2 cache. The latest SoCs provide improvements of about 3x the peak CPU performance while using the same power draw, or the same CPU performance while using about 5x less power.

The existing processors provide two digital display interface (DDI) ports that enable eDP, DP, DVI or HDMI, with audio supported on DP and HDMI. An on-chip graphics controller supports HW encode/decode acceleration for many video formats including H.264 and MPEG2. The on-chip image signal processor enables up to three MIPI CSI ports for camera interfaces. Other interfaces include PCI Express, SATA, USB 3.0/2.0/1.1 and various serial I/O.

The performance-per-watt improvements in the processors are said to enable better performance and responsiveness for battery-powered applications including tablets, smartphones and other low-power mobile devices. Future variants will target entry-level laptops and desktop computers in innovative form factors, as well as provide good energy efficiency and performance-per-watt for microservers, storage servers, entry- to mid-range routers, switches and security appliances.