This article talks about the new Intel Atom line of processors (formerly known as “Silverthorn” and “Diamondville”). The idea is to create processors that are: a) inexpensive and b) lower power so that they can go into things that look like the Eee PC and the iPhone:

Thinking Small: New Intel Architecture Champions Sub 1 Watt x86

In theory, if everything goes as planned, a whole new category of devices called “Mobile Internet Devices” (MIDs), along with a whole new category of really inexpensive (sub-$300) laptops, will emerge.

The sprectrum of processors looks like this:

- At 0.6 watts: A 47-million-transistor Silverthorn processor running at 500 MHz. The goal here is super-low-power.

- At 2.5 watts: A Silverthorn processor running at 1.8 GHz (three times the speed, three times the power consumption)

- At 4 watts, a Diamondville single-core processor running at 1.6 GHz. It has a 512K L2 cache and Symetric Multi-Threading. In other words, this processor looks like a stripped-down “normal” Intel processor. The goal here is to be inexpensive.

- At 8 watts. a Diamondville dual-core processor running at 1.6 GHz..

Brief overview from Intel: