Intel’s New "Atom" Chips Bring Us Closer to Ubiquitous Mobile Computing

Intel Atom centrino atom

Intel’s latest mobile processor offering, the Intel Atom, is one powerful little beast. It measures around 25mm, but still manages to fit in the Core 2 Duo instruction set and speeds up to 1.8Ghz. While these tiny trooopers certainly won’t be able to compete with a 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo processor, they shouldn’t really have to. The chipset housing this new processor, Centrino Atom, will also feature low-powered integrated graphics and wireless capability.

You can read more about the technical specifics of the Atom platform over at CrunchGear or Intel’s press release, what I’m more interested in is what this new processor represents. Obviously, Intel is aiming to create small and inexpensive devices which still offer the amenities of larger notebook and desktop chips. But the devices these chips will be headed to will most likely be far smaller than anything we’ve seen Intel tackle before.

We’ll surely see them show up in newer versions of the Asus Eee and similarly inexpensive ultra-portable laptops, but the introduction of the Atom line also leaves the door open for Intel to step into the handheld computing market. Next generation Pocket PCs may actually be able to compete notebook and desktop PCs. It also means that we’ll see Intel further perfecting this market, and moving closer towards the mobile processors that have ruled cellphones and mobile devices until now.

In a few years time, we’ll probably see some massive innovation leaps in the realm of tiny CPUs, and I for one can’t wait. While the battle for desktop and notebook processor domination will continue for the foreseeable future, this unseen battle among small-yet-powerful CPUs has a greater potential for changing the way we interact with technology in our daily lives.

The concept of ubiquitous computing comes to mind; wherein our computer interaction will not only occur between dedicated computing devices like desktops, laptops, and PDAs, but also more mundane devices like refrigerators, clothes, and pretty much anything you can think of. With processors both tiny and inexpensive, the computing possibility of our environment becomes limitless.
I for one welcome our tiny and omnipresent computing overlords.