IDF: Intel spells out the future of MIDs and the Atom

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By Darien Graham-Smith in San Francisco

Posted on 20 Aug 2008 at 17:57

Intel has set out in detail its vision for mobile internet devices, or MIDs.

The company's belief that MIDs will soon be a major hardware category has met with some scepticism, not least here at PC Pro. On a recent podcast, our staff dismissed MIDs as a superfluous half-way house between the Eee PC-style netbook and the smartphone.

But Intel has now made clear that it defines the MID category very broadly. Rather than complementing these existing formats, the company sees the MID market as encompassing them, as well as many application-specific factors in-between.

"We will have netbooks and productivity MIDs, and consumer MIDs for navigation, entertainment and gaming."

"And last, but not least, communication devices, integrating the internet device and the smartphone," explained Anand Chandrasekhar, senior vice president of Intel's "Ultra Mobility Group", at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

Netbook and tablet-style MIDs are already in production from manufacturers including Asus, Lenovo, Fujitsu and Gigabyte.

Intel expects such devices to establish themselves over the coming months, with specialist and smartphone MIDs following over the next few years.

Up and Atom

Besides wireless internet access, Intel envisages all these MIDs having one factor in common: the Atom processor.

Though the Atom was designed for low-power applications, Intel is keen to play up its processing power. Forum delegates were shown World of Warcraft and real-time photo editing software running on Atom-based MIDs.

But the game was jerky, and the photo editing application looked sluggish. As if acknowledging this, Chandrasekhar looked forward to the next generation of the Atom processor, codenamed Moorestown.

He predicted that the new platform would make compute-heavy applications, such as video conferencing and 3D visualisations, viable on a pocket device, while consuming a tenth of the power of the current Atom while idle.

Chandrasekhar confirmed that Moorestown manufacturing is on track for a launch in 2010. Further technical details will be released at Intel's Developer Forum in Taiwan in October.