Intel Silverthorne Chip for UMPC and Mobile Internet Device

Intel Silverthorne Chip for UMPC and Mobile Internet Device. Following on rumors that Apple's next-generation iPhone (or Newton) would make use of Intel's x86-based Silverthorne chip, and Intel's overtures with their iPhone-mocking mobile internet device, Intel is slated to debut the Silverthorne microprocessor later this week. The upcoming single-core processor known as Silverthorne is a 45nm processor designed for the mobile market, such as UMPCs and tiny notebooks.

Intel has upgraded the chip with HyperThreading support. While tiny in size, it is a full blown 64-bit processor. It sports a 16-stage pipeline, 533MHz bus and 512KB L2 cache.

As a scaled-down x86 chip, Silverthorne can top out at 2Ghz (2W) to do the heavy-lifting, while also dialing-down to a more mobile-friendly 600mW operating range. Silverthorne should bring Pentium M performance to the mobile space.

"What has a lot of OEMs excited is the dynamic range of this processor," said Justin Rattner, chief technology officer of Intel. "It can be active at less than 1 W, but when it has a workload in front of it–like interpreting some Java byte codes to render a Web page–it can really crank."

However, Intel seems to be marketing Silverthorne towards the UMPC and mobile internet device market rather than the smartphone market. Silverthorne doesn't have the ultra-low power consumption of some of its rivals and so will make its debut in larger, paperback sized devices. As we all saw with Intel's iPhone-esque internet device concept, Silverthorne's going to be pulling duty in some sizable devices.

While Silverthorne makes strides ratcheting down the power of an X86 processor, it is still a long way from integrated cellular chips that aim to deliver PC-like functions to pocket-size communicators. For instance, at the same ISSCC session, Texas Instruments will describe a cellular chip capable of decoding MPEG-4 video streams that includes an 840-MHz ARM11 to run applications, a 480-MHz TI C55x DSP core to handle 2G and 3G baseband comms, and a 240-MHz image processor.

Given Silverthorne's relatively heft power-consumption, we're not sure if Apple will choose to put the Intel chip in the next-gen iPhone. It would make more sense for Apple to team up with Intel on the Apple Newton - a larger device that fits Intel's Silverthorne profile perfectly. Still, with full notebook performance in an ultra-mobile form-factor, we can't wait to see what Silverthorne-powered devices Intel launches. We hope it's not too much to ask for Intel to produce the internet-device that we played with at CES 2008 (even if it was a mockup).