Hardware
Add Me To The Club Wondering About Intel’s Atom
Stacey Higginbotham of GigaOm and James Kendrick of jkOnTheRun have both picked up on a quote by Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini that has to leave you scratching your head. On a recent conference call he was apparently pressed by analysts about the ultimate end market for the Atom Chipset. His answer (quoted from GigaOm. the boldface is mine):
Otellini was excited about Atom, calling demand for the chip†robust,†but analysts pressed Otellini about Atom’s end market and whether the chip would cannibalize Intel’s low-end Celeron processor. The Celeron ranges from speeds of 2.13 GHz to 3.6 GHz, and is faster than Atom’s 1.8 GHz or 1.6 GHz. Otellini’s responses were less than a ringing endorsement of the chip. ““[Atom] is less than a third of the performance of our Centrino (high-end mobile processor),†said Otellini. ““You’re dealing with something that most of us wouldn’t use.â€Â
Like Stacey and James, I’m wondering that if most of us aren’t going to be using this, how the heck is Intel expecting to be pull in a supposed $40 billion from Atom?
I’m just asking.