It is likely Intel could lead the future of mobile phone processors after the announcement of the Atom Z2460 chip, labeled “Medfield” at CES 2012. On initial runs, the processor came out superior to current popular smartphone chips in several aspects, but the most impressive aspect is its speed, where the Intel chip leads by a huge margin. The high power requirements of the chip has raised several doubts about battery life and other concerns, but these are expected to be resolved by the time Lenovo and Motorola release their first Intel powered phones. Most experts believe that battery life shouldn’t be a concern and considering that two major players in the market have adopted the chip, it should be all that Intel claims it is.
Benchmark tests run on the Lenovo K800, one of the phones that run on the Intel chip, showed that it is faster than most of the smartphones in the market today. The SunSpider Javascript test gives the K800 a score of 1330, with the nearest competitor being the Galaxy Nexus that clocks in near 2000. The benchmark gives a lower score for better performance. In other benchmarking tests, the Intel chip delivered performance that was clearly capable of competing with the processors used in popular tablets and phones today.
Even in tests dealing with battery consumption (standby, audio playback and HD video playback), the chip scored close to the best. It isn’t the most efficient chip at the moment but with Intel’s experience in minimizing power consumption, it shouldn’t be something to worry about, experts opine. The most interesting or surprising aspect of the chip is that this outstanding performance is delivered courtesy of just a single core processor, as compared to the dual core competitors it was tested against.
Currently, the single core Medifield can trump most of the processors with the exception of a few on the graphics front. The likely scenario is that there will be a dual core version of this chip out soon that will come with a built-in GPU, providing stiff competition to current SoC favourites like Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and Nvidia.
Intel has kept mum regarding the next generation Silvermont chip up to this point, though it is said to be a complete revamp of the Atom processor and will be made with the 22nm process. This chip is also meant for tablets and smartphones and is capable of providing laptop-like performance.
