Intel Pine Trail M Netbook Platform Overview

Intel is expected to release its next generation netbook platform, codenamed Pine Trail M, by the end of 2009.

The main innovation in the Pine Trail M (Mobile) is that the new platform has the CPU, the memory controller, and the graphics chip on a single piece of silicon. In current Atom Diamondville-powered netbooks these three functions use the separate dies.

The new design reduces the footprint of the Intel-based netbook motherboards and provides a greater fanless potential, according to Intel. The Pine Trail M mobos measure 773mm2, down from current 2174mm2. Furthermore, average power consumption and thermal design power (TDP) are reduced from 4W and 16W to 2W and 7W respectively.

Pine Trail reportedly includes two new Atom CPUs, replacing the Atom N270 and N280. These are the N450 at 1.66GHz and the 1.83GHz Atom N470, both codenamed Pineview-M. The chips are based on 45nm production technology and are accompanied by the GMA 500 integrated graphics clocked at 200MHz, which is up from the GMA 950’s 133MHz. In addition, memory speed is 667MHz, up from 533MHz.

The platform enables use of two DDR2 DIMM slots instead of a single slot, but maximum supported system memory remains at 2GB.

The first OEM to launch a Pine Trail-M netbook will be MSI, according to rumors.