Overheard: Intel 'Valley View' Atom CPUs to Feature Intel HD 4000 Graphics Core

Overheard: Intel 'Valley View' Atom CPUs to Feature Intel HD 4000 Graphics Core

According to leaked product slides, Intel's next-generation 'Valley View' Atom processors will feature Intel HD 4000 graphics processor. These CPUs will be part of the Balboa Pier series that will be launched in the second quarter of 2013. These CPUs are manufactured on the 22nm fabrication process and are the touted successors to the current Intel Atom Cedar Trail CPUs that are mainly found in netbooks.

Intel's next-generation 22nm CPUs are not available on the retail market yet but its featured technology like the Intel HD 4000 are already rumored to be making in-roads to platforms outside the scope of desktop computing. This could be part of Intel's effort to improve the graphics performance of netbooks.

The slide above describes the 'Balboa Pier' platform as a possible fan-less system featuring the Intel Atom 'Valley View' CPU that will feature up to four cores, which will reportedly offer similar performance levels and capabilities as current Cedar View cores. The new Atom chip will also support up to 8GB of DDR3 memory and USB 3.0.

(Source: The Verge via Engadget)