Next-gen Atom to launch in October, say moles

'Pine Trail' coming sooner than thought?

Intel has said that its next-generation Atom processor for netbooks - codenamed 'Pine Trail' - will debut in Q4, but it now appears we can narrow that down to 'early Q4'.

Asian moles say the CPU - to come to market as the Atom N450 - will launch in October. The 64-bit capable part will run at the same speed as today's N280, 1.66GHz, and it'll contain 512KB of L2 cache.

Unlike today's Atoms, the N450 has on-board graphics and a memory controller. It'll connect to a secondary chip, the NM10 - codenamed 'Tiger Point' - which will handle other I/O operations.

The CPU consumes no more than 7W - 1W less than the N280.

The N450's desktop equivalent is the D410, which is the same basic processor, though oddly isn't roadmapped to appear until Q1 2010. A dual-core version, the D510, will arrive in Q4 2009. ®