Intel to intro next-gen netbook Atom on 10 January?

Stepping onto the 'Pine Trail'

Expect a raft of new netbooks based on Intel's next-generation 'Pine Trail' Atom chippage after 10 January - the day the products will be formally launched, it seems.

That date is slap-bang in the middle of the Consumer Electronics Show. CES, which kicks off in Las Vegas on 7 January, has long expected to host Pine Trail's introduction.

The precise date is what Asian hardware manufacturers are saying, DigiTimes reports. Acer, Asus, Lenovo and MSI, to name but four, will all introduce Pine Trail-based netbooks on 11 January.

Some of these products, such as the Asus Eee PC 1005P, are already making appearances, albeit in name only, on company websites.

Pine Trail will initialy comprise the Atom N450 processor and a supporting I/O chip. The platform's graphics will be built into the N450, as will the DDR 2 memory controller. The N450 will be clocked at 1.66GHz and contain 512KB of L2 cache. It will support HyperThreading for dual-core like operation. It'll do 64-bit too.

Whizz for Atoms Inside Intel's next netbook generation