Apple eyeing ‘Silverthorne’ chip for ultra-mobile personal computers?
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Dec 22, 2007 at 2:07pm
Apple will use Intel’s “Menlow” Mobile Internet Device (MID) platform for future handheld devices and ultra-mobile personal computers (UMPCs), according to AppleInsider.
The article says that Apple is eyeing upcoming 45-nanometer (nm) “Silverthorne” chip, agreeing to use it in not one but multiple products currently situated on its 2008 calendar year product roadmap. The top contenders, per the rumor site, are the “3G iPhone and the much rumored Newton successor/ultra-portable slate computer,” says AppleInsider.
Silverthorne is Intel’s first ground up design aimed at a new class of mobile systems smaller than notebooks but larger and more feature rich than cellphones. The chip purportedly offers the processing power of second-generation Pentium M processors, with the power consumption of a cellphone chip. Some refer to UMPCs as a “mobile phone on steroids” or “miniature laptop” or “pocketable PC.”
At Intel’s spring financial analyst meeting in New York, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said the release of Silverthorne processors in 2008 will power the next round of mobile Internet devices, as well as Internet-based consumer electronics devices and ultra-low-cost PCs for emerging markets. He predicts each of those three markets will represent roughly US$10 billion in silicon revenue for all vendors, based on projected sales of 900 million units.
“We’re extending our architecture into new markets and mobile Internet devices with full Internet capabilities and voice,” Otellini said in the spring. “We see a new class of devices like Apple TV built around consumer electronic parameters to bring Internet PC content onto [smaller devices]. The next inflection points for us is in the mobile Internet device, which is the evolution of the cell phone, but also the natural extension of the notebook.”
Otellini said Silverthorne processors combined with next-generation 3G and WiMAX wireless technologies will fuel an explosion in mobile Internet devices.
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
