Intel Berryville Atom CE Chips Exposed, ARM Beware

Intel has been lobbying for a strong position on the market of consumer electronics devices, especially portable ones, and the Atom Berryville chip line may be just the ticket it needs.

Intel may not have gotten to the point where it is ready to release the Berryville CPUs (central processing units), but information about them has surfaced regardless.

At least seven of them should become available within a few months. They will be called Atom CE and will feature two cores each, complete with Hyperthreading.

Add to that a graphics processor with a clock speed of 400 MHz and there is much evidence to suggest that Atom CE are based on the Cedar Trail series.

The 1.2 GHz CE5318 and the 1.8 GHz CE5338 processors are intended for Smart TVs and boast the H.264 hardware video encoder, Intel PQE and LVDS connectivity, albeit no HDMI.

A somewhat stranger chip is the CE5315, which works at 1.2 GHz but, though it features H.264, it lacks PQE support.

Another unit is the CE5348, a 1.8 GHz model with all the features mentioned above. The sibling that resembles it most is the CE5328, at 1.2 GHz.

There are two other processors in the collection: the CE5310/CE5320, at 1.2 GHz, and the 1.8 GHz CE5343. They both lack hardware video encoding even though HDMI is present.

For those not familiar with Intel PQE, the technology is a type of software/hardware video enhancer and has the full name of “Joint Color Correction and Enhancement IP”.

That said, the various processors support two SATA ports, three USB ports, two PCI Express lanes and the eMMC 4.4 NAND flash interface, all at a reduced cost.

Intel will have to use all its marketing acumen in the promotion of the Berryville CPUs, since it is gunning for ARM's territory and the 1.8 GHz models are scheduled to be launched last.

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