Intel will today provide details of its forthcoming processor family for ultra-mobile devices. Codenamed Silverthorne, the part is aimed at a new generation of systems with low-power requirements, such as handheld internet access devices, with products expected in the first half of this year.

Due to be formally unveiled at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, Silverthorne sips at power without compromising PC compatibility, Intel said, making it suitable for ultra-mobile PCs and pocket devices that can access the internet.

These categories typically do not need maximum speed but require a long battery life. Operating in the half-watt range, Silverthorne needs only about one-tenth of the power of Dothan, the ultra-low voltage Pentium M chip that sits in many notebook PCs.

Despite this, the chip will have similar performance to Banias, an early Pentium M processor for the Centrino chipset, Intel claimed.

“This is a ground-up new micro-architecture designed expressly for low-power operations,” said Justin Rattner, chief technology officer at Intel. “It is our smallest processor since the 486 but you do not give up any compatibility with mainstream processors, it has all the bells and whistles. A lot of people said we would never get it below one watt but here is the proof it can be done with good performance.”
However, the market for very small PCs has yet to be defined.

“With a lot of these devices, the only thing the format does is cramp you up and make you peer closer at the screen,” said Martin Day, channels director at pocket-sized PC vendor OQO. “But it is a sector that is beginning to heat up and we are seeing more demand for vertical applications where people still need a full operating system.”

Other Silverthorne capabilities include the new C6 deep-down power management system that allows systems to enter and exit power-saving mode in less than 100ms, according to Intel.

“This feature gives us much more fine-grained power management to take advantage of very brief opportunities when the system is idle,” Rattner added.
Official naming has not been given for Silverthorne, but the chip will slot into a chipset called Poulsbo and a platform called Menlow, under current codenames.

At the other end of the computing scale, Intel will also disclose more details of Tukwila, a forthcoming quad-core 2GHz Itanium processor supporting eight concurrent threads and offering twice the speed of the dual-core Itanium 9100, despite only requiring 25 per cent more power. Rattner said the Tukwila group had received “special permission” to raise power consumption to gain the benefit of the higher performance.