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Intel je predstavio potpuno novu arhitekturu za Atom procesore, Silvermont. "Potpuno novo" je ono što najviše obećava. Za razliku od mišjih koraka naprijed između prošlih generacija Atom procesora, ova je potpuno novi, veliki korak koji pokazuje da je Intel ozbiljno shvatio ovu liniju procesora. OoO dizajn, modularni pristup sa dijeljenjem L2 cachea (slično onom kod AMD-ovih Jaguar procesora); zbog tog modularnog dizajna izbačen je HyperThreading, podrška za nove instrukcije; iako fali AVX koji je prisutan kod Jaguar procesora, ali podržava novije instrukije poput AES-NI i VTX od kojih neke nisu prisutne kod Ivy Bridge Celerona, Pentiuma ili čak i nekih iX procesora (umjetna razdioba tržišta). Još jedan veliki korak naprijed je to što se više neće koristiti PowerVR grafika već Intelova HD. Još ostaje za vidjeti kakve će konfiguracije izbaciti, ali je sigurno korak naprijed. Prije svega zbog drajvera koji doduše nisu bog zna što ni za HD liniju. Evo par citata:

Although Silvermont can find its way into everything from cars to servers, the architecture is primarily optimized for use in smartphones and then in tablets, in that order. This is a significant departure from the previous Bonnell core that was first designed to serve the now defunct Mobile Internet Devices category that Intel put so much faith in back in the early to mid 2000s. As Intel’s first Atom architecture designed for mobile, expectations are high for Silvermont. While we’ll have to wait until the end of the year to see Silvermont in tablets (and early next year for phones), the good news for Intel is that Silvermont seems competitive right out of the gate. The even better news is that Silvermont will only be with us for a year before it gets its first update: Airmont.

The move to 22nm 3D transistors lets Intel drop threshold voltage by approximately 100mV at the same leakage level. Remember that power scales with the square of voltage, so a 100mV savings depending on what voltage you’re talking about can be very huge. Intel’s numbers put the power savings at anywhere from 25 - 35% at threshold voltage. The gains don’t stop there either. At 1V, Intel’s 22nm process gives it an 18% improvement in transistor performance or at the same performance Intel can run the transistors at 0.8V - a 20% power savings. The benefits are even more pronounced at lower voltages: 37% faster performance at 0.7V or less than half the active power at the same performance.

The move to an OOO architecture is a long time coming for Intel's low power processing. AMD's Bobcat APU started shipping in early 2011 with an OOO design (though it was originally announced in 2007...) and both the ARM Cortex A9 and A15 are out of order architectures. An OOO design is much more complex than an in-order one, but it can increase power efficiency and performance by allowing more of the CPU architecture to be in use at a given time. Rather than simply conforming to the order of instructions and data as sent by the application, OOO processors have the ability to shift data and instructions to better utilize internal components.

Intel claims that the IPC increase with Silvermont is about 50% - that is a very impressive generation to generation leap. Consider what we are seeing in the Core architecture designs where Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge was well under 10% in most cases.

Silvermont's multi-core design uses two-core modules as its primary building blocks. While initial products will use either one or two modules (for dual or quad core configurations) the design has the ability to scale to eight cores. Each module is built around a pair of Silvermont cores, each with their own L2 cache up to 1MB, connected via a system agent / crossbar. These multi-module designs will suffer slightly from the lack of any kind of monolithic, shared L2 cache compared to previous Core based CPUs from Intel, but implementation will have much to say in that regard.

Along with the complete redesign of the architecture comes additional instructions and technologies from the other Intel product lines. Silvermont adds SSE 4.1 and 4.2 and AES-NI accelerations from the Westmere design in addition to enterprise level features like Intel VT-x2, OS Guard and McAfee DeepSAFE. VTX and AES are important moving forward, especially with the big push to micro-servers and advanced security measures.

Izvori: Anandtech, PCPer.com, Semiaccurate.