Intel's 22nm Atom: Silvermont, Bay Trail Break Cover

For the past five years -- and it'll have been nearly six years by the time these new Atom CPUs come to market -- Intel has focused on improving power consumption, improving power consumption, and improving power consumption. Dual-core variants appeared on the desktop in fairly short order, and clock speed nudges have only bumped performance slightly higher. On the one hand, this has paid off tremendously. As someone who spent several weeks with an Intel-powered Gingerbread phone, I can honestly say that yes, you can put an Intel smartphone in your pocket, it works just fine, and battery life is decent.

But there's no hiding the fact that Intel's Atom architecture is getting long in the tooth. AMD's Brazos outperformed it decisively in 2011 and with Kabini (second-gen Brazos) and the Cortex-A15 both coming to market, Intel has finally given Atom the re-architecting it deserved.