When it comes to desktops and laptops, Intel is the company that most tech makers turn to for processors, but this isn't the case for mobile devices, like phones and tablets.
The chip maker says this is all about to change and that next year it hopes we will see a flood of new mobile devices with 'Intel Inside' (and the logo on the outside), relying on its 'Bay Trail' generation of mobile processors to drive home the idea that Intel chips are best for mobile devices.
"With Bay Trail, we've thrown the kitchen sink at it from a design perspective," says Graham Tucker, Intel's technical manager in Australia and New Zealand.
"We've put a lot of the goodness we've seen in Core-i in recent years into the Atom processor."
Blurred lines
This processor, the Atom Z300, a quad-core 1.5GHz chipset designed for tablets running either Windows 8 or Android. Based on a 22nm design architecture, the Z300 is not only significantly more powerful than the previous Clover Trail processors, but it boasts improved graphics (with Open GL 3.0 and DirectX 11), support for screens up to 2560 x 1600 pixels and improved battery life.
Tucker says the lines are blurring between the processors Intel makes for larger machines and the fanless, systems on a chip (SoC) it designs for mobile devices.
But designing for tablets and phones brings its own unique challenges too. In its research, Intel discovered that people are using mobile devices for about 26-hours per week, on average, and unlike laptops where they can fall back on their travel adapters, mobile devices need to complete this workload on battery alone.
To this end, Intel has managed to match its competitors and claims to get about 10-hours of use out of its reference designs.
Intel's traditional computer partners will be first with Intel Inside their tablets, with Acer, ASUS, Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba all showing off upcoming products this week at the Intel Developer's Forum.
But what about smartphones?
The Bay Trail design is just for tablets, but Intel won't leave phones alone for long. Gearing up for a launch in the first quarter of 2014, Intel intends to have its 'Silvermont' design in the hands of manufacturing partners.
Apparently, Intel will soon solve its last hurdle in designing chips for phones, when it completes work on an LTE 4G networking module built into the SoC. This is essential for convincing players like Samsung and HTC to give Intel a chance.
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