A range of new low powered processors have been released by Intel without much fanfare. The line is based on the 14 nm technology Braswell architecture, and covers the Celeron and Pentium brands. This puts the performance at somewhere behind the Intel Core M, and aren’t too dissimilar from the Cherry Trail Atom processors.
Braswell is a die shrink of Intel’s Bay Trail D, which was the version used for the recent Celeron and Pentium brands. This looks like a split from the Cherry Trail family of processors that are also making an appearance, like in the new Microsoft Surface 3. There shouldn’t be too much of a performance improvement, but they do feature some improvements in terms of battery life and graphics performance.
Intel has improved the TDP on the Braswell chips to bring that extra amount of battery life, but has done so at the expense of the clockspeed compared to Bay Trail. However, it does support faster RAM and with Generation 8 support graphics hardware support.
The new Intel Celeron N3050, N3150 and Pentium N3700 will be available in both desktop PCs and laptops, while the Celeron N3000 will be laptop exclusive. There is no telling what devices Braswell will end up appearing in, especially with most manufacturers choosing to stick with either the Atom or Core brands of processors for their machines. Still, this middle range of chips provides an interesting possibility for lower end laptops. At the very least, it could end up in educational grade devices for classrooms.
[Source: Extremetech]
