Intel’s been working behind the scenes lately to create more than just Haswell; it’s also been working on a processor that makes use of its Atom architecture. A chipset primarily used in low-end tablets and mobile devices, Intel recently revealed “Bay Trail” to the general public for use in a variety of future devices. Today, Intel took its project a step further by introducing what is expected to be a new “all time low” price point for tablets with Intel processors.
“We [Intel] believe we can push it well below the $199 price point,” Hermann Eul, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Mobile and Communications group, said during a news conference at Computex. This is great news for those who can’t afford an iPads or Surface tablet and who want to secure an Intel-laden tablet.
According to Eul, these proposed tablets will feature Windows 8.1 and will fall somewhere between 7 and 10 inches in size. Thanks to the Bay Trail design, the tablets should run with increased battery life and performance. Eul estimates these devices will be able to go 8 or more hours on a full charge (with active activity) and said they could go “weeks on standby.” Eul went on to say that the Bay Tail tablets will be capable of playing 3D games and running productivity applications and software. According to Eul, the new chipset will be approximately two times faster than the traditional Atom architecture chip.
We heard rumors back in April that Intel’s Bay Trail chip would power $200 Android laptops, and the jury’s still out on that one. Perhaps Bay Trail will stick strictly to tablets instead of making its way to laptops.
Microsoft also announced today that it would be offering a free copy of Office Home and Student 2013 to small, 7- and 8-inch Windows 8-based tablets. It isn’t clear, however, if these proposed Bay Trail tablets will offer the same bundle package, although they do fit the prerequisites that were set by Microsoft. We should get a better ide of what to expect with these tablet designs in the near future, but for now there is no solid information regarding a potential release date for the Bay Trail devices.
Photo via Chiploco
