Intel Introduces EP80579 SoC Designs

No official press release has yet been posted, but our friends at HotHardware have the scoop on a brand-new Intel integrated processor family, called EP80579. This launch isn’t so much for just the processors, however, but rather entire system-on-a-chips, meaning that key components, such as the memory controller, I/O hub and processor core are located on one chip.

These SoCs are designed for special environments, such as security, storage, communications and other industrial applications. They are designed to be efficient, powerful, small and capable of withstanding temperatures between -0°C – 70°C for the commercial models, and -40°C – 85°C for the industrial models.

Eight different models will be launched immediately, six for commercial application and two for industrial, and range between 11.5W – 21W, and also feature processor frequencies of 600MHz – 1.2GHz. You may wonder where this fits in when Atom is already on the market, but don’t confuse the fact that these new processors are lower-powered and designed exclusively for specific scenarios. Atom is designed more for the regular consumer, as it is featured in many feature-packed MID’s and other such devices.

In addition to lower-power characteristics and the smaller form factors enabled by the Intel EP80579’s integrated design (in some cases, Intel claims they will lead to platforms that have a 45% smaller board footprint and 34% lower power dissipation), the main benefit of this product line is its native support of Intel Architecture (IA), aka x86.