Report: Intel Pinetrail Pushed to 2010

The second coming of Atom will be next year.

The Intel Atom is a small, lightweight and extremely power efficient processor. Only through outside help from the chipset does the Atom gain extra abilities.

We know what the Nvidia Ion can do for the Atom, but of course Intel wants to keep it all in the family. That's where Intel's Pinetrail comes in, which integrates graphics in with the CPU.

According to what Digitimes Research senior analyst Joanne Chien has gathered from vendors, Intel has decided to delay the launch of the new CPU to early 2010, "so as to avoid impacting the netbook market in second-half 2009."

With netbook worldwide shipments already projected to be double what they were from 2008, there could be reason for Intel not to want to rock the boat.