At its IDF Spring in Beijing, the company disclosed that the 32 nm Cloverfield CPU will follow the 32 nm Cedar Trail, which will replace the 45 nm Oak Trail CPU, which was released just this week, in H2 2011. Intel did not disclose much information and simply stated that Cloverfield will consume less power.
That, of course, is to be expected, but we wonder if Intel will actually be moving to more cores with Cloverfield. I recently criticized Oak Trail as being not competitive enough as far as performance is concerned and as too expensive. However, Intel sources promised that Oak Trail will be very competitive with ARM's current product lineup. We are promised to get to see extensive presentations and demonstrations at Computex in a few weeks.
Intel is a bit late to the party, which can be an advantage or disadvantage. It could use the effect of surprise, but it will need a very compelling product. A single core with 1.5 GHz for $75 is not very likely to succeed. But I may be too pessimistic here - and I will wait until Computex for a final judgment on Oak Trail. That said, the price needs to come down in any case.
