Intel Corp. said that despite of the media reports, it is still taking orders on Intel Atom Z-series processors and will continue to supply them even in 2010. The world’s largest maker of microprocessors did stress that it plans to continue selling its Atom Z-series chips to makers of netbooks.

“Rumors of 'industry sources' stating that Intel is no longer taking Atom Z processors orders for netbooks, or any other products, or ending production by end of year are 100% inaccurate,” an Intel spokesperson told Register Hardware web-site.

Last week a report emerged that Intel had informed its customers that it would not accept any more orders for its Atom Z family chips from netbook makers shortly. Intel was projected to entirely stop the supply of Atom Z-series central processing units to the netbook market before the end of 2009. The report claimed that Intel wanted to “digest its inventory”.

Intel Atom Z-series microprocessors operate at 800MHz – 1.86GHz clock-speeds, thus, provide similar performance compared to typical Atom chips, but have only 0.65W – 2.4W thermal design power. Moreover, there is Atom Z550 chip that operates at 2.0GHz, which results in considerably higher performance compared to typical Atom processors that can also boast with 2.4W TDP. Although Intel Atom 230 (1.60GHz), N270 (1.60GHz) and N280 (1.66GHz) also feature 4W or 2.5W thermal design power, they do not support very advanced power management features of Atom Z-series, such as C0/C1(e)/C2(e)/C4(e) power states, Intel Deep Power Down technology (C6), L2 dynamic cache sizing, Split Vtt support for lowest processor power state and so on, thus, for sleeker designs Atom Z is more preferable.

Early next year Intel starts shipping its code-named Pineview processors for netbooks that feature integrated graphics core and some other advantages.

Tags: Intel