Dell previewed a Windows 7 hybrid tablet with keyboard that stole the show at the second day of IDF. The Inspiron demo was one of many new products to use Atom, the lead architecture in Intel's effort to expand beyond traditional PCs.

Separately one vendor showed the first MeeGo tablet, a device that will go on sale next week. Amino Communications showed a Web TV application running on MeeGo.

So far, Intel has sold 70 million Atom chips into netbooks, the majority of its overall Atom sales. But demos and announcements at IDF suggest the Atom and Atom-based SoCs will slowly appear in a growing range of products.

At IDF, Intel formally announced its Tunnel Creek products now called the Atom E6xx series. The SoCs merge an Atom core with display, memory and graphics controllers as well as a 4x PCI Express Gen 1 interconnect.

Nine versions of the chip will range from high-end devices consuming 3.9W at 1.6 GHz and low end versions consuming 2.7W at 600 MHz. The chips will be in volume production in November.

Oki, Realtek, STMicroelectronics and Intel will make companion chips for the E6xx. They will focus on markets such as media phones, home gateways, medical devices and in-vehicle entertainment.

Intel's Stellarton will pair an E600 with an Altera FPGA in one package to be released before June. It aims at reconfigurable systems in areas such as industrial automation or accelerating algorithms for portable medical systems.

Set-top box makers ADB, Technicolor, Samsung and Sagemcom will make systems using Intel's upcoming Groveland chip. The 45nm Atom-based Sock, now renamed the CE4200, is aimed at cable-TV boxes and will support H.264 encoding and up to eight video streams.

Also at IDF, D-Link announced the Boxed Box, a set-top delivering the Boxed TV service for premium and online content. It uses Intel's earlier Doraville chip, the CE 4100, and will ship for $199 later this year.

Separately Asustek and Acer demoed Atom-based systems that will deliver a Microsoft Media Center TV service in 2011. They are also based on the CE 4100 chip.

In automotive, Visteon showed an in-vehicle infotainment system based on Atom and MeeGo. Visteon will turn the prototype into a full reference design complaint with the specifications of the IVI alliance in time for CES in January.

Intel said 6,500 attendees from 60 countries attended IDF this year, a record for the event.

By: DocMemory
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