Intel launches Atom brand for UMPC CPUs

Intel has launched 'Silverthorne' and 'Diamondville', its twoprocessor families developed from the ground-up for UMPCs and low-costcomputers like the Asus Eee. Both will be made available as the Atomprocessor and platforms based around them as Centrino Atom.
The Atom CPUs are Core 2 Duo compatible. Fabbed at 45nm, theyconsume between 0.6W and 2.5W, and are expected to run to 1.8GHz,though Intel's not yet saying at what clock frequencies the parts willinitially be set to.

Intel's Atom: inside...

Indeed, right now, Intel's keeping quiet about the platform's speedsand feeds - it'll presumably say more at its Intel Developer Forumconference, due to take place in Shanghai later this month.

More device stickers...

However, recent reports out of Asia suggest the Diamondville Atomswill debut as the desktop-centric 1.6GHz 230, which will connect acrossa 533MHz frontside bus and contain 512KB of L2 cache. A mobile version,the N270, will also be offered - this is probably Silverthorne.
Both CPUs are single-core chips, but Intel has brought back itsHyperThreading technology to allow the chips to appear to the hostoperating system as dual-core processors. Intel last used HT with theold Pentium 4 family, but it's also expected to play a major role in'Nehalem', the next-gen Core 2 successor due at the end of the year.
Centrino Atom comprises an Atom processor, the chipset formerly known as 'Paulsbo' and presumably a Wi-Fi module.

Its about time Intel brings back HT, but what are they thinking? Is this supposed to perform better than their dual cores or is this supposed to be a cheap way for people to do multi-threading? First Intel pays companies to tell lies about how much better they are than AMD (although I do believe Intel's quad cores are better), then they charge nearly $90 more than an AMD that performs the same, and now they're going back to single core and are probably going to charge a lot this new design. At least the name is decent unlike "Core 2".

I'm not trying to favor AMD here, but Intel is really becoming a disappointment to me.