Intel may still be in loitering for its major headway in the smartphone market, but its tablet processor series is ploughing with moderate improvements. Intel has an upper hand over its rivals when it comes to fabrication facilities and the manufacturer has also announced that it has started shipping its 14nm Cherry Trail tablet chipset to its partners today.
In inclusion to the smaller and highly energy efficient 14nm chips, Cherry Trail features a compact GPU inspired by Intel’s high-end Broadwell desktop series, which will be enhancing the performance over Bay Trail’s last generation Ivy Bridge-class GPU.
Cherry Trail’s GPU features lesser number of “execution units” in comparison to its bigger desktop equivalent. The latest rumors set this number at 16 EUs for Airmont, in comparison to 24 EUs in Intel’s HD 5500 and 48 in its HD 6000 series. Intel has also stated that Cherry Trail can also be coupled with Intel’s XMM 726x-series LTE modems for enhanced cellular connectivity. A sigh of relief, as the absence of modem functionality has been a major issue for Intel’s mobile line-up.
Premature yield problems had shoved back the launch of Intel’s 14nm mobile by few months, however, consumer products based upon the Cherry Trail chips are almost ready to debut in the first half of 2015.
