Intel Atom Processor Z3740

The Intel Atom processor series has been the weakling of the block; in other words, the chip that the other ones would push around the school yard. The Atom was born with the intention of an x86 processor that could work within a small power envelope, and keep the low power ARM chips from taking over the lower segment of the market. Intel originally envisioned their Atom chips in the gamut of low power devices, from tablets, to smartphones, and to long battery life laptops. The Atom did find some success in netbooks (N270), but many consumers got frustrated with the limited performance of a single core processor, and even when Atom went dual core (N550) it still offered only a minimal performance gain.

You see, in order to keep Atom from cannibalizing their more expensive chips, Intel made sure to keep the lowly Atom from reaching its potential, keeping it generations behind their flagship chips. With AMD floundering, Atom held its own against whatever AMD mustered. While this strategy served Intel well to make sure that no one

in their right mind would choose an Atom for their main system, they also failed to compete against the ARM products, and faster than you can say "Cheap Chinese processor," ARM dual and quad cores were taking over the ever growing tablet market.

Intel, the slumbering bear, had not realized the true threat, and they needed to play catchup to their real competition- the ARM processors. With the previous generation of Intel Atom's, code named "Clover trail," the gap was narrowed to where Atom needed to be. This was succeeded by the current generation, "Bay trail" which brings Atom to a current generation processor design.

The Intel Atom Z3740 is such an example of a "Bay trail" processor which was launched in the Fall of 2013. The "go fast" ingredients include a 22 nm process, just like its Ivy Bridge and Haswell current brethren. It also has a respectable 2 mb of L2 cache unlike the original Atom N270 that scraped by with 512 kb to clip its wings. The clock speed of the Z3740 is 1.33 Ghz, which can burst up to 1.86 Ghz. It also supports DDR3 RAM, and has integrated Intel HD graphics. There are 4 physical cores (but no hyperthreading). Amazingly, they claim a 2 watt "Scenario design power."

While this all sounds good on paper, the real proof that Atom has truly hit the gym and has the goods to compete, is based on benchmarks. While there are some benchmarks out there, I wanted to see what type of performance this Z3740 could muster against some of the chips I had previously looked at.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), I do not have an original Atom N270 chip. However, I have a similar chip, the Athlon XP-M 2200+. I realized years ago that while it uses significantly more power, in the end it is a single core x86 mobile chip, with an actual clock speed of 1.6 Ghz, and 512 kb of L2 cache. It also benchmarks quite closely to an Atom N270 that had very similar specs.

Our first test is the HyperPi test. This was run in single core mode, and is a numerical calculation of Pi to a full million digits. As a baseline, the Athlon XP-M 2200+ completed this test in a pokey 79 seconds. The Atom Z3740 did better at 45.3 seconds, but this is slow. I say that because other desktop chips such as the Core Duo E4500 completed this in 26.8 seconds, and a current Haswell desktop, the Intel Core i5-4670k blistered through in 10 seconds. Clearly the current Atom Z3740 is not going to be confused with a desktop part anytime soon in single core pure number crunching performance.

Passmark is a synthetic benchmark. My AMD Athlon 2200+ gets a low 373 on this test. The Z3740 comes in at 1065 which is quite a bit higher. The chip that is close to that is a Pentium T2410, which is a mobile Core 2 Duo part, with 2 physical cores, and a clock speed of 2.0 Ghz, and its Passmark score is 1030. The current Bay Trail Atom is looking better, but still no superstar.

The last test run is the Fritz Chess benchmark. This is a test that clearly favors multicore processing. The single core Athlon XP-M 2200+ not surprisingly gets a low 1.56. The Intel Atom Z3740 comes in at a respectable 6.28. I say respectable because other chips in that same neighborhood include the Core 2 Duo E4500 at 6.05, the AMD Athlon X2 5200+ at 6.15, and the more modern Intel Core i3-3217U at 6.16. Interestingly, the Atom Z3740 bested them all, despite a lower clock speed, and working with a lot less power. On the other hand, for comparison, the Intel Sandy Bridge Core i5-2500k which is a quad core part running at 3.4 Ghz gets an impressive 21.09 in the benchmark which shows what a desktop quad core can do running at speed.

Overall, the Atom Z3740 is an impressive part. While it took Intel years to get the Atom to where it needed to be, the current part holds its own against some silicon from just a few years ago. With the low wattage used, it is suitable to run it passively cooled- in other words without any fan, making it ideal in a tablet. While I would not recommend the Z3740 as your only chip, it is more than satisfactory for a tablet, with impressive multicore performance given its intended wattage. Here's to thanking the angry Intel bear for this one.

-Jonas