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.