During IDF Shenzhen, Intel has given the media a sneak preview as to what to expect from the chip manufacturer’s next generation low-cost SoC platform: Apollo Lake.
Based on the new Atom-based x86 microarchitecture known as Goldmont, Apollo Lake comes with a new graphics core that features Intel’s ninth-generation architecture which is currently used in Skylake processors. This graphics core would allow the Apollo Lake to integrate more codecs, enabling hardware-accelerated playback of 4K video from hardware decoding of HEVC and VP9 codecs.
For memory, Apollo Lake will support dual-channel DDR4, DDR3L and LPDDR3/4 memory. Besides dual-channel memory, Apollo Lake will also support traditional SATA drives, PCIe x4 drives and eMMC 5.0 options to oppeal to all types of form factors.
Apart from that, Intel remains tight-lipped as to the exact specifications and performance number of the Apollo Lake. Intel has not specified the TDP of its new processors, but they claim that the power management features of the platform will help it to improve battery life compared to previous-gen systems.
Intel will be shipping out Apollo Lake-powered Celeron and Pentium processors in the second half of 2016.
Source: Anandtech