Rumor: Intel, Nokia Partnership Could Mean Powerhouse Netbooks

Posted 02/19/2010 at 6:36am | by Paul Lilly

1

Comment

Print

Could there be a love affair brewing between Intel and Nokia? Quite possibly, as it would appear the two are collaborating on a new mobile chip for use in smartphones and netbooks.

Officially, the two have teamed up to tackle Linux development, but reading between between the lines, ArsTechnica thinks there's a good chance they're up to more than that. As the rumor goes, Intel and Nokia are busy piecing together a system on a chip (SoC) called Penwell. The rumor is at least plausible when you consider Intel's Atom architecture.

"Intel's 32nm Atom core, codenamed Medfield, will leave plenty of 'uncore' available on an SoC for all sorts of third-party IP blocks. [Charlie] Demerjian [at SemiAccurate] suggests that once such IP block could be the HSPA/3G modem that Intel licensed from Nokia last summer," ArsTechinca writes.

But that isn't the only clue. Nokia doesn't seem to want to talk about the chip that's supposed to power the successor to the N900, saying only that it is continuing to develop on the OMAP3, which is the same chip used in the N900. Given the availability of next-gen ARM parts, it seems unusual that Nokia would stick with OMAP3.

Of course this is all speculation and could end up much ado about nothing, but what if it isn't?

Image: desinformado.com