Intel today announced its Atom processor E3900 series which it designed from the ground up to support the rapid development and the growing complexity of Internet of Things (IoT) businesses.

The processor Series is targeted at the booming industrial, automotive, video, manufacturing, retail, and other IOT sectors with features for robotics, security connected cars and sensors.

To power connected cars Intel is offering an automotive grade processor specifically to address in-vehicle experiences called the Intel Atom processor A3900 series.

Across New Markets IoT is expected to be a multi-trillion-dollar market, with 50 billion devices1 creating 44 zettabytes (or 44 trillion gigabytes) of data annually by 2020, require much more processing power at the edge in order to maintain viability.

Upgrades, Intel said the Atom adds to CPU performance, fast GFX and media, image processing and Intel Time Coordinated Computing Technology (Intel TCC Technology):

  • Achieves new levels of security, determinism, and image and video processing power in a compact form factor;
  • Works across extended temperatures (TA -40 – 85 degrees Celsius), which is especially critical for industrial use cases; Keeps systems of devices in sync in reduced latency across a wide variety of applications
  • Delivering Advanced Solutions for the Next Generation of Smart and Connected Products;

Enhanced CPU in a small, power-efficient package. It delivers 1.7 times more computing power compared to the previous generation3 at the edge of IoT operations, for faster memory speeds and memory bandwidth. Built into a compact flip chip ball grid array (FCBGA) and featuring Intel’s latest 14 nanometer silicon technology.

It features a new graphics engine that improves 3-D graphics performance by 2.9 times compared to the previous generation4, offers outstanding video capabilities. It also features enhanced image processing with colour processing and multi-frame technology. intel-iot-atom2
Intel TCC Technology synchronizes peripherals and networks of connected devices, achieving determinism. It also resolves latency issues in applications, such as robotics manufacturing, by enabling 1 microsecond timing accuracy across the network.

Fast, strong processing and sensor integration at the edge. The Intel Atom processor E3900 series will make the edge and fog more intelligent – enabling many of the processing needs to take place right at the edge or fog level and alleviating the need to push all data processing to the data center. For example, in traffic cams and sensor data, there are significant downsides to sending the data to a server to be processed, including loss due to video compression and time spent in data travelling, versus having the ability to process data at the device.

The firm is targeting uses such as

  • Industrial: Predictive maintenance, accelerated time to market and increased quality and remote management
    • Digital security and surveillance (DSS)/vision systems (video): Visual data identification and analysis, safety and security, traffic management and monitoring, agriculture and pipeline monitoring, and manufacturing inspection
    Transportation/automotive: Software-defined cockpits and vehicle-to-vehicle communication

Spec and performance

1As measured by SPECint*_rate_base2006 (1-copy)

SPECint*_rate_base2006 (1-copy):

  • Device: Intel CRB; CPU: Intel® Atom™ processor x5-E3930; OS: CentOS 7 64-bit kernel 3.10.0-123el7; Memory: 4x2GB LPDDR4-2133; Storage: Intel 520 Series SSD 120GB.
  • Device: Intel CRB; CPU: Intel® Atom™ processor E3825; OS: CentOS 6.4 64 bit kernel 3.5.0;
  • Memory: 1x4GB DDR3L-1066; Storage: Western Digital* HDD 250GB.

SPEC CPU2006 is a benchmark from the SPEC consortium that measures device performance and throughput using compute intensive application subtests.  SPECint base2006 measures how fast a device completes a single integer compute task. SPECint_rate_base2006 measures throughput, or how many integer compute tasks a device can accomplish in a given amount of time.  OS support:  Desktop Windows.

As measured by 3DMark 11 Performance

3DMark* 11 Performance

  • Device: Intel CRB; CPU: Intel Atom processor x7-E3950; OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit; Memory: 4x2GB LPDDR4-2400; Storage: Samsung SSD 750 EVO 120GB; Graphics: 9th gen Intel LP graphics; Graphics Driver: 15.42.4438
  • Device: Intel CRB; CPU: Intel Atom processor E3845; OS: Microsoft Windows 8 64-bit ; Memory: 2x4GB DDR3-1333; Storage: Intel 320 SSD 40GB; Graphics: 7th gen Intel LP graphics; Graphics Driver: 10.18.10.3925