Intel’s Atom has sprouted a new core and the boards that were designed for them to run on only need a BIOS update according to the news on DigiTimes.  That won’t turn them into Core 2 Duos, but it will certainly help to extend the uses netbooks can be put to.

“Intel released its dual-core Atom 330 processor on September 21 which will mainly target the nettop market. The CPU features a core frequency of 1.6GHz, 533MHz FSB, 1MB L2 cache and has a TDP of 8W. The Atom 330 processor is priced at US$40 in thousand-unit tray quantities, while the single-core Atom 230 is priced at US$29. The initial launch price of Atom 330-based motherboards in the channel is expected to surpass US$70, which will put Atom 330-based nettop prices at around US$299, while Atom 230-based nettops will be priced around US$249. The dual-core and single-core Atom processors are pin-compatible, single-core Atom platforms will only need a BIOS update to support the dual-core CPUs.”

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