Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

Silvermont

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Model
  
Atom

Architecture
  
Silvermont x86

Predecessor
  
Bonnell Saltwell

Transistors
  
22 nm transistors

Instructions
  
MMX, AES-NI, CLMUL

Extensions
  
x86-64, Intel 64 SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4, SSE4.1, SSE4.2 VT-x

Silvermont is a microarchitecture for low-power Atom, Celeron and Pentium branded processors used in systems on a chip (SoCs) made by Intel. Silvermont forms the basis for a total of four SoC families:

Contents

  • Merrifield and Moorefield  – consumer SoCs intended for smartphones
  • Bay Trail – consumer SoCs aimed at tablets, hybrid devices, netbooks, nettops, and embedded/automotive systems
  • Avoton – SoCs for micro-servers and storage devices
  • Rangeley – SoCs targeting network and communication infrastructure.

    • Silvermont was announced to news media on May 6, 2013 at Intel's headquarters at Santa Clara, California. Intel had repeatedly said the first Bay Trail devices would be available during the Holiday 2013 timeframe, while leaked slides showed that the release window for Bay Trail-T as August 28 – September 13, 2013. Both Avoton and Rangeley were announced as being available in the second half of 2013. The first Merrifield devices were announced in 1H14.

    Airmont is the 14 nm die shrink of Silvermont, launched in early 2015 and first seen in the Atom x7-Z8700 as used in the Microsoft Surface 3. Airmont microarchitecture includes the following SoC families:

  • Braswell  – consumer SoCs aimed at PCs
  • Cherry Trail  – consumer SoCs aimed at tablets.

    • Design

    Silvermont was the first Atom processor to feature an out-of-order architecture.

    Technology

  • A 22 nm manufacturing process
  • SoC (System on Chip) architecture
  • 3D tri-gate transistors
  • Consumer chips up to quad-core, business-class chips up to eight cores
  • Supports SSE4.2 instruction set
  • Gen 7 Intel HD Graphics with DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.0, and OpenCL 1.1 support. OpenGL 4.0 is supported with 10.18.10.4425 WHQL drivers and later drivers. On Android, Silvermont graphics is OpenGL ES 3.1 certified.
  • 10 W thermal design power (TDP) desktop processors
  • 4.5 and 7.5 W TDP mobile processors
  • 20 W (TDP) Server and Communications processors

    • Erratum

    Intel revealed in its Q4 2016 quarterly report that there were quality issues in the C2000 product family, which had an effect on the financial performance of the company's Data Center Group that quarter. An erratum published by Intel state there is a defect in the chip's clock, and affected systems "may experience inability to boot or may cease operation". A workaround is available. The SoC failures are thought to have led to failures in Cisco and Synology products, though discussion of the C2000 as the root cause of failure has been reported to be under a non-disclosure agreement for many vendors.

    Desktop processors (Bay Trail-D)

    List of desktop processors as follows:

    Server processors (Avoton)

    List of server processors as follows:

    Communications processors (Rangeley)

    List of upcoming communications processors as follows:

    Embedded/automotive processors (Bay Trail-I)

    List of embedded processors as follows:

    Mobile processors (Bay Trail-M)

    List of mobile processors as follows:

    Tablet processors (Bay Trail-T)

    List of tablet and hybrid processors as follows:

    Smartphone processors (Merrifield)

    List of smartphone processors as follows:

    Smartphone processors (Moorefield)

    List of smartphone processors as follows:

    Desktop processors (Braswell)

    List of desktop processors as follows:

    Mobile processors (Braswell)

    List of mobile processors as follows:

    Tablet processors (Cherry Trail)

    List of smartphone and tablet processors as follows:

    References

    Silvermont Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA