When the Windows 8 tablet was announced, there were some skeptical feelings about the release of such a tablet as early as the end of 2012. However, it seems that the tablet will be delivered right on schedule.
An inside source to the company says that there’s absolutely no reason the tablet won’t be released on time, even though it will be a tight squeeze. The tablet is not only running on a completely new OS, but the OS runs on three ARM’s, AMD, and Intel to boot. In addition, the tablets don’t just stop at “tablet”; users should expect designs that combine aspects of an old-fashioned keyboard with those touch screen features of a tablet. There are over a dozen designs scheduled to be released as well.
Intel’s new “Clover Trail” Atom chip will likely be the center of attention for all new tablets. It’s Intel’s first dual-core Atom design and is incredibly small in size, but small size doesn’t sacrifice power in this case. The single-core version of the chip is already slated for phones from Motorola and Lenovo, even though it hasn’t gone live yet.
In many ways Windows 8 is much like Windows 7; it runs on chips from Intel and micro devices that will be able to run almost any older application still available to the public, though it will be able to run any new software thrown at it as well. A different release of Windows called Windows RT will not have this backwards-compatibility feature and will not run older applications.
The source also had a bit to say about the new 22-nanometer Bay Trail chip that’s supposed to be a follow up to the 32-nanometer Clover Trail in the new tablets. The biggest adjustment, other than the actual size of the chip, is the built-in security features. Bay Trail will also be using Intel’s own designs for graphics instead of Imagination’s, which have historically been used with Intel’s technology. The release of this chip is still up in the air, but it will likely be sometime late next year.