Intel begins shipping 14nm Cherry Trail tablet chips

Intel may still be waiting for its major breakthrough in the mobile market, but its tablet processor line-up continues to plod along with some gradual improvements. One advantage that Intel does have over its competitors is industry leading fabrication facilities and the company has announced that it has begun shipping out its 14nm Cherry Trail tablet SoCs to its partners today.

In addition to smaller, more energy efficient 14nm chips, Cherry Trail also features a slimmed down GPU taken from Intel’s high-end Broadwell desktop series, which should boost performance over Bay Trail’s last generation Ivy Bridge-class GPU.

Cherry Trail’s GPU features a smaller number of “execution units” than its bigger desktop counterpart. The latest rumors peg this number at 16 EUs for Airmont, compared with 24 EUs in Intel’s HD 5500 and 48 in its leading HD 6000 series. Intel also states that Cherry Trail can be paired with Intel’s XMM 726x-series LTE modems for additional cellular connectivity. Good news, as the lack of modem functionality had previously been a big problem for Intel’s mobile line-up.

Early yield problems had pushed Intel’s 14nm mobile launch back a few months, but consumer products built on Cherry Trail chips now look set to appear in the first half of 2015.