Intel Atom N450 / Pine Trail Netbooks Out In Time For CES?

Fudzilla is reporting that Intel’s next generation Atom processor, N450 a.k.a. Pine Trail, will launch on January 3rd. Though there are no sources for this contention, it seems a reasonable time frame given that DigiTimes reported that the chip would ship to netbook manufacturers this month. That’s also right before CES, which is a likely place to get a first look at the Pine Trail-powered netbooks on the horizon.

For those of you who aren’t chip geeks, the Pine Trail structure will be even smaller than the current generation of Atom CPUs, which promises to bring better performance, more battery life, thinner netbooks and fanless designs. The chip will also cost $20 more. Whether the new chip is worth the extra cost and can live up to these promises remains to be seen, but at least we don’t have a long wait before finding out.

Hat Tip: CrunchGear