In what is being seen as the first major revision of the company's popular and widely used Atom platform, Intel, on Monday, officially launched the new Pine Trial platform for use in netbooks and other low-priced PCs. The new platform has managed to move both the memory and graphics controllers into the main processor.

As confirmed by the company, the new platform would pull down battery consumption by at least 20% and the chipset is also nearly 60% smaller, thereby reducing the space requirement as well. The chip can, thus, also be used in smaller handheld devices.

When fitted into desktops, the new processors would mean 50% cut in the amount of power consumed; and in all, 1 processor for netbooks has been announced, the N450, and 2 chipsets, D410 and D510, have been unveiled for use in desktops, which will replace the current N2xx series and the D3xx series.

The company's traditional 945 chipset, which included separate chips for graphics and memory, has been done away with all together, and although the price for the new offering has not been shared yet, Intel did confirm that the prices of netbooks would not be affected when they are fitted with the new processors.