Intel begins shipping 14nm “Cherry Trail” chips for tablets
Next-gen Atom SoCs refine the CPU and provide a big boost to the GPU. — In addition to the new Broadwell chips it's announcing today, Intel is also sharing a little information on “Cherry Trail,” its new SoCs for Windows and Android tablets.
Context & Ripple Effects
Cherry Trail is Intel's next step in the low-cost Atom line it has been rebuilding for tablets: a 14nm shrink of the SoC family that pairs a refined CPU core with what Intel calls a big GPU boost, aimed squarely at Windows and Android slate designs. Its arrival lands the same day as the company's broader PC refresh — the Broadwell U laptop chips rolling out from Core i7 down to Celeron — so Intel is moving both ends of its client lineup onto newer silicon at once.
The arc around this story runs through the rest of the decade of coverage: two months later Intel was detailing SoFIA, integrated LTE, and its Rockchip partnership at MWC for the cheapest Android devices, then quietly launched 14nm Braswell as Bay Trail's successor, and by 2016 had moved on to Apollo Lake for cheap Atom-based devices. Cherry Trail is the point where that budget-tablet cadence first reaches 14nm.
First-order effects
- Tablet OEMs building Windows and Android slates can now spec a 14nm Atom SoC whose main selling point is graphics headroom — the GPU bump is the pitch, since the CPU side only 'refines' the prior design.
- Intel's tablet silicon now sits on the same process node generation as the Broadwell U laptop chips shipping the same day, letting one fab node serve both the premium notebook and the budget tablet lines.
Second-order effects
- Cheap-Android rivals like Rockchip, which Intel would formally partner with weeks later at MWC for entry-level parts, face a competitor offering x86 compatibility plus a stronger iGPU at the same price tiers.
- ARM licensees designing tablet SoCs have to answer the GPU argument directly — Intel is no longer conceding graphics performance in the segment where it previously competed mostly on price and battery life.
Third-order effects
- The steady Atom cadence visible here — Cherry Trail to Braswell to Apollo Lake — points toward the endgame the later coverage confirms: Intel's 3D-stacked Lakefield chips built explicitly to take on ARM and Qualcomm in ultraportable and dual-screen form factors.
- If the pattern holds, Intel's budget-device strategy becomes less about raw process shrinks and more about packaging and heterogeneous design, since each successive Atom generation competes increasingly against ARM-native efficiency rather than other x86 parts.
The trend: Intel's low-cost Atom line is evolving from simple process shrinks toward ARM-style hybrid packaging, setting up its direct bid against Qualcomm in fanless mobile devices.