IDF Day 1 - Paul Otellini's Keynote

Atom's Software Ecosystem

Continuing the Atom theme, Otellini also revealed the Atom Developer Program, which will enable prospective developers to not only learn how to create applications for Atom, but also make it easy to sell them via an application store.


This will happen on netbooks initially - and Intel has the support of Asus, Acer and Dell already - but expect it to be rolled out across all Atom-based devices in due course. What isn't clear is whether this application store model is exclusive to each manufacturer, or whether every application created is available to every Atom-based device.


Finally, Otellini invited Claire Alexander to the stage to demonstrate the latest version of Moblin, v2.1, which she confirmed would be ready for when the first Moorestown devices arrive next year. This looked to be vastly improved OS compared to previous versions, with a much more sophisticated user interface.


Obviously, the new version of Moblin is touchscreen compliant, meaning that devices running the OS will be able to compete with other handhelds out there. The demo was run on a Compal MID, which looked to be a pocketable device at the very least, even though it's not as small as we'd like to see. We're going to have to wait until 2011 for the Medfield platform before things get really interesting.


Medfield's footprint is half the size of Moorestown and that's when we can start to expect mobile phone device manufacturers to start to seriously consider using Atom SoCs in their smartphones. If you're using a feature-rich smartphone today like I do, I'm sure, you'd definitely welcome a more powerful platform - the question is will Atom be that platform? Only time will tell.