We've already seen Intel's first Medfield Atom SoC, the Z2460 which was announced at IDF back in October; however, this chip was designed specifically for Smartphones. Details of what should be Intel's second Medfield chip has now come to light and it should be known as the Atom Z2610 and it looks like Intel will be targeting it for tablets.We've been having a hard time to figure out the difference between the Atom Z2460 and the Z2610, as the two are virtually identical as far as we can tell. Both are 12x12mm chips in a POP (Package-on-Package) chip package with support for single channel 32-bit LPDDR2 memory at 800MHz. The Atom Z2610 should feature the same PowerVR SGX540 graphics with a core clock of 400MHz as the Atom Z2460, with the ability to encode and decode 1080p30 video, so no change here either.The clock speed of two Medfield chips also top out at 1.6GHz, but one thing we did notice that should make the two chip slightly different is that whereas the Z2460 has a minimum clock speed of a mere 100MHz, the Z2610 can only clock down to 600MHz according to details that VR-Zone has been privy to. However, the Z2460 only operates at 1.3GHz in general, with the 1.6GHz clock speed being a burst state, i.e. it would only reach this speed during very short periods of time, just like when a desktop or notebook CPU goes into Turbo mode. It's very possible that the Atom Z2610 will run at 1.6GHz at all times due to the fact that it's easier to cool a chip in a tablet compared to a phone.
Image courtesy of Anandtech
According to Anandtech, the Atom Z2460 consumes about 175mW at 600MHz and we should see something similar for the atom Z2610, although at 100MHz the Atom Z2460 draws a mere 50mW, an overall saving of 125mW. This isn't a huge power saving if you compare it to the 750mW power draw at 1.6GHz, or 500mW at 1.3GHz, so it seems like Intel has tried to balance the power/performance ratio a bit differently on the Z2610. This makes the Z2610 less suitable for really low power devices such as smartphones, but considering that tablets can be equipped with higher capacity battery packs than a smartphone, it's not likely to have a huge impact in terms of device battery life while improving overall performance for the user.According to Fudzilla, Intel already has a reference tablet known as Red Ridge up and running built on the Atom Z2610 and it's said to offer up 9 hours plus battery life in a slim 8.55mm frame that weighs in at a smidgen under 680g. Although no other specifics were revealed about the tablet itself, it looks like it should feature HDMI and USB 2.0 connectivity, as these are features that are built into the Atom Z2610 SoC. The Intel tablet is running Android 4.0x and Intel is specifically targeting Medfield as a hardware solution that will run Android and Tizen (previously MeeGo). Fudzilla is suggesting that we should see the first Medfield tablets in the market as soon as Q2 this year, so expect a fair few tablets to be on display at Computex in early June.

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