We've been hearing a fair bit about Intel's next-gen Atom platform (known as Pine Trail) for quite some time now; a much needed refreshment to the Atom family with expected superior performance and features all-round. Finally Intel gives it the green light today with an official announcement unveiling the new Atom processor range.

The initial lineup comprises the N450, D410 and D510 processors, all of which operate at 1.66GHz, along with the supporting NM10 Express chipset. The single-core N450 is the model that is designed with netbooks in mind with its integrated memory and Intel graphics on the CPU die. The D410 is a single core processor with 512MB L2 cache and the 510 dual-core with 1MB cache; these two suited to the nettop market.

Come CES and beyond we'll start to see Pine Trail based netbooks and nettops being hammered out by the dozens from vendors galore (ASUS, Acer, Lenovo, MSI and many more). Get ready for a new wave!