Intel working on x86 system on a chip

In a 1957 article entitled "The New Age," TIME magazine speculated that "Some day, soon, big computers will be reduced to the size of a shoe box and sell for several hundred dollars." A shoe box? Try a matchbox, foolish journalists of the past! Word has come that Intel is getting back into the mobile chip game and will produce an x86 system on a chip. The unit, code named "Tolapai" (is it just me or are Intel code names getting sillier as the days go by?), will be based on the Pentium M architecture and will cram a surprising number of features into one tiny chip: 256KB of L2 cache and support for DDR 2 memory, PCI Express, USB, SATA, Gigabit Ethernet, RS-232 and a cellular link. The initial batch of chips will come out of the oven at speeds ranging from 600Mhz to 1.2Ghz and will support Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows XP Embedded. This is great news for people who love buying multiple copies of Vista as soon, you'll have to buy separate upgrade copies for your phone, wristwatch and calculator too.

For more on the system on a chip:
- see this Engadget article