Intel's Bay Trail business devices to land in Q1 2014

Business users will be able to get their hands on enterprise-ready Bay Trail devices starting in Q1 of 2014.

Although 64-bit Windows support is built into the latest version of the Atom architecture, Intel has confirmed devices in the initial Q4 2013 rollout, including tablets and 2-in-1 Ultrabooks, will only be available with 32-bit connected standby support.

"Our priority was, under the Windows world, to deliver a full connected standby [Windows] 32-bit experience in Q4 to match what consumers needed for holiday season. And extend our development effort for 64-bit, which we believe Intel will be unique at doing on these platforms, in Q1," explained Chris Walker, GM of tablets at Intel, during a briefing.

"Remember at the same time we are delivering [Bay Trail] Android for consumers in Q4 as well."

Although not as powerful as Intel's Core i range of processors, which are found in high-end Ultrabooks, the Bay Trail portfolio is still expected to catch the eye of IT admins looking to refresh employee hardware.

"Atom gives you a higher degree of mobility based on form factor, battery life and standby time," Walker said.

Bay Trail devices will be cheaper than traditional laptops. With starting prices of $199 and will support enterprise friendly features such as 64-bit security and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) authentication, Bay Trail devices could also trigger an uptake of Windows 8.1 systems.

Intel has noted that there will be a range of tablet and 2-in-1 form factors running Android or Windows, and the touted battery life of eight hours plus could also attract mobile employees.

Walker was also confident that Bay Trail powered devices will be able to hold their own against those by rivals such as Nvidia and Qualcomm, which use architecture based on ARM designs.

"At the end of the day you want to measure how applications work and how smooth they are in a touch environment. Do you get a very fast scroll? How does the device feel? Does it last all? Is it responsive?," he continued.

"As [Intel project managers] architected and delivered the platform, they really had those usages in mind. And we architect and design to those usages beyond performance based metric alone. [With] the ground up redesign of Silvermont on 22nm, we see these 20 50 per cent leadership [benchmarks] on single and multi-threaded workloads."