New AMD and Intel budget processors rumored

Currently, there are several different versions of Microsoft Windows 7 operating system, and the least expensive from them is Windows 7 Starter. This version comes pre-installed on netbooks, and it lacks many features, such as 64-bit support, desktop Window Manager, Windows Aero, and others. Not only that, this version of Window 7 can be only distributed on systems with budget, and budget-to-middle class x86 processors. A PDF file with a list of CPUs, licensed for this OS, can be downloaded from Windows Get Genuine for Academic web page. This is where interesting part begins. In addition to production processor families and processor/model numbers, the document also includes a few unknown models. The PDF file was published less than a month ago, therefore we suspect that those unknown processor / model numbers belong to microprocessors, that are planned for release, or were planned for release at some point of time:

A few Atom CPUs in the document have processor numbers, that are not currently in production: D2550, D2750, N2100, N2150, N2600, N2650, N2800, and N2850. Two Atom models, N2600 and N2800, should be available later this quarter. Atom D2550 and D2750 processor numbers are close to production D2500 and D2700, as a result we expect them to have only minor improvements over production chips. Consequentially, Atom N2650 and N2850 SKUs look like improved versions of N2x00 processors. The last two Atoms with processor numbers N2100 and N2150 could have much lower clock speed and lower TDP than N2600 and N2800 series parts.

The document refers to two new Celeron processors, G550 and G560. Future release of these two models is quite possible. Current Sandy Bridge Celerons were launched in September, and they will be replaced by Ivy Bridge CPUs in the third or forth quarter 2012. We believe that before switching to Ivy Bridge micro-architecture, Intel will refresh Celeron line-up in 2012. We already published partial specifications of forthcoming Celeron G460, and it's likely that Intel might as well launch one or more products from Celeron G5xx series.

Two new APU model numbers in the document are E-Series E310x and E330. It's difficult to speculate what differences, besides clock speed, these microprocessors will have from E-Series E-300 and E-350.