At MWC 2014, Intel has completely revamped their line of Atom SoCs, lanching new products alongside a complete rebrand of the product category to make it easier for consumers to follow and understand.

The biggest change to the Atom line-up concerns branding. Rather than using a bunch of confusing codenames and product numbers, Atom SoCs will now be categorized under x3, x5 and x7 branding, similar to how Intel's performance chips are branded as i3, i5 and i7. This makes it much easier for consumers to compare products and the hardware found inside.

Atom x3 SoCs will be Bay Trail- and SoFIA-based, produced at a 28nm node, and will feature integrated modems of some kind alongside Mali graphics. The lowest-end part will feature two CPU cores and a 3G modem, progressing up to a quad-core part from Intel's agreement with Rockchip, and a third SKU with four cores and an LTE modem.

Atom x5 and x7 SoCs are Intel's new Cherry Trail parts, built on a 14nm process similar to Broadwell. These new SoCs include Airmont CPU cores and eighth-generation Intel graphics, alongside support for Intel's discrete XMM 7260 modem with Cat. 6 LTE.

There are three Cherry Trail chips that Intel has detailed so far: the x5-8300 with a quad-core CPU up to 1.84 GHz and a 12 EU GPU at 500 MHz, the x5-8500 with a 2.24 GHz quad-core and a 12 EU GPU at 600 MHz, and the x7-8700 with a 2.4 GHz quad-core and a 16 EU GPU at 600 MHz.

Intel says that the Atom x7-8700 should be around twice as fast as the Atom Z3975 at 1.6 GHz in some graphics benchmarks such as GFXBench T-Rex, indicating that a lot of time has been put into improving the GPU side. Other than that, Intel isn't providing many performance metrics for their new Cherry Trail silicon.

Intel are targeting a 1H 2015 launch timeframe for the Atom x5 and x7, though it's expected that the launch will occur closer to the end of that time frame.