Early atoms where unquestionable intentionally crippled. During the netbook era, by leaving out stuff like out of order execution, SSE functionality, no x86_64

Early atoms where unquestionable intentionally crippled. During the netbook era, by leaving out stuff like out of order execution, SSE functionality, no x86_64 bit extensions and forcing vendors to bundle crappy intel GPUs and limiting systems to 2 gigs of ram and XP only. I'm shocked there was never a lawsuit over this. Its hard to say how much that continues today, but one gets the distinct impression that atom is still held back much like the other low end intel processors (pentium, celeron) with stuff like AES-NI and AVX disabled. Seems to be part of a ploy to preserve high end margins and fend off ARM on the lowend with "just barely good enough" chips.