Intel's known lineup of low-power Atom processors based on the "Silvermont" micro-architecture spans across the "ValleyView" line of chips for tablets, nettops, and embedded systems, "Avoton" line for micro-servers, and a third line that completes the triad, "Rangeley." Designed for the networking and communications market, such as high-density switches, internet- and telephone-exchanges, etc., these chips are the first Atom-branded products to pack up to eight x86 CPU cores.

The eight-core chips are built into a single-chip SoC design. The cores feature out-of-order execution, much like "Avoton," CPU clock speeds of up to 2.40 GHz, and an instruction-set that's carefully measured for Rengeley's target application, which includes SSE4.1/SSE4.2, AES acceleration, VT-x, and x86-64. Rangeley is also among the first Atom chips to feature a dual-channel DDR3 integrated memory controller, supporting DDR3-1600 MHz, blurring the lines between it and other Intel processors. Thanks to out-of-order execution, the chip gains a 35 percent performance increment over previous-generation "Saltwell" architecture. Since it's an SoC, its core-logic is completely integrated into the CPU package. Connectivity includes PCI-Express 2.0 (a total of 16 lanes spread across 4 ports), two SATA 6 Gb/s ports, gigabit Ethernet MAC, and legacy I/O.