Intel’s new Atom processors have been heralded as opening the door to a new breed of cheap, portable laptops. And they’ll take their bow at Taipei’s Computex show next week.

But will Atom be as successful as everybody thinks?

We visited Samsung’s HQ recently in Suwon City, South Korea to find out what the firm thinks about the new tech. And it turns out its rather underwhelmed by the new chip, saying it’s slower even than the . Asked whether he was excited about Atom, Jeongseon Euh, Principal R&D Engineer in Samsung’s Computer Systems Division replied. “Not this moment.”

Euh stressed that Atom is intended for very cheap devices and wasn’t pleased at journalists pressing for a story about the new processor. “So now they [Intel] have three categories including mini PC using Atom. UMPC is the middle. I don’t know why you keep asking to compare the UMPC and the Mini PC.”

“At Intel they don’t want to cannibalise across [product lines] by introducing Atom.”

“They keep saying this is for low configuration systems. [There are limitations] in the chip and function.”

Industry skeptical

He’s not the first to question whether Atom will have as much poke as existing chips and initial web-posted benchmarks would seem to bear out this theory.

ComputerBase.de (via Laptoping) reported back in March that a 1.6GHz Atom chip was just behind an ancient Dothan-based 900MHz Celeron M chip using Super PI. That's really not so hot, but was very early. Newer benchmarks bear out this conclusion - Toms Hardware has reported a SuperPi result of 1 minute 32 seconds - only four seconds different to the ComputerBase.de result. So, as our Samsung man suggests, Atom has to be aimed at super-cheap devices running super-basic tasks - like Intel's much vaunted MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices).

HP too, showed it wasn’t exactly head-over-heels about Atom by shipping its Mini-Note 2133 mini laptop using the underpowered VIA C7-M chip – oft criticised for its lack of poke. And, while we know that Asus will ship an Atom version of its Eee PC, it didn’t stop the company refreshing the model earlier in the Spring.

What we’re interested to see though, is what the marketers can make out of this. Intel’s Centrino line has been notable for persuading consumers what they want. And now it will add Atom to this brand too – a move it hopes will boost sales of sub-notebooks using Atom.