Earlier this week, OpenPeak released a reference design for a tablet using one of those upcoming chips, code-named Moorestown. The tablet will have an Atom-based CPU. The OpenTablet 7 tablet comes with a touchscreen is designed for multimedia and video communications, the company said. It is as slim as a photo frame, and weighs 1.15 pounds (0.52 kilograms), the company said.

Tablets are a potential growth area for newer and upcoming low-power, low-cost Atom processors, said Suzy Ramirez, an Intel spokeswoman.

"But it is by no means confined to Atom -- Intel has a range of products that will enable various tablet computing designs," Ramirez said. She did not specify which chips.

Smartphones with the Moorestown chip have already been shown. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, Intel's CEO Paul Otellini showed LG Electronics' GW990 smartphone, which uses that chip and is scheduled to ship later this year. Finnish company Aava Mobile also showed a smartphone prototype with the Moorestown chip at the Mobile World Congress this week in Barcelona.

The OpenTablet reference design will ship in the second half of this year, OpenPeak said. Intel has pegged release for the Moorestown chip at around the same time.