During presentations at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on September 13, Intel officials confirmed that the upcoming “Clover Trail” version of the company’s low-power Atom processor would not support Linux.

The Clover Field processor is targeted at mobile devices, such as low-cost notebooks and tablets. The Inquirer reports that an Intel representative at IDF declared that Clover Trail “cannot run Linux” and is exclusively “a Windows 8 chip.”

On September 11, Intel Architecture Group Executive Vice President David Perlmutter told IDF attendees in his keynote that the Clover Trail system-on-a-chip architecture was designed specifically for Windows 8 tablets and “convertibles.” In effect, Clover Trail is Intel’s effort to provide a full Windows 8 experience (including enterprise features missing from Windows RT) on devices competitive with ARM-based Windows 8 tablets.

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