Posted on Tuesday, January 08 2013 @ 11:41 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Intel talked about its upcoming Haswell processors at CES and touted that these new chips will enable a broad new range of ultrabook convertibles, detachables and tablets with "all-day battery life". The chip giant promises that Haswell will deliver the biggest battery life gain over a previous generation in Intel's history.
Since mid-2011, Intel has led the industry in enabling Ultrabook devices aimed at providing new, richer mobile computing experiences in thin, elegant and increasingly convertible and detachable designs. To enable these innovative designs, Intel announced last September that it added a new line of processors to its forthcoming 4th generation Intel Core processor family targeted at about 10 watt design power, while still delivering the excellent performance people want and need.
Skaugen announced today that the company is bringing the low-power line of processors into its existing 3rd generation Intel Core processor family. Available now, these chips will operate as low as 7 watts, allowing manufacturers greater flexibility in thinner, lighter convertible designs. Currently there are more than a dozen designs in development based on this new low-power offering and they are expected to enable a full PC experience in innovative mobile form factors including tablets and Ultrabook convertibles. The Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga* 11S Ultrabook and a future Ultrabook detachable from Acer will be among the first to market this spring based on the new Intel processors and were demonstrated by Skaugen on stage.
The 4th generation Intel Core processor family enables true all-day battery life -- representing the most significant battery life capability improvement in Intel history. Skaugen disclosed that new systems are expected to deliver up to 9 hours of continuous battery life, freeing people from some of the wires and bulky power bricks typically toted around.
"The 4th generation Core processors are the first Intel chips built from the ground up with the Ultrabook in mind," Skaugen said. "We expect the tremendous advancements in lower-power Core processors, and the significant ramp of touch-based systems will lead to a significant new wave of convertible Ultrabooks and tablets that are thinner, lighter and, at the same time, have the performance required for more human-like interaction such as touch, voice and gesture controls."
To demonstrate the impact of the 4th generation Intel Core processor family, Skaugen showed a new form factor Ultrabook detachable reference design (codenamed "North Cape") that converts into a 10mm tablet and can run on battery for up to 13 hours while docked.
Advancements made in the way consumers will interact with their computing devices were also demonstrated, including natural and more immersive interaction experiences using a 3-D depth camera. Intel showed applications running on an Ultrabook in which objects can be manipulated naturally with free movements of the hands, fingers, face and voice. One application that was demonstrated can be used for enabling new and immersive video collaboration and blogging experiences. These were all enabled using the Intel® Perceptual Computing SDK Beta. This year, Intel expects more Ultrabooks and all-in-one (AIO) systems to offer applications for voice control (Dragon Assistant*) and facial recognition (Fast Access*) for convenience and freedom from passwords.
