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Intel Unveils 10-Watt Haswell Chip

adeelarshad82 writes "At IDF, Intel announced the company's fourth-generation Core processor code-named Haswell. The chip is based off of the same 22nm process used in the current third-generation Core products. What makes this chip remarkably different from the third-generation chips is its ability to product twice the graphic capabilities at a much lower power consumption, which Intel has achieved by making use of a number of tactics." HotHardware has video of Haswell running a 3D benchmark.

24 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. Closing in on Atom by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Intel's top Atom chips have a 10W TDP. Of course the chipset/RAM also play a large factor, but still -- this is an amazingly frugal CPU

    1. Re:Closing in on Atom by All_One_Mind · · Score: 2

      Intel's top Atom chips have a 10W TDP. Of course the chipset/RAM also play a large factor, but still -- this is an amazingly frugal CPU

      At IDF, Intel also talked about upcoming 5W Atom chips that will be out at the same as Haswell

    2. Re:Closing in on Atom by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      The part I was impressed with was how they did it...
      "[...] which Intel has acheived by making use of a number of tactics."
      +5 Informative!

    3. Re:Closing in on Atom by Unknown+Lamer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The best part is that, unlike Atom, these things are usably fast. I have a 2x1.3Ghz core2 process shrunk or something with a TDP of 12W (total system is about 26W ... under full load). I mostly live in Emacs but I like a compositing window manager (wobbly windows are fun alright) and GL screen hacks... the thing does great and can handle my regular abuse of PostgreSQL/SBCL/mlton/... all while getting about 8-9 hours of realistic use (ok, closer to 7 now that the battery is down to 72Wh from its 84Wh theoretical max when it was new) and all under 10W generally. Sign me up for something that uses about the same power and is just a bit slower than the current Ivybridge processors... (come on laptop, don't die until next summer).

      And it all Just Works (tm) with Debian testing (it even worked with Squeeze, but GL was a bit slow since it predated the existence of the graphics hardware and all). Now, if only someone would make one of these low voltage things with a danged Pixel Qi display or whatever Qualcomm has so that I can use it outside... not having to worry about finding power every 2 to 3 hours is great, but if you're still stuck indoors it's not half as great as it could be.

      --

      HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
    4. Re:Closing in on Atom by Anne_Nonymous · · Score: 5, Funny

      >> 5W

      How the hell am I supposed to reheat pizza on that?

    5. Re:Closing in on Atom by LordKronos · · Score: 5, Funny

      The part I was impressed with was how they did it...
      "[...] which Intel has acheived by making use of a number of tactics."
      +5 Informative!

      Welcome to the internet. We have these thing called hyperlinks. Anytime you see underlined text of a different color, you should consider clicking on it. I you had clicked on the phrase "number of tactics", you would have been taken to view another article which would have explained many of these tactics.

    6. Re:Closing in on Atom by default+luser · · Score: 3, Informative

      Intel's top Atom chips have a 10W TDP. Of course the chipset/RAM also play a large factor, but still -- this is an amazingly frugal CPU

      You're thinking of the wrong Atom CPU there. You want to compare Intel's lowest-power Core architecture to...their lowest-power Atom.

      Intel has placed an Atom Z2460 on a smartphone platform, complete with 1.6 GHz core speed and sub 1w typical power consumption, and they've done it on just the old 32nm process. The 10w parts you're thinking of are for desktops.

      These 10w Haswell chips will also be the pick of the litter, but the power consumption will be nowhere near that of Atom (and neither will the price...expect to pay upwards of $300 for these exotic cores). The Lava Xolo X900 costs only $400 on the street, so you can imagine Intel's charging around $25 for their chipset.

      --

      Man is the animal that laughs.
      And occasionally whores for Karma.

  2. Graphic Capabilities by Lord+Lode · · Score: 2

    So wait, is this only about the graphics part inside the CPU or what?

    Who cares about that graphics part inside the CPU. Useful for a laptop maybe, but for the real stuff you need an actual graphics card.

    1. Re:Graphic Capabilities by silas_moeckel · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because most PC's sold use integrated graphics, traditionally they have been abysmal. In the last few years seemly pushed by AMD they have been looking to correct that.

      --
      No sir I dont like it.
    2. Re:Graphic Capabilities by Hadlock · · Score: 2

      Laptops make up something like 50% of the consumer market. Integrated graphics are what go in most dells for corporate users. An HD4000 has no problem pushing a dual or triple screen setup. The triple head displays at my work choke on anything more than word processing. Dragging a youtube video across all three makes things very choppy. Also, the HD4000 is an actually usable chipset. It's nothing like the old integrated graphics of old like the GMA950 which couldn't even load TF2. HD4000 will do TF2 at 250-300fps.

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
    3. Re:Graphic Capabilities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      The integrated graphics are still crap.

      The thermal overhead added to the CPU die limits the amount of computational power they can realistically add. Not to mention that on enthusiast systems it creates needless waste heat that could be better spent on CPU cycles. (Supposedly we'll see some tightly integrated cpu+gpu systems with shared memory space and registers and whatnot.. But we're far away from that, as it presents a large departure from traditional PC architecture, let alone x86 arch. AMD is way ahead on this path though, and it may pay off for them in the future.)

      Above aside, the real elephant in the room comes down to memory speed. GPUs need memory bandwidth. Lots of it. GPU speed scales with memory bandwidth to the point that it's pretty much the most significant metric that separates price tiers in the traditional GPU card market. GPUs are supposed to have fast, high clocked, tightly integrated memory subsystems using exotic high speed memory types explicitly designed to directly coupled to GPU chips, for their exclusive use.(GDDR3, GDDR5, etc)

      These cpu-gpus have to make due with the plain old low bandwidth narrow bus main memory in your system. And they have to share that bandwidth with the rest of the system. GPUs are so memory speed sensitive that you can see drastic differences in performance on the AMD chips simply by getting faster main memory modules. Overclocking your memory yields even more improvement - But that's the thing. All of these solutions are budget oriented, so they'll be saddled with slow and cheap memory to begin with.

      You know the xbox? It's got shared memory. How to they get fast performance? ALL of the system's main memory hangs off the GPU. It's ALL GDDR3. They can do this sort of unified memory arch because it's a special custom designed system.

      Until the memory bandwidth issue is solved the integrated GPUs will continue to be crap.

    4. Re:Graphic Capabilities by DeathFromSomewhere · · Score: 4, Insightful

      1) Using integrated graphics for gaming if you are concerned about framerates is just dumb.
      2) 1/3 the TDP is the difference between a battery with power and one without.

      --
      -1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
    5. Re:Graphic Capabilities by DigiShaman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's official. Intel on-board video is all you'll ever need for home and general office use. I'm not talking about "getting by" performance. I'm talking about full 2D hyper smooth animation, fading, and alpha blending. I've seen both Ubuntu, Windows 7, and Windows 8 using on-board. It doesn't bat an eyelash. No pausing or hiccups. Flash animation couldn't be more smooth too.

      About the only reason you wouldn't use on-board video is if you must run Adobe product that calls for GPU acceleration or you're a gamer.

      nVidia knows this too. As you can see, they've been focusing in on advanced 3D gaming and super computing. It won't be long before nVidia turns into the next "SGI" where only high-end is their focus. To the point where even they start losing the consumer market and only focus on business-to-business solutions and other vertical market applications.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    6. Re:Graphic Capabilities by Bengie · · Score: 2

      the difference between 40fps and 20fps at 1080p for medium quality in a modern game... on a netbook. Intel IGP is notm eant for games, but it can run them with "meh" quality, but really really lower power usage.

    7. Re:Graphic Capabilities by bemymonkey · · Score: 3, Informative

      "The integrated graphics are still crap."

      Depends what for, really... Office, web and HD video? Nope, they're pretty good at that - so good, in fact, that I don't buy machines with dedicated graphics cards unless I'm planning on playing games or running applications that specifically require a fast GPU.

      Even the HD3000 or HD4000 (Sandy and Ivy Bridge, respectively) graphics included with the last and current generations of Intel Core iX CPUs are overkill for most people - even a 4500MHD (Core 2 Duo 2nd generation) had perfect support for 1080p acceleration and ran Windows 7 at full tilt with all the bells and whistles, if you wanted those. What more do you want from integrated graphics?

      The fact that I can even play Starcraft II on low at 1080p on a Core i3 with the integrated HD3000 at acceptable framerates is just icing on the cake...

      Oh and have I mentioned the sub-5W total system power consumption on a 15.6" laptop with a standard voltage CPU? THAT is what integrated graphics are for. If you're looking to do gaming or CAD or use the GPU for computationally intensive tasks, you're not in the target audience...

    8. Re:Graphic Capabilities by Solandri · · Score: 4, Informative

      My 2-year old laptop has an nVidia GT 330M. At the time it was a mid-range dedicated mobile 3D video card.

      Ivy Bridge's HD4000 comes very close to matching its performance while burning a helluva lot less power. So the delta between mid-grade dedicated video and integrated video performance is down to a little over 2 years now. Intel claims Haswell's 3D video is twice as fast as HD4000. If true, that would put it near the performance of the GT 640M, and lower the delta to a bit over 1 year.

      This is all the more impressive if you remember that integrated video is hobbled by having to mooch off of system memory. If there were some way to give the HD4000 dedicated VRAM, then you'd have a fairer apples to apples comparison of just how good the chipset's engineering and design are compared to the dedicated offerings of nVidia and AMD.

      I used to be a hardcore gamer in my youth, but life and work have caught up and I only game casually now. If Haswell pans out, its integrated 3D should be plenty enough for my needs. It may be "crap" to the hardcore gamer, but they haven't figured out yet that in the grand scheme of things, being able to play video games with all the graphics on max is a pretty low priority.

    9. Re:Graphic Capabilities by bemymonkey · · Score: 2

      Laptop displays have been LED backlit for years now - you can't buy a CCFL backlit display except maybe as a standalone monitor in the clearance aisle of your local big box electronics store...

      As for AMOLED... that's useless as a laptop display, because it uses 2-5x as much power as a decently efficient LED backlit display when displaying mainly-white content (such as Slashdot or other websites) - not to mention the fact that AMOLED displays at this size (15.6" diagonal in this case, but consider this sentence to be true for roughly 10" diagonals and higher) cost thousands of $. I have had AMOLED displays on my last two smartphones, so I can definitely attest to the fact that the battery life sucks... on the other hand, the high contrast is pretty good, and you can conserve your battery life by using an operating system and apps with a lot of dark colors - hence why Android's UI has gotten darker and darker after their dev phones started being released with AMOLED screens ;)

      So yeah, the laptop display is LED backlit. Just like every other laptop for the past 2 years or so :p

      5W is with the display on roughly half or even 70% brightness, BTW - albeit using the low-res Chimei Innolux WXGA (1366x768) panel that came with the laptop... that thing was wicked efficient and very nicely readable in sunlight because of the huge pixels that made the panel almost transflective. I've since upgraded to a much less efficient panel (the FullHD 95% gamut panel used in the Thinkpad W520/530), and that still runs around 5.6-5.9W at half brightness :)

  3. Incorrect summary is incorrect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Intel's Statement was that it could produce similar results as Ivy Bridge at half the power consumption OR around twice the power at the same power consumption as Ivy Bridge's built in chip.

    Which is still pretty good all considered.

  4. Re:Compared to ARM by atlasdropperofworlds · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When you consider that the x86 uses 3x the power, but can run a benchmark such as multithreaded linpack 1000x faster, it suddenly seems like we're getting ripped off by these ARM processors.

    In reality, this processor consumes 20x less (I assume that means 1/20th) power of the current Ivy Bridges. I presume that's under normal use. It's a huge win for laptops.

  5. Re:Compared to ARM by Wallslide · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to anandtech.com, the '20x lower power' statistic is only a reference to the chip's idle power state, not while it's under any sort of processing load.

  6. Still not good enough for me(just my opinion) by csoh · · Score: 2

    What I want for my ultimate mobile computing device:

    1. Small, lightweight and have physical keyboard
      I walk a lot so I want small device that fit comfortably in my backpack (so that's below 7'') and weight less than 1.5(preferrably 1) pound. I'm not all-day mobile warrior so I can live with cramped keyboard but after testing my wife's galaxy s2 touch keyboard I decided I DO NEED a physical keyboard for typing documents/playing games(like nethack, old dosbox compatible games).

    2. MS application/IE compatiblity
        I need to do business with MS office documents and MS IE only internet banking/payment processing. Libreoffice is not good enough if you have to edit/exchange MS office documents with other business entity(and that stupid and powerful entity is stubborn enough that it want genuine MS office docs only and complain slightest of incompatibility problems)

    3. Very low power
    10W - It will still need fan or huge heatsink. Moving part/high power is not good for longivity/ruggedness let alone battery life. My estimate is that you'll have to go below 2W to acheive compact & sleek design without fan/huge heatsink - Yes atom Z5XX do that and I have one now.

    4. usable graphic core without fsckup.
    I need graphic core that supports linux well and play angry bird. PVR core in atom don't support either. Even their xp driver don't support basic opengl well enough.

    5. Support basic net tools/secure net connection I feel comfortable
    I want to redirect all normal net connection via VPN using my secure home base using openvpn when I connect to untrusted/public wifi. I believe that is reasonably achievable(without heavy source modifying/manually recompliling) with only linux/winxp~7 for now. And I hate OS that don't support basic net tools.

    6. Trusted application that I know What it is doing.
    I don't want application that does unknown things behind my back(leaking private info for whatever reason or doing net connection I don't want it to do). So I prefer well known/open source apps and become skeptical on many android/google apps.

    If you go ultrabook route, you can acheive 2,4,5,6 for now.
    If you go atom route, you can achieve 1,2,3,5,6 for now. Currently I've settled for this.
    If you go arm based smartphone/pad route, you can achive 1(depends on device),3,4,may be 5 (if you rooted your phone/pad) for now.
    With WINRT device, may be you'll be able to achieve 1,2,3,4.

    Of course things are changing so somewhere in future may be you could do things with a platform that counldn't do for now(compatibilty/standard compliance got better,intel finally make 2w non-atom processor/drop FSCKING pvr core from atom, better performance to run emulation comfortably, corporation changes their mind about privacy...). So I think it is the race between platforms which acheives the most within reasonable time.

  7. Remember the GMA500 by jbernardo · · Score: 2

    As any other owner of that orphaned Intel chipset, I'll never buy another Intel integrated video solution. Even if they manage to get their power consumption below competitive ARM SoC, I will still not get that crap. The GMA500 disaster showed how much Intel cares for end users after selling them the hardware. So it is interesting they managed to reduce power consumption so much, but my netbooks are still going to be AMD, my tablets and phones are ARM possibly with NVidia's Tegra chipset. Intel will have to do a lot more to convince me to try their solutions again.

    1. Re:Remember the GMA500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The GMA500 was for embedded devices anyway, and not a real Intel chipset. Intel knows of the problem is actively working on replacing those PowerVR chips with their own chips. ARM chips have the same or even worse problems than GMA500 chips: You don't have working drivers for those either, maybe some for Android, but not for Xorg.

    2. Re:Remember the GMA500 by Kjella · · Score: 3, Informative

      The GMA500 disaster showed how much Intel cares for end users after selling them the hardware.

      GMA500 = rebranded PowerVR SGX 535. The graphics Intel develops themselves isn't for serious gamers but it's improved leaps and bounds over the last couple years. You're of course free to be unhappy about the Poulsbo and with good reason, but most people with a recent Intel IGP are very happy and the sales of discrete cards only goes one way, down.

      --
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