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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.