Intel Details Power Management Advancements in Haswell

MojoKid writes "Intel's next-generation CPU architecture, codenamed Haswell, puts heavy emphasis on reducing power consumption. Pushing Haswell down to a 10W TDP is an achievement, but hitting these targets requires collaboration. Haswell will offer finer-grained control over areas of logic that were previously either on or off, up to and including specific execution units. These optimizations are impressive, particularly the fact that idle CPU power is approaching tablet levels, but they're only part of the story. Operating system changes matter as well, and Intel has teamed up with Microsoft to ensure that Windows 8 takes advantage of current and future hardware. Haswell's 10W target will allow the chip to squeeze into many of the convertible laptop/tablet form factors on display at IDF, while Bay Trail, the 22nm, out-of-order successor to Clover Trail, arrives in 2013 as well. Not to mention the company's demonstration of the first integrated digital WiFi radio. Folks have been trading blows over whether Intel could compete with ARM's core power consumption. Meanwhile, Santa Clara has been busy designing many other aspects of the full system solution for low power consumption and saving a lot of wattage in the process." It's mildly amusing that Windows 8 is the first version to gain dynamic ticks, something Linux has had working since around 2007.

Comments

Funny

[viperidaenz]

It's mildly amusing that Windows 8 is the first version to gain dynamic ticks, something Linux has had working since around 2007.

Its also mildly amusing that Windows has always trumped Linux in battery life, despite not implementing this power saving feature.

Re:Intel already realized where their market is

[Pulzar]

You have confused performance per watt with total power consumption. ARM is very good at the latter, but is by no means the best at the former.

Performance per watt isn't a single number that can be compared to tell the full story. In an envelope desired by small portable devices, ARM has a significant edge in performance per watt over Intel's Atom.

In server market, Intel has an edge, of course, as they have chips specifically designed for those kinds of high-power workloads. ARM is still a few years away from having anything designed for similar use.

Market share numbers in both categories reflect this.