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Intel Claims Haswell Architecture Offers 50% Longer Battery Life vs. Ivy Bridge
MojoKid writes "As with any major CPU microarchitecture launch, one can expect the usual 10~15% performance gains, but Intel apparently has put its efficiency focus into overdrive. Haswell should provide 2x the graphics performance, and it's designed to be as power efficient as possible. In addition, the company has further gone on to state that Haswell should enable a 50% battery-life increase over last year's Ivy Bridge. There are a couple of reasons why Haswell is so energy-efficient versus the previous generation, but the major reason is moving the CPU voltage regulator off of the motherboard and into the CPU package, creating a Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator, or FIVR. This is a far more efficient design and with the use of 'enhanced' tri-gate transistors, current leakage has been reduced by about 2x — 3x versus Ivy Bridge."
Early last year some Lenovo Thinkpads had issues with lockups due to a voltage regulator being off spec.
Not terribly on-topic, but it was either that or scream: "I just bought an Ivy Brigde laptop dammit, Dammit, DAAAMMMIT!!!"
That's fantastic. I love seeing efficiency, but I imagine that the screen would eat most of the battery life in consumer applications.
According to amdahl's law we are know this is not happening. Screen is sucking up most battery power in the system (by a wide margin). So unless Haswell has some magic that's working on the screen....
The biggest battery drain on my phone is always the display, followed by "Cell standby". How is a CPU and chipset able to promise a 50% increase in battery life when it's not even the biggest power user in the phone?
Darn. At least it would have been if I had a Haswell. My Ivy Bridge's battery ran out.
Is this seriously 50% increase in battery life? Or just 50% reduction in power usage by CPU? The article wasn't clear on this. I'm assuming the power usage thing.
So what? Amtrak has seat-side power for your computers. What you say does not make sense. (
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
Yeah, but I also bet Amtrak frowns on nerds jacking off in public, so I guess he spends the 3 hour trip in the can. AFAIK there's no power socket in the toilets.
If you're watching 3-hours of porn in a single sitting you're doing it wrong.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
My laptop consumes most of its power via the discrete GPU, display and other peripherals. I know, since if I switch from the good GPU to the crappy one, and dim the screen, my battery life goes from 2.5 to 5 hours. Thus, with everything on, at least half the power draw can't be CPU, so there is no way this could double my battery life.
But, when idle, with a dimmed or off screen, yes, it could help a lot. Apparently Haswell has some major improvements to handling network (including wifi) packets when in low power modes, and this should be a big win. I assume this kind of situation is where they got the 2x number, since they would choose the case that would produce the largest improvement for marketing.
Of course there is. How do you think people use electric shavers?
Yes, but they don't have a ground plug, so jacking off in the can while plugged in greatly increases the risks of severe electric shock.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Without checking the source, i bet it is only the cpu/gpu/power thtat is getting lower values. It is the old intel story again. First it was the atom cpu that was supposed to be super low power. However they forgot to mention you needed a chitset along with it for the video networking pci that was not so super savy with power.
Now the cpu/gpu is super power savery. But the wifi/display/battery/2g/3g/nfc/audio/cam/gps might still drain your battery in 3 seconds.....
FIVR in the mornin' FIVR in the evenin', FIVR all through the night!
Facts are useless, they can be used to prove anything.
Is this a laptop only chipset, or does intel have goodies for those who like to be chained to their desks?
Or, very right.
Like most CPU's these days, they produce a lot of variants.
For this article they are likely talking about the "U" variant with 15W TDP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_(microarchitecture)#Mobile_processors
You can't really compare that with the (or say in same breath) desktop "K" variant with 84W TDP (also has twice the cores and threads).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_(microarchitecture)#Desktop_processors
I am pretty sure the benchmarks will be wildly different. Anyway the summary makes it sound like it is all one thing. I am sure it will be very good and all, but I know I won't be getting one of those power saving versions. POWER! (To quote Clarkson)
Math tip: A 50% increase in battery life (what they actually claimed) isn't the same as doubling it.
Also, since a big selling point for Haswell (aside from power efficiencies) is the claimed greatly improved (~2x for laptop-oriented models, ~3x for desktop-oriented models) improvement in graphics performance, I'd be very surprised if their claims for about battery life were focussed on systems using discrete GPUs rather than relying on the integrated graphics on Haswell.
Well, except that they explicitly claimed that was overall battery life, and it was a 50% increase not 2x, and they actually cited numbers for improvement in idle life and it was much higher than the +50% claimed overall (or even the 2x you pulled out of who-knows-where), since their claimed idle-mode improvement was twenty times (TFA is less clear on this, but Computerworld covers the same event with more specificity: "And in idle or standby mode the chips will do even better, extending battery life by up to 20 times, [Rani Borkar, Intel's Architecture Group VP] said." [emphasis added])
Which translates to 10% longer battery life after factoring in your whole laptop, in best case.
Some would find that a compelling feature.
I wonder how the performance vs power consumption compares to the old Transmeta chips that started the trend.
Soon motherboards will be just wiring for the I/O and CPU
The Zeitgeist Movement
He is doing it just right. If you are doing "it" with a Victoria's secret catalog in 3 minutes then you are doing it very, very wrong.
http://i01.i.aliimg.com/img/pb/419/444/420/420444419_371.jpg
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
Yes, but they don't have a ground plug, so jacking off in the can while plugged in greatly increases the risks of severe electric shock.
You've obviously never tried electric stimulation...
Ezekiel 23:20
Is that marketing speak for "we were unable to increase the operating frequency"?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Too bad CPU power consumption hasn't been the biggest consumer of watts in many years.
Hint; the biggest amount of consumed current in most laptops is the glowing part you look at.
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
laptops are dc and I don't think ground pass though the power brick to laptop.
Tantric Porn
The Y capacitor can leak enough for an uncomfortable tingle on sensitive skin like your bare lap (eg wearing shorts) or the underside of your forearms.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Not really, no.
There's a reason desktop CPU's have been limited to around 3GHZ since 2005, transistors can only change voltage so fast.
Overclockers can accomplish significantly better, but the life of a CPU is considerably reduced in these situation, and that's not just because of extra heat.
How is Barry Life Formed? How Usage get Consemption?
they need to do way instain comsumer> who kill thier barrys. becuse these barry cant frigth back?
it was on the charger this mroing a user in ar who had kill their three divice.
they are taking the three barry back to zero charge too lady to rest.
My parry are with the tickle chrager who lost its powre ; i am truley sorry for voltage lots.
AMD CPUs run 4.4GHz stock. There must be a different reason. It might be a tradeoff between complexity and pipeline depth.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Or its simply the fact that dynamic power is related to the switching speed via the square of the voltage * frequency. So, increasing the clock and voltage causes the power to go up significantly for a given number of transistors.
So, its an evil tradeoff, add more transistors increase leakage, or bump the clock rate and increase the dynamic power.
AMD has chosen the faster clockrate, for a few percent decrease in efficiency, while Intel has chosen the save power option for a few percent decrease in performace. It makes sense as intel is top performance dog right now. Being top power dog is now their focus. If AMD starts getting close they will release another i7 EE with more memory channels and clocked another Ghz faster.
In both cases, I'm sure they could design a CPU with a TDP of 300W and give themselves a clockrate bump to match the 5.5Ghz zSeries IBM sells. Of course then they would need a huge blower like IBM uses. I'm sure that if either of them thought they could get away with selling a few $500k CPUs to fit in a $20 million machine they would do it.
I thought the Y-shaped capacitor was what allowed time travel.
For workloads where the system is awake but mostly idle (think web browsing etc) you'll see enormous gains in energy efficiency; the less idle it is the less gain.
When I browse the web on my Nexus 7 tablet, "Screen" already takes at least 67 percent of the battery. And that's with ARM, which already sips less power in general than x86. What CPU upgrade will fix that?
Then perhaps the next step is to build user interfaces that aren't based on scrolling or other smooth motion, so that something with a laptop form factor and an e-ink display becomes viable.
Now they can make the OS and application coding less efficient!
Do you usually make it a prolonged experience so that Victoria's Secret catalog feels satisfied?
You make a good point about Haswell using less power at idle. And an x86 CPU that uses less power at idle could help Windows tablets escape the RT jail that Microsoft has erected around the ARM architecture. I was just trying to point out that "enormous gains in energy efficiency" for the CPU won't necessarily translate to "enormous gains in energy efficiency" for the whole system, especially as laptop makers shift their emphasis away from 10" subnotebooks to the larger screen models.