Intel's 14-nm Broadwell CPU Primed For Slim Tablets

crookedvulture writes Intel's next-gen Broadwell processor has entered production, and we now know a lot more about what it entails. The chip is built using 14-nm process technology, enabling it to squeeze into half the power envelope and half the physical footprint of last year's Haswell processors. Even the thickness of the CPU package has been reduced to better fit inside slim tablets. There are new power-saving measures, too, including a duty cycle control mechanism that shuts down sections of the chip during some clock cycles. The onboard GPU has also been upgraded with more functional units and hardware-assisted H.265 decoding for 4K video. Intel expects the initial Broadwell variant, otherwise known as the Core M, to slip into tablets as thin as the iPad Air. We can expect to see the first systems on shelves in time for the holidays.

Comments

Thank GOD

[ADRA]

Because what I was missing from a tablet was 4K movies!

Re:Thank GOD

[Lab Rat Jason]

Bow down to my 27" tablet!!!

Re:Thank GOD

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about future proofing. Plus H.265 applies to all the resolutions, not just 4K. So you might be able to download a 720p video that's 70% to half the current file size.

I haven't touched Ivy Bridge or Haswell. I want to hold out for Broadwell or Skylake for a nice and even lower power notebook. That or a future AMD offering.

Re:Thank GOD

[timeOday]

I do have a 4k display on my Mac Pro, but I don't have a tablet because I like having one device that can do it all. A Surface Pro with this new chip might end up being that device.

Re:Thank GOD

[CastrTroy]

You're missing the biggest point. It has hardware h.265 support(not to be confused with h.264) which is a newer compression algorithm that allows for even smaller files while maintaining the same video quality, or better quality when using the same bitrate.

Re:Thank GOD

[VTBlue]

Funny, but actually what it means is that you a sandy bridge class core CPU in an iPad Air form factor that dramatically alters the scenarios for usage. A nice port replicator or docking station will make for a clean and minimalist work area. One more generation and graphics will be pretty capable of mainstream gaming. Even with core M, many games will be playable with medium/low settings.

Currently I'm looking for an excuse to dump my still capable lenovo t400s

Re:Thank GOD

[nine-times]

Yeah, but you can also play video from your tablet to your TV, through HDMI out if you have it, or else streaming to a set-top box. It may not be an extremely common use for tablets, but I've done it before. And a 13" tablet running a "retina" resolution (~300 dpi) would run over 1080p, for whatever that's worth.

I mean, I'm not sure I care about 4k right now, since 1080p seems to be doing just fine for my purposes. Still, it's not as though the idea is completely stupid.

Re:Thank GOD

[afidel]

I use HDMI from my tablet to TVs in hotel rooms when traveling.

Re:Thank GOD

[mlts]

I can see an x86 (well, more accurately x86_64 because it is the AMD 64 bit extensions) tablet taking the role of a main desktop, similar to how the Microsoft Surface Pro is starting to do.

I would like to see five things on it to make it a serious contender for a desktop replacement role:

1: Two Thunderbolt connectors on a port replicator or docking station. These would work for video out, as well as provide 8 (in TB 1) or 16 (in the TB 2 spec) PCI lanes. I wonder if this would be enough for an external video adapter.

2: USB 3.1 with a type C connector. This is small enough to be on the device itself and support high amperage charging (as well as voltage higher than 5 volts if negotiated through the plug.)

3: A decent docking station. Something that the device can easily be plugged or slid into (and can handle a lot of insertions without breaking), and offer connectors for video, keyboard, mouse, HDDs, multiple NICs, eSATA, USB ports (and lots of them), and so on. Bonus points if the tablet can be locked in place, as a theft-deterrent.

4: Decent RAM and disk space. For starters, it should have 16 GB of RAM, and at last 1TB of SSD.

5: A read-only drive that has OS media on it. This way, reinstalling the machine from malware-free media (not the "reset" button or recovery partitions that wind up just as infected as the main partition) would be doable, and there would not be a case of losing the install media that came with the box. Heck, Tandy did this in 1984 with MS-DOS, why can't it be done with a modern machine?

Re:Thank GOD

[Kjella]

One more generation and graphics will be pretty capable of mainstream gaming.

I'm not sure if I should disagree with you because there's plenty gaming on phones/tablets today or because the bar of what's mainstream keeps going up but I don't agree. Every time they do a better tablet they also release a new generation of graphics cards and a new generation of games comes out to use it. We no longer run Quake and Crysis is no longer all it's cracked up to be, so next generation I expect the situation to be exactly the same - many games will be playable with medium/low settings. And there's no catching up because you can't do in a 15W tablet power budget what a 150W desktop can do. It's always going to look much better, relatively speaking.

the way it was meant...

[Imazalil]

You just haven't seen a movie the way the director intended, until you've seen in on a 10 inch tablet in 800ppi at an airport. Now, how do I get this 160 gig movie on there.

14 nanometers?

[ChipMonk]

Given that the covalent radius of silicon is 111 picometers, that comes to a channel that's 63 silicon atoms across.

And I thought 65nm (~300 silicon atoms across) was impressive five years ago.