At its Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, California, yesterday, Intel’s chief product designer David Perlmutter gave a glimpse of how the company will be ushering in a new era for mobile computing and for thinner ultrabooks next year with its low-power processors, starting with the company’s Haswell processors.
Perlmutter said Intel would be reducing the platform idle power of its fourth-generation Intel Core processor range by more than 20 times over the second generation based on its next-generation Haswell microarchitecture.
In addition, Perlmutter said that, in 2013, Intel would be adding a new line of even lower-power processors based on the same computer chips.
He said this new line would “usher in an era of unprecedented innovation in mobile computing”.
“Our focus to deliver even lower power with the great performance that our processors are known for is as fundamentally significant as when we shifted our development focus beyond sheer processor speed in 2001,” added Perlmutter.
In relation to ultrabooks, Intel said that more than 140 different ultrabook designs are in development.
The company said that when its Haswell chips using the 22-nanometre process arrive on ultrabooks and other PCs in 2013 this will spell high-definition graphics support and lower power usage to enable longer battery life.
Apparently, the new low-power chips based on Intel’s Haswell architecture will start off by operating at about 10 watts.
Perlmutter also pointed to how the personal computing experience is shifting towards perceptual computing to give devices more “human-like senses”.
He also invited the developer community to work with Intel to bring the next wave of perceptual computing capability to Intel Core-based platforms. Next quarter, Intel is aiming to release its Perceptual Computing Software Development Kit (SDK) for hardware and software developers.
