It’s interesting that the year is ending and Nvidia hasn’t yet announced a new Tegra generation, while things are generally moving in a more cautious and slow way in the ARM segment. Meanwhile, Intel is taking strides in improving its technology, with a 10 watt Ivy Bridge CPU planned for 2013, that should bring lower battery life, thinner PCs and tablets.
People have a tough choice on their hands nowadays, when picking up a laptop: go with a potent Core i3, i5 or i7 device, or with a modest Intel Atom-based notebook, that offers 10 hours of battery life, approximately. Compared to that the Intel Core series only offers a few hours, but starting with 2013 there will be a third option. Intel intends to reduce significantly the power usage of its current Ivy Bridge silicon, reaching a thermal profile of just 10 watts.
Right now the ultra low voltage Ivy Bridge processors that are found on Apple’s MacBook Air have reached a thermal profile of 17 watt. There’s software that tweaks them down to 13 watt, but still they want to go further. At the Intel Developer Forum in September, the chip giant announced that it wants to bring Ivy Bridge down to ultrabook level, with sub 10 watt performance. The new generation of chips is based on the 22 nm process tech and the new line starts with a low power CPU within the 3rd gen Intel Core family, that will arrive in the first half of 2013.
