 Sony Vaio Y series uses Intel ultra-low-voltage processors. |
The most power efficient of Intel’s new series of mobile processors will start appearing in new laptops in February, according to the chipmaker.
The Core i3, i5, and i7 processors are slated to replace most of Intel’s older generation of Core 2 processors. Intel introduced, for the first time, mainstream mobile processors based on the Core i design–the Core i3 and i5–at the Consumer Electronics Show last month.
Though laptops using Intel’s standard-power Core i mobile processors have already hit store shelves en masse, systems using the chipmaker’s ultra-low-voltage, or ULV, Core i processors will begin to appear “in early February,” according to an Intel representative. These new processors include the i5-520UM and i7-640UM. Because ULV chips consume relatively little power, they are used in laptop designs in order to offer longer battery life.
MIPS to Watts, the new benchmark ratio.
And then, nVidia will ruin it all by introducing a graphic card for your laptop that eats so much energy it also serves as a lap warmer.
Intel® Core™ i7-640UM Processor (4M Cache, 1.20 GHz) with SPEC Code(s) SLBMM http://bit.ly/8clCi5
Isn’t it the screen, not the CPU, that eats most of your battery juice?
#4. Ron. Yes, but the wifi and ethernet chip-sets are not far behind. LED backlit displays are cool and clean, advances in that display area are relocating power loading concerns to the communications side of laptop motherboards. 3G, WiFi, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth, are draining tomorrows battery.
And off topic, a personal request to the editor, would it be at all possible to give the “Submit” button a text-only attribute? I browse without images, and being able to comment on DU without having to re-load entire pages with all images, would be very nice.
Yes, we will get new laptop models this spring with these new chips. They will be ultra-thin, lightweight, super-cool models that still get the usual 3-4 hour hour battery life, even with these new much more power efficient chips. Why? Because the manufacturers will put smaller, thinner batteries to go along with the thinner, lighter design of the machine. They’ve been doing this forever. Chips have been using less and less power for several years now, and yet the laptop I bought last year gets the same amount of battery life as the one I bought 8 years ago. These aren’t netbooks we’re talking about here.