Intel is one of the leading manufacturers of microprocessors in the world, powering a wide range of devices spanning from top of the line workstations to personal computers and more recently, mobile devices. Starting from last year, Intel has tried to gain ground in the mobile market by developing processors for smartphones and tablets. Although at the time, Intel was falling behind, in the past year they have gained a lot of ground and now the number of devices powered by Intel’s line of mobile processors has grown to over 100 products. Also, the technology behind these processors has come a long way, mainly in the fields of power and battery efficiency.
Intel reveals a new line of mobile CPUs
A few minutes ago, at CES 2013, Intel has revealed their new line of mobile processors, based on the 22nm chips. The quad-core Atom SoC chips which Intel calls “Bay Trail” are designed for implementing in tablets running both Android and Windows 8 operating systems. As we’ve mentioned before, the two main advances in the Intel processors are battery life, which has been massively upgraded and in computing power. The new chips can provide over twice the power of the old Clover Trail processors.
In the same category as the Bay Trail processor, Intel shows the new Clover Trail+ processor, also known as the Atom Z2580, a dual-core chip with integrated graphics that will be implemented in smartphones. The processor also offers twice the performance of the Z2560 that it follows. Both the Bay Trail and the Clover Trail+ processors will be available at the end of 2013. In the same line of the Atom chips presented above, Intel has unveiled a new design for smartphones, powered by the Atom Lexington Z2420 processor. The device is targeted for emerging markets and it was presented on the reference smartphone from Intel which has a 3.5” 320 x 240 display, 1.2Ghz single-core processor with HyperThreading, custom Intel Radio which supports HSPA+, microSD card slot and dual SIM capabilities. Laptops and Ultrabooks have not been forgotten in the presentation, and Intel has developed a special breed of chips to power these devices. This time, it’s all about battery life, and the engineers at Intel have definitely managed to blow everything out of the water. Until recently, the power consumption of mobile processors was around 15-20W (Intel revolving around the 17W range), the new Ivy Bridge series has lowered this figure to 7W.
This means that the processor will consume less power and this is what allows the new generation of ultrabooks and laptops to have all day battery life (around 10-13 hrs), but also become much lighter and thinner than ever before. The reference laptop model that Intel presented, named North Cape, featured a 13.3” detachable display that is capable of showing full HD videos is more of a hybrid between tablets and laptops, but having the best in both worlds.
Intel powered 4th Generation Ultrabooks
Today at CES, Intel gave us a look at the new generation of Ultrabooks powered by the Intel processors. These devices have ultra-thin bodies and thanks to the low battery drain of the processors, they will be able to keep going for an entire day on one charge. Also, the price for the devices is said to be around the $599 mark by the end of the year, which lands them smack down in the tablet region. The drop in price will make these devices much more affordable for the general public, and thanks to their high computing power, lightweight and slim bodies, they could make excellent replacements for tablets.
All-in-One and Pay TV powered by Intel
Intel is trying to bring top of the line technology in every household, and in this sense, they’ve presented some great models of All-in-One computers, powered by Intel chips that run on the Windows 8 operating system. These devices will truly be wireless devices, having an integrated battery that will no longer tie them to a wall socket. The device presented at CES (Sony Tap 20) featured a tilt feature that allowed the user to use the device as a normal All-in-One or tilt it all the way down to a horizontal position.This design is perfect for family gaming, and as Intel stated, games coming from big names such as EA Games will be optimized for them. Also at CES Intel have announced their partnership with Comcast, making possible streaming of on-demand Xfinity premium television to Intel devices. This will be possible via the IP set-top boxes that will connect to all your Intel powered devices and allow you to stream media to any of them.
Intel’s technology shapes up the future
Intel powered devices will get some interesting features in the future. Today we’ve seen the new and improved lock screen that will use facial recognition and other “senses” to recognize the owner of the device. Although this technology isn’t new, Intel have managed to perfect it, and can now be safe to use by anyone and it cannot be hacked with a picture or a video of the user (or so Intel claims). We’ll soon see a demo software developed by Dell that will give computers the possibility to understand their owners.
One other interesting piece of kit was the 3D camera which allows users to actively interact with their computers, but it can also bring a new perspective for video calls. The system will eliminate the background of the person you are talking to and you will be able to overlay the image onto any other application, making it much more realistic than the old square box that we are used to. The system is similar to the Kinect module that Xbox has and it will also prove useful in gaming and in other tasks thanks to its ability to “see” in three dimensions.
