Intel planning 10W processor

Intel planning 10W processor IVB chips in 2013

Intel processors are known for their power efficiency. Its current most power efficient chip being used in Apple’s MacBook Air and a lot of Windows 8 based ultrabooks is rated at 17 Watts (also known as a Consumer Ultra Low Voltage (CULV) chip). But Intel plans to make even more power-efficient chips in 2013.

                    An industry source familiar with Intel’s plans told CNET () that the future version of Ivy Bridge (not Haswell), expected to come out in 2013 will be rated at 10 Watts, making it ideal to be used in tablets. In September this year, Anandtech had also reported on the limited availability of 10W Ivy Bridge processors in early 2013. Exact dates of this low-power Ivy Bridge chips’ debut are not known.

          Lower wattage implies a longer battery life and a slimmer form factor for the product (as it requires lesser cooling solutions) - be it ultrabook or tablet. Intel has the Z-series of chips which are power efficient, but fail to provide the kind of performance numbers seen with an Ivy Bridge chip. Intel plans to change that for the better. An ARM based chip is rated under 5 Watts and can provide battery life for a day or so, which is not possible with mainstream x86 chips.

The alleged 10W Intel Ivy Bridge chips will definitely not offer the same kind of performance numbers as the 17W counterparts, but will surely be better than the Intel Atom or ARM based chips which are running some Windows 8 tablets.

Taking the recent example of the Surface tablet, there are two versions: the Surface RT which runs on ARM chips as it has a limited Windows 8 OS and the Surface Pro which runs on Ivy Bridge processors as it is expected to run the full Windows 8 Pro version.

Intel had already stated in its roadmap that its 4th generation of Core-i family of chips, codenamed Haswell, will be rated at 10 Watts which are expected to launch in the second quarter of 2013.