IDF: Speculation about 10-watt mobile processors
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On Tuesday in San Francisco starts the Intel Developer Forum IDF. Given sluggish PC sales, Intel will there vistas open to a hopefully more lucrative future. A number of lectures is about the next "tock" in Intel's x86 microarchitecture: the mobile, desktop and server processors Haswell generation. Continue to be manufactured with 22-nanometer technology as the current Ivy Bridge chips coming Core i3 and Core i5 processors are both more powerful but also more efficient.
Among the new features - AVX2, transactional memory, SMAP, much more graphics power, presumably DirectX 11.1 and OpenCL 1.2 - Intel has already announced some. The Wall Street Journal, the manufacturer was in the IDF advance but it Haswell versions would come with 41 percent less power than, say, 10 instead of 17 watts thermal design power (TDP). Now we read that before starting the Intel Haswell, is not expected until the second half of next year, already could provide 10-watt versions of Ivy Bridge chips.
But what the TDP is for the battery life is not very easy to understand. First, bear in mind here is that the maximum power consumption is closely related to the highest possible performance. For Ultrabook processors are about a TDP of 17 watts has established - even so, some of the ultra-thin notebooks under full load quite noisy. It achieved the fastest and most expensive 17-watt processor, the Core i7-3667U, just 2 GHz at full load on both cores. Only in Turbo mode, ie with asymmetric load, it creates 3.2 GHz. The cheaper Core i5-3427U puts it at 1.8 / 2.8 GHz, the fastest 17-watt Celeron 877 to a mere 1.4 GHz. By comparison, the 35-watt Type Core i7-3520m comes to 2.9 GHz and the i7-3612QM has four rather than two cores, which can reach 35 watts at least 2.1 GHz.
Low TDP is associated with low frequencies - so you get for less power about the same computing power. The maximum power consumption of typical notebook use also always only briefly. Some Ultrabooks throttle on battery power anyway, the maximum available speed grades of CPU and GPU cores. Of course, but you can save by using ultra-economical processors space and weight: cooling system, power converter and battery may be smaller. For Tablets are therefore even Ultrabook processors with restrictions: If the weight will fall below 1 kg and the thickness of the case is limited, are 17 watts of CPU power to lift heavy. For the battery then there is little room to spare.
Essential for long battery life, but is not about the TDP, but the power consumption of an idle CPU - finally spend the comparatively powerful x86 processors most of their operating time typically associated with doing nothing. Therefore, Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced a year ago that the "Idle Power" in the Haswell generation should shrink by the "factor 20". It is also about the chipset and the memory - and this statement is not "across the board" for all Haswell chips, but for special versions. With special Haswell processors, special chipsets and probably through the use of LPDDR3-SDRAM, which does, among other tricks to save energy in the (Connected) Standby, it will be possible to achieve a factor of 20X. These are but some special SSDs also need the waste not even have 0.5 watts at the mere idleness - or equal firmly soldered eMMC flash chips.
To bring the TDP to 10 watts are also measures as a "Configurable TDP" planned, so an adjustable maximum for the power consumption. Logically, however, also saw the highest possible performance when screwed down the TDP. Which provide computing power 10-watt processors ultimately remains to be seen.
Processors with 10 Watt TDP and including Intel provides way for years, such as the dual-core Pentium SU4100 (1.3 GHz) or the 5.5-Watt single-core Celeron M ULV 722 - but those were the chips that are neither GPU, nor storage controller or PCI Express Root Complex contained. So there were still added two blocks chipset (northbridge and southbridge). Ivy Bridge is in each one still Southbridge necessary, wherein, for example, the content UM77 but under high load with 3 Watt TDP. Of Haswell is expected also SoC versions - the 10 Watt TDP also apply suspected it, so including Southbridge functions?
Finally, the respective equipment manufacturer must also bend over backwards and combine the economical processor also very frugal with additional components. If a tablet is space for a 36-watt-hour battery, then a mean just only 3.6 watts available, if you want to achieve 10 hours of battery life. Given the large number of components - CPU, DRAM, storage, UMTS, WLAN, Bluetooth, audio adapter, touch, tilt, GPS sensors, LCD, backlighting, camera, webcam, HDMI socket - comes it for each component already on the precision of the power consumption. The TDP of the CPU is therefore only one aspect among many. How to listen at Hot Chips was, for the mere transport of data sometimes has more energy than is necessary for their processing. Therefore, a 10-watt processor will also probably make some compromises necessary for clock or data path width of RAM, memory size, number of PCI Express lanes and SATA.
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