Intel 2012 New Chip ultrabooks ----- IT News © 2003

Intel’s new ‘ultrabooks’ coming by 2012

http://world-techtimes.blogspot.com/2011/05/intel-2012-new-chip-it-news-3.html

New chips will offer computers day-long power and ‘weeks’ of standby time by early 2012, Intel says at Computex.

Images of Intel's current and new chips: the yellow dots on the left are arranged in 2D, compared to the new, 3D arrangement on the right 

By Matt Warman, Consumer Technology Editor

Intel has unveiled a new generation of chips that it says will power ‘ultrabook’ laptops and offer significantly increased processing power and battery life. The development, the company hopes, will allow slimmer and more stylish laptops that also retain high levels of computing power. The company said it expects 40 per cent of laptops sold in 2012 to be ‘ultrabooks’.

The chips, previously announced with the codename ‘Ivy Bridge’, will be the successor to the current ‘Sandy Bridge’ processors. At just 22nm, they are set to power machines less than 20mm thick that are likely to be more stylish than current models. The move means more PC manufacturers will be able to offer designs that challenge Apple’s MacBook Air model.

Making the announcement at the Computex show in Taipei, Taiwan, Intel also emphasised its ambition to unseat rival Arm in providing chips for tablets and smartphones. It also said that it would accelerate its release cycle for Atom processors to a new generation of chips every year.

At the same show, Asus also revealed the ‘Padfone’. Building on the approach of Motorola’s Atrix, the Padfone is a standard telephone that can also be ‘docked’ into a tablet to provide a larger screen. Release dates for Europe have not been announced.