A rip-out-the-carpet PC refresh of both software and hardware is in the offing as Microsoft's latest operating system and new laptop designs converge later this year.
Intel's Mooly Eden, general manager, Mobile Platforms Group, speaks at the Intel Technology Summit in San Francisco
(Credit: Brooke Crothers)At the Intel Technology Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, an executive described the imminent mobile future, including a major refresh of Netbook silicon, better-designed "ultrathins," and turbo-powered high-end laptops.
Netbooks may undergo the biggest change. Models that appear after Windows 7 ships in October will see the most significant overhaul internally since the Netbook category debuted back in the spring of 2008. Intel's new "Pine Trail" Atom silicon will collapse most of the core chips onto one piece of silicon, improving the power efficiency and boosting performance.
"There will be integrated graphics inside the same (processor) core so you get better performance," said Mooly Eden, general manager of the Mobile Platforms Group at Intel, describing how the graphics processor and main processor will be grafted onto the same chip--an Intel first.
The segment just above Netbooks is ultrathins. These sleek, sub-$1,000 laptops should appear in greater varieties from more PC makers later this year, according to Intel--about the same time Windows 7 hits the streets. Aesthetics will be crucial. "You can't sell a keyboard and a screen," Eden said, describing the ideal ultrathin laptop design. "You have to sell something that somebody will desire. We need to go beyond the great CPU, great performance...to something that a normal consumer can look at say 'I want that.'"
One of the challenges for Intel is making sure these sub-one-inch-thick designs don't overheat. Eden described the use of laminar air flow technology to cool a laptop's outer skin. "This is the difference between thin comfortable and thin uncomfortable," he said.
Intel is also designing new fans that are better at getting hot air out faster. "We are putting a lot of effort into designing fans," said Eden. Intel demonstrated the fan technology at the conference Wednesday.
Intel described laminar air flow technology to cool the skin of ultrathins
(Credit: Intel)And how does Intel see these segments breaking down into screen sizes? Netbooks will have 10-inch class displays, while the "sweet spot" for ultrathins will 13.3-inch, though some larger ultrathins may have 15.6-inch screens, according to Eden. He also said there may be "some experimentation" with 11.6-inch designs.
Higher up the laptop performance scale are Core i7 mobile processors, also due around the same time that Windows 7 hits the streets. Eden showed how the gigahertz speed--or "clock speed"--of individual mobile processor cores will instantly spike in performance to accomplish a task then, in the next instant, go idle--what Intel calls HUGI or Hurry Up and Get Idle.
HUGI is a power-saving technology: the faster a task is accomplished, the faster the processor can return to idle mode--a state that uses only the bare minimum of power. Along these lines, Eden did a demonstration of Turbo Boost technology.
In the demonstration, one of the cores (inside, let's say, a mobile quad-core chip), would jump well over the processor's rated speed. For example, a processor rated at 2.0GHz, for example, may run one of the cores at 2.60GHz (or higher) while the other cores are idle. In the gaming world, this is referred to as overclocking.
A common theme of all these laptop designs was power efficiency, above and beyond Intel's traditional message of performance. All-day computing--on battery power only--seems to be one of the major rallying cries within Intel.
Updated on October 24 at 10:20 a.m. with corrected image of Intel laminar jet technology.
Intel wants a laptop to live up to its name.
A computer that sits comfortably, coolly on your lap. The world's largest chipmaker expects a crush of ultrathin laptops from PC makers in 2009 and unveiled cooling technology this week to make sure these svelte air-flow constrained designs stay cool.
To date, cooling technology has focused on keeping the internal components from getting too hot but not the outside of the computer, according to Mooly Eden, general manager of Intel's Mobile Platforms Group, speaking at the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei this week. Eden's keynote was streamed from the event.
Intel uses laminar jet technology to cool a laptop's skin (corrected image)
(Credit: Intel)"When you design a very thin system, cooling the skin is a very big challenge," said Eden. "If you put (a laptop) on your lap, it can feel very uncomfortable. Very hot." This is one of the biggest hurdles to designing an ultrathin laptop like the MacBook Air or HP Voodoo Envy 133.
If this problem isn't solved, laptops "can't be made thinner and thinner," he said.
Eden showed an animation of a jet engine to prove his point. The inside of a jet engine can get as hot as 1,000 degrees centigrade. But the jet engine's wall must be kept cool because it is connected to the wing where the fuel is. To keep the engine heat away from the wing, laminar air flow cooling is used.
A laminar flow occurs when a fluid--or air in this case--flows in parallel layers.
Intel demonstrated a system using the same laminar air flow technology to move the heat off a laptop's skin. "We are licensing it to our customers so they can keep making thinner and thinner laptops," Eden said.
Intel demonstrated laminar jet cooling at IDF.
(Credit: Intel)Intel also revisited the next-generation Calpella laptop platform (due in the second half of 2009) based on its Nehalem technology. Eden reiterated that the graphics and memory controller would be integrated onto the same piece of silicon as the processor.
He also discussed how additional transistors in Nehalem can switch cores on and off, depending on how processor-intensive the application is. This will be critical in a quad-core Calpella laptop to deliver acceptable battery life. (Eden intimated that Calpella quad-core laptops would be common.)
For instance, three of the cores can be shut down to save power when the user is doing tasks that don't require a lot of compute power. Then more cores can be turned on depending on the need.
This is done "automatically on the fly. It is transparent to the operating system," Eden said.
He also talked about "Hyperthreading" or simultaneous multithreading on Nehalem--the ability to run two program threads simultaneously per each core, doubling the number of threads and, Intel claims, obviating the need for eight cores. "We could have done eight cores. We know how to do it. But it would have been too hot," he said.
Eden showed a concept Calpella laptop on stage during his IDF keynote speech.
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