Looks like next year’s ultrabooks may have even slimmer, lighter frames and longer battery run times than today’s models. The folks at The Verge have gotten some early details ahead of next week’s Intel Developer Conference in San Francisco, and they say ultrabook-bound Haswell processors will have power envelopes of just 10W—down from 17W for Ivy Bridge models.
Intel tells us that at least one version of highly integrated system-on-chip is now slated to have a 10-watt TDP. "It’s really the first product we’re building from the ground up for ultrabook," a representative says.
Haswell, of course, is the next "tock" in Intel’s CPU roadmap, due early next year. It will bring a brand-new microarchitecture based on the same 22-nm fab process as Ivy Bridge. Other refinements will no doubt be in store, as well.
10W is a pretty substantial step down from 17W. Remember, Intel’s dual-core Atom chips for netbooks peaked at about 8.5W back when they were still fabbed at 45 nm. There’s a lot more to power efficiency than lower peak power utilization, of course, but this shows just how far we’ve come in a few short years.