Intel Sets The Bar At 10 Watts, Haswell Details Leak Ahead of IDF
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Monday, September 10, 2012 - by Rob Williams
Ahead of this week's IDF, Intel's annual Developer's Forum, the company let an interesting number slip through the cracks: 10W. With all of the leaks we've seen so far, along with information Intel itself has revealed, it's clear that the company has been focusing like never before on power efficiency with its Haswell microarchitecture. "10W" highlights that well. As Intel's TDP ratings include the GPU, that number becomes all the more impressive.
Whereas Ivy Bridge was an evolutionary update to Sandy Bridge, Haswell has been built from the ground-up, as part of Intel's "Tock" phase. The ultimate goal? To take full advantage of both the 22nm process and 3D "tri-gate" transistors.
Haswell will launch in both a two-chip and one-chip design, with the 10W part - likely a dual-core - to fall into the latter category. Like Intel's Atom chips, this one-chip design will result in an SoC (system on a chip), where all the other interfaces regularly found in the motherboard's chipset will instead be integrated into the CPU itself. This cuts down significantly on space and paves the way for Intel's plan of breaking into the tablet market.
It highlights that they suck, power compared to ARM.