Ultra-Thin Laptops To Be Next Intel-AMD Battleground 125
FinalAnkleHealer sends along an IBTimes article proposing that $500 ultra-thin laptops, capable of multitasking and editing multimedia content, could be the next market contested by Intel and AMD. "AMD partnered with Hewlett-Packard Co. in January to launch the Pavilion dv2. Intel launched its rival CULV (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage) chip this month and Acer Inc. and Asustek Computer Inc were among those that demonstrated laptops based on the new technology at the Computex trade show in Taipei. ... With more people gravitating toward mobile and wireless technology, consumers want smaller laptops — and most of those people would prefer doing more than surfing the Web, which the no-frills netbooks now excel at. ... Acer, the first company to introduce a cheap Intel-powered CULV laptop, expects revenue from that segment to account for 15 percent of its total sales by the end of 2009. Asustek, which pioneered the netbook in 2007, plans to launch five consumer-priced ultra-thins this year."
Ports (Score:2, Insightful)
Thickness will be limited by large ports such as VGA, USB annd ethernet, unless they make everything wireless.
Just more battery life (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Slimness without performance? (Score:0, Insightful)
I hope they are promoting slimness with performance.
Has the success of Apple and the iPhone taught you nothing? If it looks pretty, performance can remain an afterthought.
Re:Just more battery life (Score:4, Insightful)
Only when you're truly going to innovate make it 24h!
My big-ass notebook has a battery that is around 5% of the total volume (rough calculation) and it manages 2.5 hours of normal work or 2 hours of more intense usage. When you have a battery that is 50% of the volume of the tiny netbook (and the chipset is much less power hungry than an ordinary notebook) you can easily make the battery life tenfold of what it is today.
fix landscape portrait sync problems (Score:4, Insightful)
rather then worrying about thin, how about the hardware and software people get to gether and have a std for web pages, so we don't have these awful problems of landscape screens and portrait pages (even worse for most pdfs - people edit them in word for portrait display, which never happens on screen, can't adobe make a pdf that auto changes the format of the file to fit screen or print mode ?)
Re:Ultra-thin? (Score:4, Insightful)
And one inch isn't that thin. My Tiger era MacBook is only very slightly more than an inch thick. I'm pretty certain it wasn't the thinest laptop available at the time, and the MacBook Air has been released since then.
Battleground? I Doubt It (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as I love AMD, I would like to know what the submitter was thinking calling it a battleground. It's only a fair fight for AMD so long as Intel's not interested - AMD (and their manufacturing partner née subsidiary) can't match Intel's manufacturing abilities. AMD doesn't have an Ultra Low Voltage chip; Intel has a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo that runs at 10W [intel.com], meanwhile it's murky at best for AMD's competing chip line, the Neo. The only specs given out to the press for the new fual core version [notebookreview.com], which is 18W for the 1.6GHz version, with the chip still being built on the 65nm process which hobbles AMD from the start. Bear in mind that the Neo is Athlon 64 based, which means that it's not clock-for-clock competitive with the Core 2 Duo (you'd need a Phenom II-based core for that). In other words, the Intel chip eats less power and gets more performance at the same time.
So if Intel's serious about this, it's only a battle so long as they don't decide to crush AMD with products and pricing. Intel is light years ahead of AMD in the mobile space due to their process technology advantage. Even TFA points out that they expect 8 hours out of the Intel CPUs, but only 5 hours out of the AMD CPUs. It's entirely lop-sided in Intel's favor.
Now TFA does mention AMD will have Congo later this year, but even if that's 45nm (AMD has not commented on that matter), it's unlikely that they'd be able to meet Intel's power envelope. When you look at the desktop chips this stuff is derived from, the Phenom II takes more transistors and as a result power than the Core 2 Duo, and that's only to reach a clock-for-clock parity. Congo wouldn't change this.
Re:Last years ultra-portable is this year's thin.. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want it lighter, but still have a decent sized keyboard and screen, then the only way to do that is to make it thinner.
Re:Ultra-thin? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Battleground? I Doubt It (Score:1, Insightful)
As much as I love AMD, I would like to know what the submitter was thinking calling it a battleground. It's only a fair fight for AMD so long as Intel's not interested - AMD (and their manufacturing partner née subsidiary) can't match Intel's manufacturing abilities. AMD doesn't have an Ultra Low Voltage chip; Intel has a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo that runs at 10W [intel.com], meanwhile it's murky at best for AMD's competing chip line, the Neo. The only specs given out to the press for the new fual core version [notebookreview.com], which is 18W for the 1.6GHz version, with the chip still being built on the 65nm process which hobbles AMD from the start. Bear in mind that the Neo is Athlon 64 based, which means that it's not clock-for-clock competitive with the Core 2 Duo (you'd need a Phenom II-based core for that). In other words, the Intel chip eats less power and gets more performance at the same time.
Mod parent troll. Do you work for intel or something? http://www.amd.com/us-en/ConnectivitySolutions/ProductInformation/0,,50_2330_9863_9864,00.html
There's a link for the AMD geode processor that pulls 1.1W.
So if Intel's serious about this, it's only a battle so long as they don't decide to crush AMD with products and pricing. Intel is light years ahead of AMD in the mobile space due to their process technology advantage. Even TFA points out that they expect 8 hours out of the Intel CPUs, but only 5 hours out of the AMD CPUs. It's entirely lop-sided in Intel's favor.
WTF? This argument only makes sense in the fantasy land where companies don't care about making money. Intel is doing everything they can in every space they compete in, including this one.
Now TFA does mention AMD will have Congo later this year, but even if that's 45nm (AMD has not commented on that matter), it's unlikely that they'd be able to meet Intel's power envelope. When you look at the desktop chips this stuff is derived from, the Phenom II takes more transistors and as a result power than the Core 2 Duo, and that's only to reach a clock-for-clock parity. Congo wouldn't change this.
Citation needed?
Re:"capable of multitasking" Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Win95 had "cooperative multitasking" between Win16 programs, and "preemptive multitasking" between Win32 programs.
However, on a single core/single CPU, I really wouldn't consider either timeslicing mechanism to be "true multitasking" since in reality you are still only running one process simultaneously.