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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

What is going on with Intel

To anyone is not a secret that UMPC has been largely criticized because of the poor battery life in it's first generation. And it's not a secret that almost 40%27 to 30% (thanks to Steve for the correction) of the battery life is used by the CPU. So basically, the bad guy in the first part of this movie is Intel. To change this situation Intel desperate has introduced the McCaslin CPUs, currently used in Samsung Q1 Ultra and few other devices that have not been released yet, and from what I have seen they have been able to lower the consumption in around 30%. But is really a McCaslin a solution, I do not think so. What Intel have done is just cutting down the capabilities of their mobile platform, releasing a CPU with a lower speed, weaker capable of giving a lower performance than current Pentium M used in the first generation of UMPCs. is a coincidence that Intel is suddenly promoting MID as the device of the future? I do not think so. I think that Intel is trying to focus our attention to a "new" type of device where this weaker processor is enough.


Consumption

Battery

Launch

Current Processors

>5W

1-3 hours


McCaslin

2 to 3W

4-5 hours

This summer

MenLow

<1w

6-8 hours

1st Q2008


Like any other user I would like to see a longer battery life in my UMPC but this next generation of UMPC coming with McCaslin processors is not what I want or need. I do not want to give up performance for 30% more of battery life. I'll be glad to carry more weight using a extended battery than giving up performance. So I definitely will wait to see what happens with Menlow CPUs that should be released at the beginning of 2008. In the meantime I'll wait for Kevin's tests of a 2GB RAM chip in this Q1p. I current Q1s support 2 GB that's going to be the best news of this year because from Intel I have not seen any good news yet.

Update: Here is a press release from Intel that is worth to read. If you read between lines you can see that they make almost no emphasis in McCaslin processors. But they spend a lot of time talking about Menlow. And the reason why is because there is where the real changes are. At least that's what I "hope". In one thing I agree with Intel, WiMax is the future.

9 comments:

  1. Comment that has nothing to do with this post (but I don't know how to contact you!).

    Did you see that this guy made the same tests as you on his vista-OQO2 and compared the VIA chip to the Q1U Intel Chip?
    http://www.math.uaa.alaska.edu/
    ~afkjm/techteach/

    Added to Chippy's video on the medion, VIA seems more and more interesting.

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  2. yes, I saw that, but keep in mind that current "old" intel processors score around 18000. So VIA still a very slow processor even running at 1.5 GHz!

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  3. BTW that's maybe why the super slim US700 "to-be-released" by the end of this year UMPC has a celeron :)

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  4. you can contact me at ctitanic at tweaks2k2.com

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  5. Well, if the US700 will be released with a Intel Celeron that's a real good news.

    The Intel Celeron has a lower battery life but from the point of view of performance and taking in consideration all tests that I have ran, it's not far behind of the Pentium M.

    All I want to see now is price. If the U702W price is around 1200 dollars that probably is going to be my next victim.

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  6. Mine too :-) But... wait and see...

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  7. 40% of battery life taken by CPU? In what state?
    Quiescent state it can be as low as 10%. Under load - 20-30%. GPU can take a lot too.

    Remember too that McCaslin incorporates extended deep sleep state. This is technology from Santa Rosa that should not be ignored.

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  8. Chippy, who is the biggest power consumer? INTEL and the display! That was my point. I was not looking unto the exact numbers.

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  9. The extended sleep mode is a good thing but you are missing that in my post I said that I'm not willing to trade performance for Battery. The extended sleep mode will give me more battery, that's ok, but at what cost, performance?

    ReplyDelete

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