Despite Acer’s bullish proposals for an updated S3 ultrabook in April next year it looks like new Ultrabooks won’t start hitting shelves until the second half of 2012 but when they do, we can expect CPU and GPU clock boosts along with the extra goodness that’s going into the chipsets.
It looks like the tri-gate transistor and the 22nm process being used to make the next-gen Ivy Bridge processors will result in some usable performance boosts for the same thermal design ratings. You should also see lower idle power and, with Windows 8, even more power savings that are going to widen the dynamic range of Ultrabooks up even further.
VR-ZONE have published details of the mobile Ivy Bridge parts and they include two that will he used in Ultrabooks. Note that there’s no Core i3 part on the list yet. Early adapters will, as usual, be levered into spending more than they planned.
The two parts for Ultrabooks are:
Core i7-3667U (2.0-3.2GHz, 4MB level 3 cache)
Core i5-3427U (1.8-2.8Ghz, 3MB level 3 cache)
Both platforms include the Intel HD4000 graphics on-die which promises big improvements in performance and adds DX11 support.
The chipset is also updated to the UM77.
Click through to VR-ZONE to see more Ivy-Bridge details and tables.
It seems curious to me that desktop TDPs drop from 95W to 77W, but ultrabook chips/CULV remain at 17 watts. I’ve also read that there is approximately a 15% performance boost for mobile chips. When Intel announced tri-gate in May, Intel spoke of 37% performance boost at low voltages with significant power savings
Link: (http://www.dailytech.com/Intels+3D+Transistors+Boost+Performance+Lower+Power+Consumption+for+Ivy+Bridge/article21547.htm).
But a 15% performance boost is what one can expect from a processor shrink alone. I wonder if the mobile parts for Ivy Bridge are using Tri-gate transistor stacking after all? I guess we will find out at CES.
Also curious is that there are no more quad core i7 parts, at least, not on the mobile chart as yet. Well, a lot can happen between now and the launch in spring.
Also, I remember Intel talking about programmable TDPs. If any product should have it, it should be the ultrabook chips. I wonder if that is why the graphics part of the chip has such a low default speed?
The 37% gain in low voltages are at 0.75V. Looking at voltages for 17W Core i7, that’s only at LFM(Low Frequency Mode). Higher frequencies like base and Turbo works at 1V or higher, which brings 20% gain.
So the low voltage gain they are talking about is only relevant to specific circuits. It may apply to graphics, or things like cache.
Ivy Bridge is also a Tick, which means we may not see full benefits until Haswell.