Intel Looking to Cut Power Consumption on Future Ivy Bridge Chips
CNET reports that Intel is hard at work on reducing the power consumption of its Ivy Bridge chips, opening the door to use of the chips in mainstream tablets and reducing battery needs on small notebooks such as the MacBook Air.
Intel will cut power consumption "significantly" for future versions of the chip, an industry source familiar with the chipmaker's plans told CNET.
Intel's most power efficient Ivy Bridge chips today -- used widely in Windows ultrabooks and Apple's MacBook Air -- are rated at 17 watts.
A future version of Ivy Bridge would be rated well below this, the source said.
Intel has already previewed its next-generation Haswell chips that will push power consumption to as low as 10 watts initially, but it seems that Intel is moving to reduce power needs for its chips even before Haswell hits the market.
With future Ivy Bridge and Haswell chips becoming feasible for tablets with their reduced power consumption, there have been rumors that Apple could consider Intel chips for at least the iPad, although Apple seems dedicated to its own ARM-based chip designs for its mobile devices. But with Apple said to be looking to shift away from Samsung for production of its A-series chips, the company is said to be looking at TSMC and Intel as future chip foundry options.
In a research note issued last week, RBC analyst Doug Freedman claimed that Apple is already in talks with Intel on a deal that could see Intel producing A-series chips for the iPhone while Apple shifts to Intel's x86 platform for the iPad.
Popular Stories
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Best Buy is discounting a collection of M3 MacBook Pro computers today, this time focusing on the 14-inch version of the laptop. Every deal in this sale requires you to have a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership, although non-members can still get solid second-best prices on these MacBook Pro models. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a...
Top Rated Comments
First we see rumors of ARM on Mac. Now we're seeing rumors of x86 on iPad?
People are getting a little bit too crazy with their imaginations IMO. Without hard proof that Apple is working on this, I'd say its much more realistic that Apple is targeting these lower power chips for the MacBook Air line, which only further diminishes the chance that ARM has in competing in the Mac lineup.
Do you honestly think Intel couldn't whip up a processor as low powered and cool as an ARM processor? It's like saying Bugatti couldn't build a scooter, because they're only good at making big engines for cars.
The only reason they've never done it before is because they've never had to. ARM is a decent processor, great for what they're used for, and I applaud the fact they're finally kicking Intel around enough in the mobile sector that they've finally decided to start focusing on efficiency rather than yet more speed enhancements.
...but ARM chips aren't that much better. As has been pointed out here by people who know even more than me, an ARM chip running as quick as an Intel chip would consume just as much power. There's no real advantage between the two. Once ARM finds a way to eek as much power out of their chips with as low a power usage and heat dissipation as possible, and Intel works in reverse, finding ways to make their fast chips more energy efficient, there will be no real reason to prefer one over the other on a pure spec basis.
It's around that's when things will start getting really interesting.
No, the only thing we need is 640 kb of ram ;)
I grew up on Stat Trek and assorted scifi, it's all unfolding right in front of me and I think thats simply wonderful!