In 2013 Intel Will Launch Haswell CPUs with 20X+ the Power Efficiency of Sandy Bridge

Given that the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco has been underway for two days now, it would have been odd if Intel hadn't said anything about the next year (2013) and what would happen then.

The promise of better hybrid drives (SSHD, solid-state hybrid drives as it were) is one thing that will have consumers, and IT companies alike, on the edge of their seats.

Nevertheless, Intel is a CPU maker first and foremost, so, naturally, the world is more interested in what the corporation will do on that front.

The 22nm Haswell microarchitecture took center stage, as we expected, and now we have the closest thing to an official confirmation that the line will, indeed, spawn at least one chip with 10W TDP.

The announcement didn't outright say it, but it did promise that Haswell would be over 20 times more energy efficient than Sandy Bridge (second-generation Core-series CPUs).

What's more, Intel said that even less power-hungry chips would be launched in 2013, based on the same architecture.

Ultrabooks will, obviously, benefit greatly from all this. One can never have too much battery life after all, and it doesn't hurt that the CPUs will supposedly have better performance and more features compared to those of today, despite the reduced energy requirements.

"The 4th generation Intel Core processor family and our new line of low-power processors will usher in an era of unprecedented innovation in mobile computing," said David (Dadi) Perlmutter, chief product officer and executive vice president of Intel.

"Our focus to deliver even lower power with the great performance that our processors are known for is as fundamentally significant as when we shifted our development focus beyond sheer processor speed in 2001. As a result, you'll see our customers delivering sleek and cool convertible designs, as well as radical breakthrough experiences across a growing spectrum of mobile devices."

ARM-based units have been getting stronger as of late, and it was just the other day that we saw a 22-inch ARM all-in-one running Android. Thus, Intel isn't outdoing itself here as much as it is accomplishing what it needs to.