Intel Presents Spring Meadow Technology

Intel’s always-on / always-connected concept is quite interesting and somewhat useful as everything is completely updated when you open the lid of your UltraBook, but it will actually make the CPU drain quite a lot of power as it’s not really idling too much.

Intel envisions a world where your mobile computing devices are permanently connected to the internet and, when the user resumes work, his e-mails are already available and the social networking latest events are visible.

We have serious doubts about the real usefulness of such a concept, but the company doesn’t really care as this gives it the opportunity to use yet another different marketing approach.

If the CPU is clocked low enough, this technology shouldn’t use too much power, but there is quite a bit of difference between a low clocked processor and a chip that’s completely off.

Having to check all the incoming traffic and properly respond will keep the CPU busy and therefore it will consume power. Not too much power, but it will actually continuously consume it, bit by bit.

Intel’s Spring Meadow technology will decide if the incoming traffic is actually useful or if it can be ignored and thus will allow the CPU to stay in idle.

Even useful and directly related traffic will be somewhat resynchronized in such a manner that the CPU will stay in extended idle for longer periods of time.

The goal of the company is to allow the user to keep its system always-on, but to have a power consumption low enough that he will have a working mobile computing device available throughout the day.