14 DAY TRIAL // Intel's mobile version of the 2013 Haswell processors will feature a SoC (system-on-a-chip) design, recently confirmed the Santa Clara chip giant who is planning to introduce this chips in ultra-thin notebooks with prices starting as low as $599.
Contrary to today's computer processors, SoC chips incorporate all the functionality that is found inside the CPU and motherboard controllers inside a single package in order to decrease costs and reduce the overall power consumption of the system.
Intel has already taken a step in this direction with its current Sandy Bridge processors that incorporate no only two or four computing cores, but also a graphics core and all the controller that were traditionally found inside the north bridge (ie. memory and PCI Express controllers).
Together with this new SoC design, Intel will also improve the chip's AVX performance, with the introduction of the AVX2 instruction set, in an attempt to boost performance in visual processing, engineering and scientific applications, gaming, physics and other number crunching applications.
Haswell is the code name used by Intel for Ivy Bridge's successor and this is expected to be launched in 2013.
Not so many details are known at this time about the chip, but we do know that Haswell will be built using the 22nm Tri-Gate fabrication technology.
Recent reports have also unveiled that Intel is expecting Haswell to deliver impressive graphics performance over the current-generation processors, while the CPU will also feature a configurable TDP technology.
This will be introduced for the first time in the 2012 Ivy Bridge chips and enabled machines that use such processors to surpass their maximum TDPs for short amounts of time in order to speed up applications that require more computing power. (via Cnet)