The first products with Core M will arrive before 2015

Sep 18, 2014 13:33 GMT  ·  By

Back at Computex 2014 Intel talked about their upcoming skinny and light weight tablets, which are supposed to run on the upcoming Core M platform.

The chip giant also had a reference design to show us, which was dubbed Llama Mountain. Fast forward a few months later at the Intel Development Forum (IDF 2014) where Intel has brought the tablets once again.

Intel sheds more light on its Intel Core M platform

The prototypes were shown to run the new Intel Core M-5Y70 variation of the chip. Most interestingly, the tablet was made to run in CineBench and 3DMark with the intent of demonstrating to the world the potential lying inside the Core M low-power platform.

The IDF session focused mostly on Intel showing the improvements in the thermal department. The Intel Core M-5Y70 processor is based on the latest Broadwell architecture and is manufactured using the 14nm fabrication process.

Since it has an extremely low TDP, it enables manufacturers to develop tablets and convertibles which don’t require a fan anymore.

Intel also paid attention to the materials used to build the tablet. In the session, a tablet using a pressed aluminum case was proved to have 3-4W thermal dissipation, while one with a unibody aluminum frame bumped things up to 6-8W. A slate made of copper came up on top, showing numbers of 10-12W.

The first batches of Broadwell to ship into the wild will be a locked version at 4.5W TDP, but a higher performance version with 6W is expected to follow. The latter we saw in benchmarks at IDF 2014.

The benchmark results have been made available curtesy of Ultrabook News, so we can see the Intel Core M on Cinebench 11.5 multi CPU scored 2.65, which tops chips like Core i7 Ivy Bridge Y Series found in the Yoga 11S.

However, the tablet still falls short in comparison with the Surface Pro 3, although the difference is quite negligible. Hopefully, until Llamia Mountain tablets are actually launched into the wild, Intel will have time to learn a lesson or two in terms of materials used.

The Llmia Mountain reference design used in these benchmarks had an aluminum rear casing configured for 6W TDP, as we mentioned above.

Anyway, it’s true that Core M SoCs have the capacity of improving CPU, GPU and A/V decoding and encoding compared to earlier 4th gen Core Y-Series SoC, but it’s important to understand that for it to translate into real life, a good thermal design is essential.

Watch out for the first Intel Core M tablets and 2-in-1 towards the end of 2014

Bear in mind that these are raw performance figures, and even if they somehow give an indication of how things will turn out to be, we should wait until the real devices running on the platform make a debut into real life.

We already detailed the first machines arriving on the market and equipped with Broadwell architecture and they include the Acer Aspire Switch 12, ASUS Transformer Book T300TA, HP Envy x2, ASUS Transformer T300 Chi, Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 2, ASUS Zenbook UX305 and Wistron N-Midas.

Llama Mountain Reference Design with Intel Core M (4 Images)

The upcoming Intel Core M devices
Intel Core M in 3DMarkIntel Core M in Cinebench
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