14 DAY TRIAL // Though there are a great many suppliers of mobile personal computers, all laptops are alike in the way that they are powered by central processing units from either Intel or Advanced Micro Devices. One of the more noteworthy, current-generation chips is known as the Core i5-540M and has a core clock of 2.53GHz, overclockable to 3.06GHz via Turbo Boost. With AMD having unleashed its VISION platform, it makes sense for the Santa Clara, California-based giant to raise the stakes, and this is exactly what a recent leak suggests will happen by Fall.
When designing a new mobile processor, chip makers always do their best to bring as high a performance boost as possible, compared to current-generation parts, without impacting upon power consumption.
To this end, the upcoming Core i5-580M will somehow operate at a base frequency of 2.66Ghz, while staying at the same thermal design power (TDP) as the i5-540M, namely 35W. Furthermore, by means of the built-in Turbo Boost technology, performance will be able to go as high as 3.33GHz.
Notebook Italia, the source of the report, also found out that the built-in graphics circuits would be a fair bit faster than those of the 540M, at 766MHz instead of 500MHz. As for memory, the L3 cache will be of 3MB. Basically, this CPU should come just in time for PC makers to upgrade their system portfolio, no longer having to wait for the start of 2011, when mobile Sandy Bridge chips are expected to show up.
It is interesting to note that this Core i5-580M is very close, spec-wise, to the current dual-core Core i7-620M processor, which is superior only though its 4MB of cache. There is, of course, nothing that can stop Intel from deciding to upgrade this chip to 2.8GHz or higher, but no roadmap has suggested this thus far.