The upcoming family of Haswell processors from Intel will offer 50 percent more battery life, compared to its Ivy Bridge siblings.
This was announced by Rani Borkar, corporate vice president and general manager of the Intel Architecture Group, during a media briefing about the new set of chips primarily designed for tablets and laptops. The main focus during the development of the Haswell processors was on making it more energy efficient, said a report on PC World.
According to Borkar, the performance of devices using the new Intel processors will not be affected with the longer life of the battery. Intel claims that its new processors can extend the battery life 20 times more than the usual.
With the sale of personal computers on a decline, the enhancements that will be introduced using Haswell processors will be critical to snatch back a good chunk of the market.
The computer chips manufacturer is expected to officially launch the new family of core processors during the Computex event in Taiwan in June. The new processors will represent the update to the instruction set infrastructure of Intel that is released every two years.
The fourth generation of Intel core processors will also boost the graphics performance of laptops and help the more portable device to be at par with desktop computers.
The Haswell core processors will most likely be seen in hybrid laptops that can be converted to tablets, with detachable keyboards and touchscreens.
According to Intel, these new chips will be able to reduce the energy consumption of certain parts to just 7 watts. The Ivy Bridge was able to lower consumption to 10 watts. With this new chip, a tablet using a core processor will have a similar battery life to non-Intel tablets but with a performance that can go beyond than the usual content consumption.
The new chips make use of an on-chip regulator that is considered pioneering in the industry. The new core processors are also equipped with a power optimizer, with a computing power similar to the old 486 processor, that handles power management for the whole device.
Haswell chips have also been engineered to aggressively use lower-power circuits. It has also been designed to help lower power consumption by as much as 20 times when a device is on standby state. The core processors can also operate with a lower operating voltage that decreases active power. Transistor leakages, common in very small circuitries, are also better-controlled using Tri-gate transistors. Lastly, these new chips have powerplanes that can turn off most transistors when in idle mode.
