Intel rolls 14nm Broadwell in Vegas
Intel will offer dual and quad-core chips — 10 processors at 15W (both Core i5 and i7 chips) with Intel HD graphics, and four 28W products with Intel Iris Graphics spanning i3, i5, and i7 lines. The dual-core chips have 1.9 billion transistors, a 35% increase over the prior generation, and a 133 mm2 footprint that is approximately 50mm2 smaller than its predecessors. The 15W chips have data rates up to 3.1 GHz while 28W i7 cores hit up to 3.4 GHz.
The Broadwell chips have L3 caches ranging from 2 to 4 Mbytes, roughly the same as Haswell.
While the new line has modest improvements in productivity, Intel hopes battery life gains will encourage users to buy new devices, said Karen Regis, director of notebook roadmap and strategy for Intel’s PC Client Group. The Broadwell family was announced alongside a new 14nm processor for tablets, Cherry Trail, which includes support for Intel’s RealSense technology and Category 6 LTE-Advanced when paired with an Intel modem. Cherry Trail products are expected in the first half of 2015.
“[The fourth generation processor family] represented the biggest generation-over-generation battery improvement,” Regis said during a press briefing. “With the fifth gen, we’re raising the bar again. We’re reducing SoC power even though it’s becoming a smaller part of the power load,” she said.
A notebook using a new i7 can last up to 10.1 hours while idle at 4W, an increase of 60 minutes for similarly configured systems using the prior generation. During video playback, the same chip saw a 90 minute battery increase to 8.7 hours while operating at approximately 4.5W.