Intel launches skinny nippy Core M – its new BRAIN for fondleslabs Intel chose the IFA consumer electronics conference in Berlin this week to launch the Core M, its latest 14-nanometer processor aimed at high-end, two-in-one typoslabs. "Core M is the first of a new product family designed to deliver the promise of one of the world's thinnest laptops and highest performance tablets in a single …
If it's a 2 in 1 you can argue it's enough of a laptop to command a laptop's price, with the convenience of turning into a tablet. That was the Metro dream after all. We'll see if consumers take the bait.
These chips have a 4.5 Watt TDP and really low idle frequencies. They may end up landing into some ultrabooks. I guess they might have less performance than some of the U/Y chips that were being used in ultrabooks, I haven't checked.
The one group that I know of that was seriously interested in Intel's hardware transactional memory (HTM) was the developers of Pypy (a JIT version of the Python programming language). Transactional memory lets them do multi-threading without locking. If there is a conflict between two threads then they roll back the transaction to before the conflict and restart. They are currently using software to implement this. Using hardware to do this would hopefully result in lower overhead. After looking at what Intel had to offer though, their conclusion was that Intel's hardware version was too limited to be useful to them except in trivial applications.
It's an idea that sounds nice as a checklist item, but I don't think that anyone is really missing anything if the feature is disabled on the current production.
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The problem for Intel (and Microsoft as the two are tied together in this) is price.
The hardware designers producing Windows tablets have to spend more on the licence (US$100) and CPU ($150+) than the competition can deliver a complete product. Moving to a Linux/BSD-based OS would help although you lose some application appeal, and you still end up with a high-performance, high-cost processor against a $10-$30 ARM SoC.
The hardware manufacturers then try to produce a competitive system and its a undesirable $1000 piece of tosh....
"The lower-end model of the processor, dubbed the Core M-5Y10/5Y10a (the "a" model being the OEM version) "
Normally for 'PC' stuff I may well expect to see "OEM" and "Retail" parts. In this picture, I can't make it work the same way yet.
This doesn't sound like the kind of item where Joe Public will want (or be able) to pop down to PC World, buy the Retail version of one of these, and do a DIY CPU replacement at home?
You're right - you'd have to be extremely handy with a soldering iron to make use of one of these on its own.
I read elsewhere that the actual difference between the 5Y10 and 5Y10a is that one can be configured for an even lower TDP if required.
If configured for the same TDP they'll perform identically.
"If it's a 2 in 1 you can argue it's enough of a laptop to command a laptop's price, with the convenience of turning into a tablet. That was the Metro dream after all. We'll see if consumers take the bait."
2-in-1s have been on the market all along, and potential customers have not taken the bait.
Why? Every one I've seen has *not* resembled a "laptop with the convenience of turning into a tablet." They appear to be an EXTREMELY expensive tablet (and actually expensive as a plain laptop for that matter), with a nasty rubber keyboard, and saddled with power-hungry Intel chips (this chip will help with that part) and Windows 8, which makes it not so great as a tablet *or* a PC.
Until some vendor starts shipping ARM notebooks, this Core M may be an acceptable stopgap. But, not if they only stick it in tablets and "2-in-1s". I think tablets are a non-starter, ARMs are even lower power. And 2-in-1s... oh, boy, *1* USB port! I want a real keyboard and not to spend money on a touch screen I'll never use, thanks. Also, not if they saddle it with Windows 8 -- blank please! I've taken a hard line, I will not pay Microsoft a single penny for software I'll never use; my recent solution has been to buy only used hardware.
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