Intel To Make 4.5W Chips To Enable More Fanless And Tablet Designs
Hardcore gamers are more interested in raw horsepower than incremental thermal wins, but Intel is still proud to announce that it will release at least one Haswell Core chip that has an SDP of just 4.5 watts. This surpasses the company’s previous mark of 6W SDP, and both are far below Intel’s stated goal a year ago of producing chips under 10W SDP.
It’s important to note, however, that SDP (Scenario Design Point) is not the same as TDP (Thermal Design Power). The latter has been the standard metric for determining the cooling needs of a given processor for some time, and SDP is a different (though related) metric. Thus, for those who have been following the decreasing thermal requirements of Intel chips, it’s important to remember that TDP and SDP are apples-to-oranges comparisons.
Still, it’s quite an achievement on Intel’s part to develop such thermally efficient chips, and these processors will enable more fanless and tablet designs that will have better battery life and can run a full Core chip instead of a mobile Atom processor.
The 4.5W and 6W SDP processors will be available in the second half of this year.
It’s important to note, however, that SDP (Scenario Design Point) is not the same as TDP (Thermal Design Power). The latter has been the standard metric for determining the cooling needs of a given processor for some time, and SDP is a different (though related) metric. Thus, for those who have been following the decreasing thermal requirements of Intel chips, it’s important to remember that TDP and SDP are apples-to-oranges comparisons.
Still, it’s quite an achievement on Intel’s part to develop such thermally efficient chips, and these processors will enable more fanless and tablet designs that will have better battery life and can run a full Core chip instead of a mobile Atom processor.
The 4.5W and 6W SDP processors will be available in the second half of this year.
