INTEL, which has been fending off mounting competition in notebook processors, says a new range of chips will help enable the longest battery life available in laptops.
New computers based on the latest version of its Core Ultra processors will go on sale starting this month, the company said on Monday (Jan 6) at CES, an annual consumer electronics show.
Intel was for decades the world’s largest chipmaker thanks to its dominance of the computer processor market. Production technology stumbles and slow product introductions have opened the door to both long-time rivals and firms just entering the space. Last month, the company’s board ousted its chief executive officer, citing the need to improve its offerings.
The new chips, intended for corporate personal computers (PCs) and high-end consumer devices, are aimed at boosting performance in two areas the company considers key selling points: battery life and the ability to run artificial intelligence (AI) functions.
According to Intel, an HP laptop that uses one of the new processors can run Microsoft’s Teams software for as long as 10.5 hours on a single charge. It can go 20.3 hours between charges when the user is running Microsoft’s cloud-based 365 suite, Intel added. By comparison, Intel says a Dell device using a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor can last as long as 9.2 hours and 18.5 hours, respectively, under those conditions.
The company also claimed in its announcement that the new chips produce much faster results than competing silicon in applications that use generative AI. Processors based on Intel’s Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake designs will debut in 2025, and will initially be aimed at business machines. They will later make their way into thin and light laptops, high-performance notebooks and desktop PCs, Intel said.
While Intel still has more than 70 per cent share of the market for PC processors based on its X86 chip standard, that position has eroded significantly, allowing rival Advanced Micro Devices to make gains. In addition, newcomers in this space are also seeing Intel as increasingly vulnerable.
Qualcomm is trying to mirror Apple’s success at bringing chips based on Arm Holdings technology to computers. That standard is already commonplace in smartphones. Its proponents argue that the resulting chips are inherently more efficient, allowing them to go longer between charges. Arm has said that other companies will soon debut PC chips using its technology. BLOOMBERG
