Intel has demonstrated a new type of mobile processor -- the Core M -- which the chipmaker believes will usher in a new generation of tablets and 2-in-1 laptops that require no fan to keep it cool.
Recent products, such as Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 and Lenovo's Miix 2, have been pitched as tablet PCs but unlike Apple's iPad these products require a fan and an air vent to keep them cool.
It is Intel's hope that with its new ultra low power, yet high-performing mobile chip range, fans will go by the wayside.
The processors will come with speeds starting at 2.0GHz and max out at 2.6GHz for the fastest model. Lenovo, HP, Dell, Acer, Toshiba and Asus are producing some of the 20 products that are currently in development with Core M inside, some of which will go on sale as soon as October this year.
Despite having a line of power-efficient chips (Intel Atom, which began their life making netbooks feasible) and a range of mainstream CPUs (the Core i3, i5 and i7 chips), Intel saw a need to slot an entirely new brand in between the two ranges.
category and the Core M will usher in a new wave of designs that eliminates the need for people to carry a tablet and a laptop.
"For the average [person] using a four-year-old PC we'll be able to double their battery life, deliver something that's half as thick, that has twice the performance from a CPU perspective and seven times the graphics performance."
Intel vs. Qualcomm
Skaugen singled out major competitor Qualcomm and he was confident Intel's Core M will give it a run for its money. "On web application performance, against the Snapdragon 805 we're 3.6 times higher; against the Snapdragon 800 we're 3.3 times higher. For 3D gaming performance we're 1.9 times higher than the 805 and 2.1 higher than the 800," Skaugen said. "And that's our value [processor], not our premium chip."
Wired.co.uk questioned whether it was strictly fair comparing Core M, which uses the x86-64 architecture that Microsoft's Windows and Apple's Mac OS X requires, to Qualcomm's Snapdragon line, which is based on the ARM architecture used by Android amongst others. "For Core M, we should be able to double the performance of the best tablet in the market, regardless of which chip they're using," says Skaugen. "At least double, if not triple, depending on which benchmark you're using -- graphics or CPU."
Is Atom not the competitor to Qualcomm's line? "If you want the cheapest tablet in the world, Atom will compete with Qualcomm and we're not getting rid of Atom for the value tablets," says Skaugen. "But for 2-in-1 and the world's highest performance fanless devices
[...] we can give something nobody else in the world can give, with twice the performance of anything on the planet."
Fanless is not a fan of passwords
Intel believes the classic password is on its way out -- something this week's celebrity iCloud hijack suggests is probably no bad thing. Skaugen said that with Intel's acquisition of the Mcafee security company the Core M will be able to take a more biological approach to computer authentication. "That's a journey, but for some customers it could become a reality early next year," says Skaugen. "We want you to be your password -- your fingerprint; with our 3D camera we can do 48-point facial recognition, pulse detection, blink detection and so we can eliminate passwords to login to Windows as well as websites and that's a product we'll be delivering on these Core M platforms in 2015."
No fans, no passwords, doubled performance. 2015's tablets may look very different to 2014's.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
