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(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)
BY A.J. Feather
The fourth generation of Intel's Core processors is out this week, and they are expected to
give a much needed boost to the battery life of tablets and small PCs.
Last year, Intel released its line of Ivy Bridge Processors, which offered a small upgrade
in performance and a modest improvement in battery life. (Via ComputerWorld)
The introduction of the Haswell processor line will be much more notable. Intel vice
president says the new line of processors will improve battery life by 50 percent. (Via Gizmodo)
The Verge reports this upgrade will offer a significant enough "... improvement in laptops
and tablets that you'll actually want to look for their name."
But this processor — which PC World is calling the first processor of the post-PC era — may
have some unexpected consequences. "Tomorrow's mobile PCs might be so thin and light, and
last so long on a single charge, and offers so much more utility than Android and iOS
devices, you might just buy a Windows notebook before reaching for that phone or tablet."
Intel already controls about 80 percent of the notebook processor market, and the introduction
of Haswell means it probably isn't planning on backing off the competition anytime soon.
In fact, Intel is expanding its attack to manufacturers of graphics processing units
like Nvidia.
ExtremeTech says Haswell puts Intel so far ahead of AMD, Intel's main competitor in the
processor market, that "AMD literally can't afford the R&D it would take to catch up..."
and manufacturers of GPUs, such as Nvidia, aren't safe because "Intel's literature makes
it plain that the company absolutely intends to minimize the value of separate GPUs by
incorporating performance where it can and driving the adoption of ever-smaller form
factors where it can't."
Apple is expected to announce upgrades to its MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lines with
Haswell processors later this month at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Haswell will likely hit the PC market with the release of Windows 8.1 on June 26.