Intel's plan of action for the Ultrabook market, 03/08/2011 - Your reactions

[machmeter]

We have been talking often about Intel's plan to develop the Ultrabook market, these computers that are simply MacBook Air clones. If we want to be more politically correct, we can say that UltraBook is a new laptop computer platform, which started with the MacBook Air, the only commercial success on that market, especially with the last models. Intel decided to develop a plan of action in 3 steps.

• Step 1 was in June with the launch of the new low electricity consumption Core i5 and i7 that are now installed in the MacBook Air.
  
• Step 2 will be mid-2012 with the Ivy-Bridge processors featuring the new TriGate 22 nm manufacturing process, for a even lower electricity consumption and more extensions with the better implementation of Thunderbolt and (finally!) USB 3.0.
  
• Step 3 will occur in 2013 with a new generation of processors with a different architecture, but still in 22 nm, for now code named Haswell. This new architecture should be another landmark in electricity consumption.

Intel also wants to implement on a larger scale instant wake-up on laptops (something that we have seen on the Mac for many years now) and also new systems to protect computers from theft, by blocking them and rendering them completely unusable when stolen. A thief would have a worthless electronic brick that couldn't be sold, except for spare parts (and only some of them). It will hopefully dissuade many thieves.
By Machmeter, original by Lionel