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Intel Opens Up Core M
Intel has extended its Core M range of fanless mobile chips by adding four models to the three initial Core M processors launched at the IFA trade show in September.
Like those first fanless models, Intel’s new Core M processors are dual-core chips that support Hyperthreading in up to four threads and have thermal design power (TDP) ratings of 4.5W.
They’re faster than the initial Core M chips, with base clock speeds ranging from 800MHz to 1.2GHz and Turbo Boost speeds from 2GHz to 2.9GHz.
The firm’s initial Core M chips were also rated at 4.5W TDP but topped out at 1.1GHz and 2.6GHz under Turbo Boost.
These additional fanless mobile chips are configurable by system designers, in that OEMs can scale the chip speeds and power consumption up or down depending on the purpose and configuration of the device.
A compact tablet or notebook can conserve power by limiting processor speed, while a larger device can offer higher speed at the cost of higher power draw and heat.
Thus, these new Core M chips can be configured from 600MHz base clock speed and 3.5W TDP to 1.4GHz base clock speed and 6W TDP in the fastest model.
Intel has also boosted the integrated graphics processors in these latest Core M chips, offering GPU base clock speeds ranging from 300MHz to 900MHz, whereas the initial models supported 100MHz to 850MHz.
The detailed specifications of all of Intel’s Core M mobile processors are available on the firm’s website.
Intel said that these new fanless Core M processors will start hitting the market early next year.
Intel Debuts A Slew Of Core M Chips
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Intel’s new Core M chips — which bring PC-like performance to slim design tablets — will initially be in many Windows 8.1 tablets, but no Android devices are yet on the radar.
The chips will be in five to seven detachable tablets and hybrids by year end, and the number of devices could balloon to 20 next year, said Andy Cummins, mobile platform marketing manager at Intel.
Core M chips, announced at the IFA trade show in Berlin on Friday, are the first based on the new Broadwell architecture. The processors will pave the way for a new class of thin, large-screen tablets with long battery life, and also crank up performance to run full PC applications, Intel executives said in interviews.
“It’s about getting PC-type performance in this small design,” Cummins said. “[Core M] is much more optimized for thin, fanless systems.”
Tablets with Core M could be priced as low as US$699, but the initial batch of detachable tablets introduced at IFA are priced much higher. Lenovo’s 11.6-inch ThinkPad Helix 2 starts at $999, Dell’s 13.3-inch Latitude 13 7000 starts at $1,199, and Hewlett-Packard’s 13.3-inch Envy X2 starts at $1,049.99. The products are expected to ship in September or October.
Core M was also shown in paper-thin prototype tablets running Windows and Android at the Computex trade show in June. PC makers have not expressed interest in building Android tablets with Core M, but the OS can be adapted for the chips, Cummins said.
The dual-core chips draw as little as 4.5 watts, making it the lowest-power Core processor ever made by Intel. The clock speeds start at 800MHz when running in tablet mode, and scales up to 2.6GHz when running PC applications.
The power and performance characteristics make Core M relevant primarily for tablets. The chips are not designed for use in full-fledged PCs, Cummins said.
“If you are interested in the highest-performing parts, Core M probably isn’t the exact right choice. But if you are interested in that mix of tablet form factor, detachable/superthin form factor, this is where the Core M comes into play,” Cummins said.
For full-fledged laptops, users could opt for the upcoming fifth-generation Core processor, also based on Broadwell, Cummins said. Those chips are faster and will draw 15 watts of power or more, and be in laptops and desktops early next year.
New features in Core M curbed power consumption, and Intel is claiming performance gains compared to chips based on the older Haswell architecture. Tablets could offer around two more hours of battery life with Core M.
HP Looks Beyond Windows
Hewlett-Packard has announced the availability of its latest Pavilion laptop with Google’s Chrome OS as the PC maker attempts to improve laptop sales by offering an alternative to the Windows OS.
The Pavilion 14 Chromebook has a 14-inch screen and runs on a dual-core Intel processor. The laptop is roughly 21 millimeters thick, and weighs 1.8 kilograms. It offers just over four hours of battery life, said David Conrad, director for product management at HP’s consumer products group.
The laptop is expected to ship on Monday in the U.S. starting at $329.99. The company did not immediately provide worldwide availability information.
HP wanted to widen its product offerings and the new Chromebook is targeted at those who do most of their computing on the Web, Conrad said.
“It’s really about choice. We have a very wide offering,” Conrad said. “We think the time is right for an additional choice for people to have a gateway to their Google digital lifestyle.”
The laptop has only 16GB of solid-state drive storage, but will offer 100GB of free Google Drive storage for two years.
The Chromebook has the same design as HP’s other PC offerings, which mostly run on Windows and have standard-capacity hard drives. But, with a lot of data moving to the cloud, the Chromebook provides a different usage model.
“We see this as another device to be used around the house. It’s easily managed,” Conrad said.
Will Lenovo Go Public In 2K14?
Lenovo’s parent firm Legend Holdings could float an initial public offering (IPO) as soon as 2014, according to the firm’s chairman.
Liu Chuanzhi, chairman of Legend Holdings told China Business News that the firm plans to list on the China A-share market between 2014 and 2016. Chuanzhi also reportedly said the company will invest $3.2bn by 2014 to develop its various businesses.
Legend Holdings is 36 percent owned by the Chinese state controlled Academy of Sciences, with a further 20 percent owned by the private investment firm China Oceanwide Holdings Group.
Legend Holdings also has venture capital and real estate interests outside of Lenovo Group. The firm’s system building operations however have gone from strength to strength since it bought IBM’s PC business back in 2005, and it is now heavily promoting its Yoga tablet-laptop hybrid device.
Earlier this year Gartner reported that Lenovo had overtaken HP to become the largest PC vendor, something that HP disputed by offering IDC’s figures. Regardless of HP’s protestations then, Lenovo is set to overtake HP as its PC business continues to grow while HP’s has been shrinking for some time.
Legend Holdings might want to cash in on Lenovo’s high flying status and a cash injection from an IPO could help the company invest in designing products for the smartphone and tablet markets.
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Lenovo On The Rise
Lenovo has topped off a great 2012 with record sales figures and revenues, and claimed it took 15.6 percent of the PC market.
Lenovo is the PC maker that has bucked the industry trend of a shrinking PC market, posting faster than average industry growth for 14 consecutive quarters. All of that has left the firm announcing an 11 percent increase in second fiscal quarter sales to $8.7bn with profits of $162m, an increase of 13 percent over the same period last year.
Lenovo has managed to maintain the legendary status held by IBM’s Thinkpads and introduce its own low-cost models aimed at consumers. The firm has also been pushing smartphones in China and close to half of its revenues in its second fiscal quarter came from its home market.
Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo said, “Our global PC market share reached another historic high, moving us closer to our dream of becoming the worldwide PC leader. With four years’ effort, our consumer PC business has become the world’s number one in this segment for the first time. Our smartphone business in China, which we started only two years ago, has again strengthened its number two position,”
Lenovo Adds Enterprise Servers
Eager to expand its horizons beyond PCs and tablets, Lenovo on Monday announced the first server from the newly created Enterprise Product Group, which deals in servers, storage, networking and software.
The ThinkServer TD330 is a tower server based on Intel’s Xeon E5-2400 processors. The server will support up to 16 processor cores and start at $929.
Lenovo last week announced the formation of the Enterprise Product Group. It is headed by Roy Guillen, vice president and general manager of the division. Guillen was previously vice president and general manager of Dell’s data center solutions (DCS) division.
Lenovo already offers low-end servers and workstations for homes and small businesses, but the new division will target small, medium-size and large enterprises. Lenovo has offered low-end servers based on Intel’s Xeon E3 and E5 processors, but the company did not respond to a request for comment on whether existing ThinkServer products would be part of the enterprise product portfolio.
“We’ve placed expanded emphasis on building our server portfolio this year, introducing products that meet the needs of all our customers — from enterprise customers to small businesses,” Guillen said in a statement.
Lenovo established itself as a PC company after it bought IBM’s PC division in 2005. Lenovo’s progress in the PC market has been rapid, with IDC placing the company as the world’s largest PC vendor for the first time in the third quarter this year. The new enterprise division will put Lenovo in competition with IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Dell, which also sell x86 servers.
Lenovo Eyes The U.S.
Lenovo hopes that computers made in its first U.S. manufacturing plant will draw more consumers, while also making the delivery of ThinkPad laptops and tablets faster to U.S. customers.
The company, which is based in China, earlier this month announced it would open a factory to make computers in Whitsett, N.C. — its first such facility in the U.S. Lenovo said the factory would create about 115 manufacturing jobs. A spokesman later added that the company may expand the facility in the future, which could create more jobs.
Manufacturing in the U.S. will help Lenovo get its products to customers more quickly, said Peter Hortensius, senior vice president of the product group at Lenovo, in an interview at a company event in New York on Tuesday evening.
The company will manufacture ThinkPad laptops and tablets starting early next year, and with the new factory, Lenovo hopes computers could reach customers within a week, or in some cases, overnight. But initial supplies of products like the ThinkPad Tablet 2, which will become available in October, will not be made in the U.S. factory.
Many Lenovo computer shipments originate from China and are supposed to reach customers in 10 days, but in some cases take weeks. The company also has factories in Japan, Brazil, Germany and Mexico.
The “Made in USA” tag on computers manufactured in North Carolina will resonate with some buyers, Hortensius said. Lenovo’s main U.S. operations are in that state, and the company also has a distribution center there.
Lenovo Tablet Hits The Market
Lenovo’s business-oriented tablet, the ThinkPad Tablet, is now available for purchase and should start shipping within a week. The 10-inch Android device, which Lenovo officially announced a little more than a month ago, boasts an impressive mix of consumer and business-friendly features that might please both the user and their IT department.
Like other Android 3.1 Honeycomb tablets on the market, the ThinkPad Tablet has a 1280 x 800 multitouch display, 1GB of memory, front- and rear-facing cameras and a NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual core processor. It comes in a 16GB model for $499, a 32GB version for $569 and a 64GB option for $669. Basic specs and price-wise, the ThinkPad Tablet is on par with the competition.
What sets the ThinkPad apart, however, are the enterprise-oriented tools like remote administration in case the tablet gets lost or stolen, support for Cisco VPN, and full device encryption. Free apps included like Documents to Go, PrinterShare, and Computrace underscore the tablets professional target audience.
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Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet On Its Way
April 26, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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It appears that Lenovo is preparing to enter the tablet war over summer. Apparently, the tablet will focus on serious minded business professionals. It appears that the tablet will run Google’s popu;ar tablet OS called Honeycomb and will be equipped with Nvidia’s Tegra 2. To make sure consumers get their monies worth, the tablet will come with a keyboard to turn it into a useable notebook more or less. Sources are also claiming the screen size will be 10 inches and have a 1280×800 IPS and optical stylus.