Intel: Full Ultrabook Concept Must Wait Until 2014

Intel has released more details of its roadmap for 'ultrabooks' - its own take on the next generation mobile data device, which aims to put full PC power into an ultraslim, netbook-like form factor. Intel says these designs could account for as many as 40% of consumer laptop sales by the end of 2012.

Focal Points:

• Despite this aggressive timescale, the first generation of these devices just look like slimmed-down notebooks, running on the new Sandy Bridge processor, with long battery life and quick start-up. And Intel itself as admitted that the full concept will take several waves of silicon and software design to be fully realized. In a blog post this week, Intel's Becky Emmett wrote that there will be "substantial changes to the way Intel and its partners design, produce and market devices and their components" to enable the full ultrabook. One objective will be to get the price below $1,000 to support mass uptake.
• The second wave of ultrabooks, due in the first half of next year, will be based on Intel's first 22nm processor, Ivy Bridge, to improve battery life, performance, security and data transfer speeds. Then, according to the newly published roadmap, a third generation will appear in 2014, running a whole microarchitecture, codenamed Haswell. For this platform, Intel will change the design of its processors so that they use around half the power of today's versions.
• At this point, Intel optimistically promises, the ultrabook will take on the functionality of all the various mobile data products vying for consumers' attention - tablets, netbooks, cloudbooks and so on. It will be "a tablet when you want it, a PC when you need it", says the blog. The problem for Intel is that, by 2014, Apple or Google may well have re-imagined the mobile device yet again.

Editor’s Note: Experton Group agrees with the last sentence … two years is a long time given the acceleration of technological and ergonomic changes.