Intel Corp is trying to sell its new laptop chips in an old way — by emphasizing their speed.
The world’s biggest chipmaker is touting the clock speed of its new H line of processors, citing their ability to process data at more than 5 gigahertz (GHz), or 5 billion cycles per second.
“Frequency is the thing we’ve optimized for... These are the first mobile processors to break 5GHz,” Intel general manager Fredrik Hamberger said.
Laptops based on these new 10th-generation Core design chips are to start appearing this month.
The top-of-the-range part can count as fast as 5.3GHz when operating in “Turbo Boost” mode, Intel said.
That targets video gamers and professional content creators, who often influence what is considered the best PC hardware.
The new products are being rolled out as Intel faces rising threats to its industry leadership. Smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) started fielding more competitive chips about two years ago.
Intel pioneered the sale of processors based on clock speed.
In 2001, then-Intel president Paul Otellini promised that Intel’s Pentium design would scale all the way to 20GHz.
However, the firm’s engineers underestimated how much power was needed, and how much heat would be generated by such chips.
As the new century progressed, laptops became more popular, and those slim designs could not handle power-hungry, hot processors as well as desktop machines. So Intel and the industry started making multicore semiconductors that combined several processors into one.
Performance is now measured by the ability to run different workloads at the same time, rather than pure speed.
AMD sells new processors that have more cores than Intel chips, garnering praise from gamers and PC reviewers. That has helped the smaller company take market share from Intel.
Intel has also struggled to maintain its lead in manufacturing technology.
AMD outsources manufacturing to specialists such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which has production technology that is well ahead of Intel’s.
The new H range of Intel chips are made with 14-nanometer production technology.
The company originally planned to upgrade to 10-nanometer in 2017, but that is only beginning to happen in mass volume this year.
AMD’s latest processors use TSMC’s 7-nanometer capabilities.
Intel has said that most video games do not take advantage of multicore chips and are best served by higher clock speeds.
About 60 percent of the new models in the H range would be capable of hitting 5GHz or higher, it said.
That speed is only achieved in short bursts on a limited number of cores, or just a single core in a “turbo” mode that shuts down other cores.
The base rate, the normal operating speed of the chips, is between 2GHz and 3GHz, where most of the industry’s products have been for more than a decade.
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