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Ultrabooks with Haswell chips could use as little as 100mW while idle

Intel’s upcoming 4th generation Core processors are designed to offer better performance than today’s Ivy Bridge chips, but the new processors, code-named “Haswell,” will also use less power than today’s chips. That means we could see notebooks with tablet-like battery life, and maybe even fanless computers with Haswell chips. But not only are Haswell chips […]

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Intel unveils low-power 7W Ivy Bridge processors

When Intel introduced its Ivy Bridge (3rd generation Core) chips in 2012, the lowest power chip sin the family featured a TDP of about 17 watts. The company has promised that 4th-gen “Haswell” chips would use even less power, with TDPs of 10W. But today the company confirmed what we’ve been hearing for a while […]

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Low power chip battle: AMD C-50, Intel Atom N550 power consumption compared

AMD introduced several new chips based on its low power Bobcat core this year. They’re all Fusion chips, which means the CPU and graphics are all on the same piece of silicon. The AMD Zacate E-350 chip uses 18 Watts and is designed as a low cost,  alternative to Consumer Ultra Low Voltage chips from […]

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Dual mode AMOLED, E Ink display could prolong battery life

We’ve seen a number of technologies pop up recently that can help to prolong battery life for laptops and other mobile devices by working with or without a backlight. But while solutions from Pixel Qi, Qualcomm, and others rely on transflective displays which typically cut power by turning off the backlight and switching from full […]

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CPT showcases sunlight readable color display

CPT is showing off a new display technology in Taiwan that will let you view a full color display in direct sunlight. Oh yeah, it’s also described as a low power display, although CPT isn’t giving a lot of specifics. Netbook News reports that the new CPT screens should use about half the power of […]

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Electrofluidics low power displays could feature bright colors, video playback

There are a number of companies working to bridge the divide between high contrast low power E Ink displays like those found on the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader and other eBook devices and full color LCD displays which are power hungry but which have high refresh rates suitable for video playback. We’ve seen solutions from […]

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Intel promises future chips will use less power than ARM-based processors

Intel may be king of the hill when it comes to processors for desktops, laptops, servers, and pretty much any CPU for a computer that doesn’t fit in your pocket. But the vast majority of smartphones on the market today use chips based on designs from ARM. Intel plans to change that. We’ve already seen […]

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Intel Atom powered servers: Low power isn’t just for netbooks

Low power Intel Atom chips have changed the way we think about battery life and “good enough” performance in low-cost laptops. But it turns out that these chips which were designed for low power laptops are also useful in other areas typically dominated by expensive, power-hungry chips. A company called SeaMicro is building servers that […]

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Intel Atom processors: Not just for netbooks

One of the hallmarks of a netbook is a cheap, low power processor. But it’s not just people who are looking for low cost laptops with good battery life who are interested in these sorts of CPUs. Researchers in Germany have developed a system for sorting data that uses an Intel Atom 330 dual core […]