Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) Planning To Make Ivy Bridge Chips More Power-Efficient

One of the biggest loopholes of using an Intel processor within a mobile device, when compared to having an ARM processor is the consumption of power. Intel Corporation(NASDAQ:INTC) processors conventionally use more power than competing products resulting in shorter battery life for devices that use Intel processors. Intel is planning on changing that with the aim of decreasing the power consumption on its Ivy Bridge processors.

CNET has received information from a reliable source that Intel is planning on reducing power consumption drastically for upcoming versions of its Ivy Bridge chip. The most powerful Ivy Bridge chips, which are available presently in the market, consume 17 W of power. Such chips are mostly used in a number of Windows ultrabooks and Apple’s MacBook Air.

As per reliable sources, the upcoming version of the Ivy Bridge chip will have power consumption less than 17 watts. The power consumption of the chip would be as low as computer manufacturers would need it to be to implement in within tablets. Microsoft has plans of using an Ivy Bridge Core i5 within the Surface Pro tablet ready to be launched very soon.

The Surface Pro tablet will implement 17 watt chip that is already available in the market and is expected to have half the battery life of Surface RT tablet along with an ARM processor. As of now, the downside to Intel’s line of low power consumption chips is that their performance is exceptionally low, as compared to what the Ivy Bridge components offer. In contrast, ARM processors that are popularly used in mobile devices like tablets consume power normally below 2 watts.

Normally, lower the wattage, longer the battery life and sleeker the device. While benchmark Intel x86 chips cannot achieve a good level of power efficiency, they are exceptionally more powerful than ARM processors. This is one of the reasons why Microsoft chose to release two versions of its Surface tablet.