Analysts mull Haswell impact
 

Analysts have been mulling over the impact that Intel's launch of Haswell will have on the industry.

According to Computerworld, they seem to think that the new chip will kill off big tablets and lead to a recovery of the portable PC market. TechEye's Mike Magee has his own take on Haswell, here.

The Haswell chip can make a six hour battery last nine hours, Intel claims.

The fourth generation Core may be the first chip from Intel that can extend PC battery life by 50 percent.

Nathan Brookwood, a chip industry analyst at insight64 said that Haswell was a redesign of its PC chip and was created from the ground up with low power use in mind.

He said that one of the design techniques used for reducing energy consumption involved the addition of graphics hardware to run processes in parallel. By doing so, the chip can operate at lower clock speeds.

This means that Haswell will double the graphics performance on laptops.

Brookwood said that the 22-nanometer chip can turn transistors on and off as it dynamically adjusts power usage. Faster interconnects to speed data flows, reducing the amount of time the chip spends processing data.

Shane Rau, an analyst at IDC, doesn't believe that Haswell alone can help the PC. But the chip combined with other things soon to arrive will provide a boost to the PC market.

By next year PC makers will be producing the fourth generation of ultrabooks, and the building blocks for a strong product have been coming into place, he said.

Rau thinks that touch capability will become more ubiquitous in laptops, and the devices will be increasingly lighter, thinner, and more durable and affordable than today's PCs.

Rob Enderle, an analyst at Enderle Group, said Haswell coupled with Windows 8.1 could mark the beginning of the end for large, 10-in. to 12-in. tablets.

Enderle said that Haswell will have a lot of folks asking why they need a tablet.

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