Intel plans 10-watt Ivy Bridge CPUs for 2013

Intel's Ivy Bridge lineup of CPUs made its debut earlier this year, and has quickly found its way into a variety of laptops and Ultrabooks. Unfortunately, the chip's Thermal Design Power (TDP) is still too high to fit in the latest generation of ultrathin tablets and manufacturers have turned to alternatives such as NVIDIA's Tegra 3 and other SoCs.

Thankfully, help is on the way in the form of a lower voltage Ivy Bridge CPU, as was detailed in an Intel roadmap and confirmed by The Verge. The upcoming generation of Ivy Bridge processors will supposedly cut power consumption by at least 40%  and reach a mere 10 watts. In comparison, the current ultra-low voltage Ivy Bridge processors bottom out at 17-watts and the improvement in power consumption could be remarkable.

Of course, many are awaiting Intel's 22nm Haswell architecture, which should use up to 20x less power, but the 10-watt CPUs will have to serve as a stopgap till then. No date has been set for when the chips will start making their way into devices, but late 2013 is the current timeframe.

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