Intel Releases ULV 17-watt Sandy Bridge CPUs
Low power for the speed.

Intel has released a few new ultra-low voltage processors that will likely find their way into this year's gang of Ultrabooks for the 2011 holiday season.
The new processors listed by Intel are as follows:
- Core i7-2677M: 2 cores, 1.8 GHz (turbos to 2.9GHz), 4MB cache, 17 watts, $317
- Core i7-2637M: 2 cores, 1.7GHz (turbos to 2.8GHz), 4MB cache, 17 watts, $289
- Core i5-2557M: 2 cores, 1.7GHz (turbos to 2.7GHz), 3MB cache, 17 watts, $250
The Core i5-2557M has already found a home in the Asus UX21 that was modeled as an Ultrabook at Computex earlier this month.
Apple is also expected to refresh its line of MacBook Air laptops with this new family of chips. Apple's current MacBook Air still use Core 2 Duo CPUs paired with Nvidia chipsets, as license agreements prevent the pairing of Nvidia technology with Intel's current generation of processors. The integrated graphics of Intel's Sandy Bridge chips, however, will likely be enough to satisfy Apple's performance targets for the MacBook Air.
For one its fragile; just because its light and thin, it won't give that screen anymore protection.
Number 2, its horribly flashy. For the criminal, the slimmest notebook you see is the most expensive. And these puppies look like they're worth every penny of the 2 grand your gonna be shelling out for these.
Number 3, is its over powered and over priced. A laptop is always a secondary computer needing a safe backup storage device. If your going to be using all of this i7's processing powers, then you'd probably be better off buying a $1000 PC and a $300 laptop, as the work you do is far to valuable to be lying around.
This is just the latest move towards fashion tech. I wouldn't be suprised if this i7's performance pales in comparison to its full powered bigger brothers, so Apple will love the fact they can sell there gullable customers the i7 brand.
True because OS X does not rely on the resource hog Direct X to do visual desktop effects.
But when will the MacBook have a similar refresh?
1. I think its pretty rare to break a screen, but with that said most ultra portables I have come across use a lot more metal in their construction over plastic; so a stronger frame and less weight means less likely to be damaged. Plus to get the small size they are moving to more solid state components, such as SSD's, not having an optical drive, etc... So you have less components to be damaged and the ones you do have tend to be more durable.
2. MacBook Air come as low as $999 a dicent build is still under $1500. A good full sized laptop is just as expensive.
3. I will break this down into sub groups
a: I completely disagree about Laptop's being secondary computers. They are powerful enough for most users to use them as their primary, having 2 computers cost more in the long run (from a business perspective) as then you have twice as many software licenses, twice as much hardware to maintain, etc... We have many people at my company (myself included) where a laptop is our only computer.
b: I will agree about needing a safe storage device, but with SSD's the likelihood of failure is minimized, and you couple that with a online or network biased backup (such as CrashPlan) and the need for a desktop is gone.
c: Because of the two above reasons I disagree about being overpowered, and to some extent over priced. If you are using these as your primary computers (as I am sure many are) you don't want an anemic CPU such as an Atom. And they are not as overpowered as the the i5 or i7 name implies.
i. They are only dual core
ii. Their base speed is much lower, they can boost up to higher speeds but they don't stay there.
iii. They have smaller cache memory
iv. Their cost to performance ratio is not as good as a desktop, but battery life is worth a lot for a road warrior, and although many might not need an 8 hour battery, it is nice to be able to have one.
As an I.T. person for a medium sized business I can say these facts about laptops:
1. If its heavy, the won't take it on the road, and that decreases productivity and higher turn over.
2. If its slow (not as fast as "their computer" at home) They will whine until someone gets them a laptop that meets their expectations. I can handle whining, but it seems upper management cannot so you will end up getting one anyway.
3. If it has a poor battery life, you basically have to buy them two power adapters. One for their office and One for their laptop bag. At about $100 for a laptop power supply; that instantly takes a big chuck of your savings on a cheaper CPU away. BECAUSE THEY WILL FORGET THEIR POWER ADAPTOR AT HOME.
I can seriously make it an entire work day on my MacBook Air's battery. I haven't needed to, but sometimes its nice to just plop your laptop open and start working.
add on the profit margin and your looking at $1500-2000
well unless u have the ability to make one of these yourself?
That is true to some extent; they dont have 200% profit; there are a lot of other manufacturing costs such as labor, R&D (Keep in mind there is no ATX equivalent form factor for laptops each board is custom designed) Same with the chassis, etc... I think we could see these in the low $1000 range ($1000-1250).
Did you guys not hear about the pricing for Ultrabooks? It's coming near end of this year. The one being made by Asus is said to cost under $1000, which suggest mid to upper $900 pricing. That's with the i5-2557M and SSD, which is more than enough.
Performance of the i7-2677M should be comparable with the average standard voltage 35W chips, while using half the power, hence the price premium.
Core i7-2677M: 2 cores, 1.8 GHz (turbos to 2.9GHz), 4MB cache, 17 watts, $317
Core i7-2637M: 2 cores, 1.7GHz (turbos to 2.8GHz), 4MB cache, 17 watts, $289
Core i5-2557M: 2 cores, 1.7GHz (turbos to 2.7GHz), 3MB cache, 17 watts, $250
so these all consume only 17 watts on turbo?
The thing might be power efficint, and have a dexcent CPU, but all that efficiancy is lost when you need a seperate video card to become a strong contender.
I have systems that run on both intergrated and dedicated video cards, and I have to say that its not CPU power that is the bottleneck any more. its the Video card.
and when you take into account the power requirements of a discreet card the advantages of this chip are all but lost.
Because the vast majority of the people that buy this type of ultra portable laptops aren't going to use it for more then just typical workload computing and want the most battery life as possible which is why they have been big sellers.
True, but I think ultra portable are targeted at business people who travel a lot; not necessarily gamers or CAD people. And to be honest the graphics built into SandyBridge CPUs is fairly impressive. I can't speak for these but I can tell you the GPU built into a Core I5-2400 (Desktop CPU) can beat a Geforce G210 in most applications.