About 49 percent all notebooks shipped in 2015 are predicted to come with quad-core processors, up from 9 percent this year. The market research firm estimates that 160 million notebooks in 2015 will offer four cores, compared to just 21.2 million in 2011.
“The cornerstone of PC performance, the microprocessor, is continuing to evolve to provide new levels of performance to the PC market,” said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst at IHS. "The battle now has moved from the dual-core segment into the quad-core area—and next will spread to the six-core realm.”
As hexa-core processors are also entering the notebook market, the quad-core CPU will be the norm and make up the clear majority of the notebook market. IHS iSuppli believes that 18 percent of notebooks will integrate six processing cores.
The market research firm also offered an outlook for heterogeneous microprocessors in notebooks that place a GPU on the processor die. The company predicts a rapid adoption and expects 90 percent of notebooks sold in 2015 to use this technology.
