Intel aims to cut graphics power draw with research chip
Intel has designed a new integrated graphics core that the company claims can improve the battery life of smartphones, tablets and laptops. — Graphics can be power hungry and the new power-efficient core, when paired with a CPU …
Context & Ripple Effects
The research chip is the graphics chapter of a power story Intel has been telling since its 2007 pledge to run chips faster while drawing less power — an arc that ran through Ivy Bridge power-consumption cuts in 2012 and the 2013 launch of Haswell as a low-powered chip pitched at saving Windows tablets. What is new here is the target: until now the efficiency work centered on CPU cores, while graphics remained the hungry block on the die.
The timing matters because Intel's mobility bet is under commercial pressure. In January 2014 the company confirmed that falling PC sales are driving roughly a 5% workforce cut, and CEO Brian Krzanich has staked the counterattack on Atom silicon reaching Android tablets by Q2 — so every watt shaved off the integrated GPU goes directly at the battery-life argument ARM licensees currently win on.
First-order effects
- Smartphone, tablet and laptop makers evaluating Intel silicon get a concrete answer to their most common objection — graphics-driven battery drain — which strengthens Krzanich's Q2 Bay Trail-on-Android push against incumbent ARM SoCs.
- Intel's own cost-cutting program means this efficiency gain must come from design, not from throwing more silicon at the problem, making the research core a template for future productized graphics.
Second-order effects
- ARM-licensee SoC vendors now face an Intel that competes on graphics power efficiency as well as CPU performance, squeezing the differentiator that has kept Intel out of most phones.
- If the paired CPU-GPU power management works as claimed, device makers can thin batteries or drop fans further, feeding directly into the fanless-tablet direction Intel teased with Haswell in July 2013.
Third-order effects
- Graphics becomes the next battleground where mobile silicon is judged, shifting vendor competition from raw throughput toward performance-per-watt across the whole die — a structural standard set by whoever ships first.
- A proven Intel GPU efficiency play would erode the last major architectural advantage ARM partners hold in handhelds, opening the phone market Intel has largely failed to crack.
The trend: Intel's decade-long campaign to close the power-efficiency gap with ARM-based mobile chips is extending from CPU cores into graphics, where the remaining watts are.