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Celeron thin-and-light laptops arriving in autumn

by Mark Tyson on 20 May 2012, 19:48

Tags: Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), PC

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabgwn

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Not new Ultrabook chips

Notebook manufacturers are looking to make cheaper thin-and-light models for consumers. Intel is launching four new Celerons to enable the production of cheaper Ultrabooks thin-and-lights aimed at the $599 price point. DigiTimes reports that two of the Celerons, the Celeron ULV 807 and the Celeron ULV 877, will be sold to the manufacturers at $70 and $86, respectively. These cheaper processors will be launched in Q3 alongside five dual-core Core i3 processors priced from $117 to $138. The cheapest Celeron ULV will be nearly half the price of the most expensive Q3-launched Core i3 CPU.

 

Celeron ULV 807

Celeron ULV 877

Microarchitecture

Sandy Bridge

Sandy Bridge

Frequency

1,500 MHz

1,500 MHz

Cores

1 (2 threads)

2 (2 threads)

Bus Speed

5 GT/s DMI

5 GT/s DMI

Clock Multiplier

15

14

Process

32nm

32nm

Caches Lvl 1/2/3

32kb/256kb/1.5Mb

64kb/512kb/2Mb

TDP

17 Watt

17 Watt

Price in USD

$70

$86

The big difference between the current Mobile Celeron lineup and the new Celeron ULV models is the sizeable reduction in TDP figures. All current Mobile Celeron CPUs have a TDP of 35 Watts compared to the upcoming ULV Celerons at 17 Watts.

Ultrabooks with mechanical hard drives

In a separate, but also thin-and-light-related, news snippet from DigiTimes we see another avenue for Ultrabook price reduction that is being pursued right now. It would seem natural for an Ultrabook to come with an SSD drive rather than a slower, more fragile and more power-hungry HDD storage device. However in Q2 2012 DigiTimes estimates that only 56 per cent of Ultrabooks will ship with an SSD installed compared to the 86 percent figure from Q1 2012. SSDs seem to be heading down in price nicely so this trend might get reversed in the following quarters.

Intel is being careful not to devalue its nascent Ultrabook initiative, which could easily be tarnished by too much cheapening. These new Celeron-based laptops occupy a price/model positioning that is manifestly lower than Ultrabooks.

*Update: 21/05/12

Intel has confirmed that the Ultrabook branding and associated trademark is only allowed on laptops featuring an Intel Core processor. This means that any Celeron-powered laptop, however thin-and-light, will not be termed an Ultrabook. Apologies for any confusion in the original article.



HEXUS Forums :: 7 Comments

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I thought Ultrabooks needed an i5 as a minimum?
Why don't they just stick an Atom in there and have Ultra-netbooks…
Baffled, the whole point of the ultrabook was so that intel could ensure that laptops were atleast useable and competitive… now it has lost meaning, its a thin laptop with a netbook spec now :(, celeron die please!
Great idea.

Almost all computers sold today are chronically overpowered for the user's needs. So to sell what people actually want/need is always a good idea.
abaxas
Great idea.

Almost all computers sold today are chronically overpowered for the user's needs. So to sell what people actually want/need is always a good idea.
Nope. Historically celerons haven't been that good for battery life for doing day to day tasks, the limited cache really hinders things.

The i5 for most people are overpowered 90% of the time, but 10% of the time they really aren't. The burst of for less than 1 second when opening a browser for instance is mostly CPU with even a humble SSD.

Then throw in this whole HTML5 malarky. I say this because there is a huge anti-flash bandwagon, I love it, I don't make it mind, but I love how simple flashblock makes the web, no CPU eating nonsense for me on my ultrabook, but I'm an exception, most people don't mind it, as soon as adverts and the like move on to HTML5, just watch the power required for a good browsing experiance rise, but also the complexity of a webpage. My point is that for the ‘modern’ web people need the faster CPUs with more cache. Also given that the CPU isn't really the most important part of the netbook cost, and we've already got the i3 for the cheaper end, this really isn't going to be good, it will instead I'd suggest allow the price of the i5 ones to go up.