14 NOVEMBER 2019|COMPUTER SHOPPER|ISSUE 381
‘IT’SABOUTTIME’is probablythe phrase best
used to describe Intel’s reveal of its first suiteof
10-nanometre processors. The chip maker has
spent years delaying the shift from its 14nm
process node to 10nm (we had abreakdown of
this in ‘The Lowdown’inShopper380), but all
that work has now borne fruit.
It comes in the form of the Ice Lake series
of laptop-grade processors. Somewhat bucking
the trend of previous steps intonext-generation
CPUs, Intel has started with mobile processors
rather than desktop chips.
There are 11 chips in all, and while theyare broken intothe normal
laptop U- and Y-series, Intel has rejigged the nomenclature forIce Lake,
which now shows off the graphics performance of the chip at aglance.
WiththeCorei7-1068G7,thetopIceLakeprocessor,the‘68’showsthe
position of the chip in the CPU family,while the ‘G7’ at the end indicates
the processor comes with the most powerful variant of Intel’s Gen11 Iris
Plus graphics. These chips have 64 of what Intel calls ‘execution units’,
while those with G4 in their name come with 48 execution units, and
those with G1 have to make do with Intel’s less impressive UHD graphics.
As formore run-of-the-mill processor specifications, in both the U-
and Y-series of Ice Lake CPUs, all the processors except forthe Core i
models come with four cores and eight threads, with the main differences
between the chips being based on cache,which ranges from 4MB to 8MB.
Topclock speeds vary,too,running from
4.1GHz on one core at the high end to 3.2GHz
on the slowest Core i3 model. Thermal design
power (TDP) ranges from 28W forthe
most powerful Core i7 to amere 9W on the
lower-end Core i3 chip.
Agood number of these chips have
configurable TDPs, which seems to be another
advantage to the Ice Lake line-up in that some
can be set up to use more power to deliver more
performance,while others can be configured to
deliver less punch but suck up less electrical juice
at the same time.This explains why aprocessor such as the Intel Core
i5-1035G4 runs from alow 1.1GHz up to ahealthy 3.3GHz across all four
cores, as it can be configured to use a15W or 25W TDP.
Youmight wonder why you’d have aCore i5 configured to deliver less
than its maximum potential power,given that one would expect the 10nm
process to deliver solid energy efficiency anyway. Well, Ice Lake also
brings in other features beyond just improved performance,which
arguably render eighth-gen laptop processors atad redundant.
Wi-Fi 6compatibility is one major feature,asissupport forasuiteof
Thunderbolt 3ports, while the underlying Sunny Cove core architecture
delivers more instructions per clock (IPC) than previous Intel laptop CPUs,
which should deliver more performance than raw clock speeds would
suggest. In short, there’s more to Ice Lake than just cores and gigahertz.
SAYWHAT?
Intel reveals its first 10-nanometre processors
SAMSUNG’SGALAXYUNPACKEDevent in August saw the South
Korean tech giant take the covers off asuiteofproducts, with the most
notable non-phone device being the Galaxy Book Slaptop.
Looking abit like asuper-thin Surface Laptop 2, the Galaxy Book Sisa
typical example of Samsung’s engineering at its best. Alightweight yet
solid-looking anodised aluminium frame houses a13in Full HD display,
with reasonably slim bezels that still manage to fit awebcam in the
traditional toppart of the screen.
This is fairly run of the mill forslim 13in laptops. And like other models
from late2018 and this year so far, the Galaxy Book Sisalso slim on
port selection, with just apair of USB-C ports –neither of which are
Thunderbolt 3compatible –and a3.5mm headphone jack.
Other than an attractive design, then, there’s nothing
immediately special about the Samsung laptop at first glance.
But things get interesting under the chassis.
RAM comes in at afairly standard 8GB, while storage
comes in the form of 256GB or 512GB of SSD
space,although that can be
expanded up to 1TB with the use
of amicroSD card. However,the
core spec is the Galaxy Book S’s
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx chipset.
While pretty much every ultraportable laptop on the market uses an
Intel Core mobile processor,the Galaxy Book Shas aQualcomm chip
custom-made to run Windows 10. The Snapdragon 8cx has an octa-core
CPU, with cores running at 2.84GHz and 1.8GHz to deliver power when
needed or lower clock speeds to conserve battery lifewhen less compute
clout is required. Thanks to the chip’s design, battery lifefor the Galaxy
Book Sisexpected to deliver 23 hours of power,which makes amockery
of the endurance of Windows 10 laptops using Intel processors.
The Qualcomm chipset means the Galaxy Book Scomes with LTE
connectivity and falls under Microsoft’s Always Connected
PC umbrella, which promises laptops that can
bootupinsecondsandhaveinternetconnectivity
even when out of range of wireless hotspots.
At astarting price of $999 in the US (UK
pricing has yet to be revealed), the
Galaxy Book Sismore expensive
than other Always Connected PCs,
which sit below the £500 mark. But the
Galaxy Book Soffers apremium
take on such machines, both in
terms of looks and performance,
so it could justify its high price.
Samsung unveils slick Snapdragon-based laptop
SAYWHAT?
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