TechieGroups

UPSTART TABLET MAKER Microsoft has announced that its Surface Pro tablet will retail for a starting price of 9.

That price gets consumers a tablet with a 64GB hard drive. A 128GB version of the tablet will sell for 9. Both models of the tablet won’t include a Surface tablet keyboard.

Surface tablet keyboards will be available as add-on accessories. Microsoft offers its floppy plastic Touch Keyboard for 9.99 and its stiff plastic Type Keyboard for 9.99.

Microsoft is promoting the Surface Pro tablet’s ability to support pen inputs. Both versions of the Surface Pro come with a touchscreen capable pen. According to general manager of Microsoft Surface Panos Panay, the stylus-like pen is ideal for note takers.

“Surface with Windows 8 Pro will support Pen input,” Panay in a blog post.

“This is an amazing feature for all you note-takers or document editors out there, especially since it has expanded capacitive and digitizing technology we’re calling Palm Block that will prevent your handwriting from getting interrupted if you accidentally place your palm on the screen as you write. This feature is pretty cool, and allows for a great inking experience alongside a great touch experience when needed.”

Microsoft calls the Surface Pro an advanced model of its Surface RT. Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablet offers an USB 3.0 port, an upgrade compared to the RT model’s USB 2.0 offering.

Surface Pro tablets also offer higher screen resolution with a 10.6in 1920×1080 display, which is larger than the Surface RT tablet’s 1366×768 resolution display.

Inside the Surface Pro consumers will find an Intel Core I5 processor and 4GB of memory. For comparison, the Surface RT runs a Nvidia Tegra 3 processor and comes with 2GB of memory.

The Surface Pro tablet should be able to put the Intel processor to good use as the device has the ability to run Windows PC legacy applications, unlike the Surface RT tablet.

Another key difference between the two Surface tablet models is the price. The Surface Pro tablet costs 0 more than its Surface RT tablet counterpart. Surface Pro tablet prices also take it out of competition with Ipads, which cost significantly less than the 9 price tag.

According to president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy Patrick Moorhead, the Surface Pro price tag makes sense for Microsoft. Moorhead told The INQUIRER that Microsoft is positioning the Surface Pro to compete in the Ultrabook market and not the tablet field.

“The Surface Pro pricing is very high in relation to an Ipad or a Nexus 10, but that’s missing the point. The Surface Pro is an alternative to buying a notebook or Ultrabook, where it can command those prices,” Moorhead said.

“Microsoft isn’t disclosing details on which they are targeting, consumers or business people. If Microsoft sells through their major account teams to businesses, or sells through commercial channels, this would be big competition to Lenovo, HP and Dell.”

Microsoft Surface Pro tablet pricing and availability are so far unavailable for the UK market. When The INQUIRER got in contact with Microsoft for UK availability the firm declined to comment. µ

One side effect of the current march towards ultramobility is the nearly complete abandonment of expandable/upgradeable local storage. No modern smartphone or tablet allows for upgradeable internal storage, and it's not exactly common to find microSD slots or USB ports on them either. This is particularly a problem if you're shopping with Apple, where expandable storage has never been a part of the iPhone or iPad. As a result, you're encouraged to buy enough storage to last you until the next upgrade – as well as rely heavily on cloud based storage and streaming services.

Huge amounts of high performance NAND can be pricey. Modern SSDs are finally below the /GB price point, which when applied to a tablet should mean that the difference between 16GB and 32GB of storage is no more than . The reality however is far worse. NAND costs even less than the ~/GB that we pay when buying an SSD, and manufacturers tend to charge anywhere from for 16GB to 0 in the case of Apple. For lower cost devices there may not even be higher capacity versions. All of the sudden that simple solution of just buying as much storage as you need up front becomes a lot more complicated. If you take into consideration the fact that smartphones and tablets are quickly replaced with much better versions, there's a good chance that you'll want a new device before you run out of storage if you buy the largest capacity offered.

A number of players in the storage industry have recognized this problem and are attempting to find the perfect solution. Just like there's still movement in determining the best mobile form factor, there have been a lot of early attempts to get wireless external storage for mobile devices right. We covered some of these in the past (e.g. Kingston's WiDrive and Seagate's GoFlex Satellite) but more recently Patriot Memory threw its hat into the ring with the Gauntlet Node and the Gauntlet Node 320.

CRIMINALS apparently have nicked most of a shipment of Apple Ipad Mini tablets worth a cool .5m.

The crew turned over the same place as the mob characters in the film Goodfellas, who in turn were representing real life events.

Thieves made off with m in cash and nearly 0,000 worth of jewellery back in 1978. That would be worth over m in today’s money.

This time the mugs managed to pinch about 3,600 Ipad Mini tablets by throwing them into a white van.

The New York Post reports that the tablets had just arrived at the JFK airport, having been shipped in by a company called Cargo Airport Services.

Sources told the New York Post that the thieves might have been let into the building. This suggests an inside job, or at least inside involvement.

The story is that someone let them in and someone let them out again. However all might not have gone to plan as some Ipad Mini tablets were left behind.

The report says that a worker returned, disturbing the thieves and causing them to flee, leaving three pallets of Apple gadgets behind. “So, as a caper goes, it was probably unsuccessful,” opined one source. However, we disagree, as .5m in Ipad Mini devices sounds like quite a decent haul.

Airport workers are being questioned by the New York gumshoes and given polygraph tests. µ

GLOBAL SHIPMENTS of Android tablets reached a record 41 percent market share in the third quarter, according to a report by Strategy Analytics.

The firm, which cannot reveal the methods it uses to collect market data for propriety reasons, claims that while Android tablet sales accounted for 41 percent of the market, shipping 10.2 million units in the third quarter, up from 29 percent a year earlier, Apple’s IOS tablet sales declined to 57 percent from 64 percent in the same quarter last year, and shifted just 14 million Ipads worldwide.

Despite the increase in Android device market share, the report said global tablet shipments grew just 43 percent, from 17.2 million units in the third quarter of 2011 to 24.7 million in the third quarter of 2012. Compared with 289 percent growth in the second quarter of 2011, Strategy Analytics said this growth “was the weakest growth rate since the modern tablet industry began in quarter two 2010″.

Strategy Analytics said that this general slowdown and Android share increase were due to three main reasons: the global economy slowed down so people were buying fewer gadgets, Apple was quiet on the tablet front ahead of its Ipad Mini and forth generation Ipad launch, and Android competition got tougher, with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean becoming more intuitive, user friendly and thus increasing in popularity.

The analyst firm also said that the gap between Apple and individual hardware vendors making Android tablets is still “quite large” but collectively they are slowly muscling in on Apple’s market dominance.

However, speaking with the firm’s executive director, Neil Mawston, we found that the report’s data refers to “sell-in” devices, that is, the number of tablets sold from hardware vendors to retailers and not “sell-through” volume sold from vendors through retailers to customers. For all we know, there could be a stacks and stacks of Android tablets holding up stock room ceilings in high street stores like Currys and PC World that they cannot shift, so it doesn’t necessarily mean that many Android tablets were “sold”.

Regardless, if Strategy Analytics’ report is accurate and Android tablets are in fact shipping to retailers in larger volumes, then this alone tends to show that they are increasingly in demand and are becoming more popular with consumers.

Mawston added that the introduction of Windows 8 tablets and laptop hybrids, which launched globally today, should help spike the growth in tablet sales in the fourth quarter as hardware vendors push devices in the runup to the holiday season. µ

TAIWANESE COMPUTER MAKER Acer announced business editions of its Iconia Windows 8 tablets today, the Iconia W700P and the Iconia W510P.

The consumer versions of the new Acer devices, the Iconia W700 and the Acer Iconia W510, were announced at the Computex show in Taipei in June. Today the firm announced that it will ship business focused versions of the tablets in Europe by bundling them with Window 8 Pro and slapping a “P” for “professional” at the ends of their model names.

However, Acer didn’t release any details about prices or release dates for the two tablets.

With the same specifications as its consumer counterpart, the Iconia W700P features a 1.7GHz Intel Core I5 processor, an 11.6in full HD display and 128GB of SSD storage. It comes with a stylus designed for writing and digital imaging as well as an Acer Crystal Eye webcam for videoconferencing.

The tablet also features a cradle that lets users lock it in portrait or landscape view when used with a Bluetooth keyboard and adds connectivity with three USB 3.0 ports and a DC-in power plug.

The W510P is a smaller equivalent version of the W700P featuring a 10in screen. Running Windows 8, it is powered a dual-core Intel Atom chip and has 64GB of storage. Instead of a cradle, it features a docking keyboard somewhat like the Asus Transformer series of tablets.

Acer said that adding Windows 8 Professional to the tablets makes them “easy to integrate with the existing IT infrastructure”. It also said that it has built in a number of custom features designed for business users, including Acer’s Backup Manager and Trusted Platform Module, and that Anytime and Anywhere connectivity features also make the tablets ideal for business.

Backup Manager protects valuable data stored on the devices by automatically backing up any information stored on the tablet online or to a company server.

The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) ensures data is secure by making sure that stored files conform to “corporate-level security requirements”.

The Anytime and Anywhere connectivity feature means that the two tablets come with Acer InviLink Nplify WiFi as well as Bluetooth 4.0+. Acer claimed this makes the device faster than regular tablets when connecting to the internet over a wireless network.

Acer’s W700P and W510P tablets will join a host of Windows 8 powered tablets and laptop-tablet hybrid devices when Windows 8 makes its big debut on 26 October.

Last week was a busy time for vendors’ launches of devices in this category. Lenovo for example unveiled four Windows 8 devices, including two ultrabooks, a tablet and a laptop-tablet hybrid device. HP announced a business tablet, the Elitepad 900, and Dell finally released pricing for its Windows 8 machines. And of course Microsoft’s own Windows 8 tablet, the Surface is due for launch next week and went up for preorder at Microsoft’s online store on Tuesday. µ

MICROSOFT is offering only a one-year warranty on its Surface tablet that is set to ship in the UK next week, despite an EU law that says hardware must come with at least a two-year warranty.

The one-year warranty period is stated clearly on Microsoft’s UK store where the 32GB and 64GB models are available to preorder.

The small print on the warranty section of the webpage claims, “[The] Surface comes with a guaranteed one-year limited warranty. If you’d like additional protection of your Surface, you can purchase an extended support plan (Microsoft Complete for Surface).”

The Sale of Consumer Goods and Associated Guarantees directive states, “The seller is liable to the consumer for any lack of conformity which exists when the goods are delivered to the consumer and which becomes apparent within a period of two years”.

We have contacted the EU press office to ask for comment regarding Microsoft’s Surface tablet warranty period. We are also awaiting a response from Microsoft regarding the issue. Surprisingly, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) too has so far failed to respond to our requests for comment regarding the matter.

The Surface tablet’s one-year warranty highlights the ongoing problem that in most cases, product vendors selling devices in the UK are refusing to honour warranties beyond the normal one-year period. This is because the Sale of Consumer Goods and Associated Guarantees directive, which should have been implemented in the UK by January 2002, is still seen as a grey area in the UK right now.

As a result, it seems vendors are tricking customers into believing they have just one year to return their product for replacement or repair after purchase. Those that are aware of the two-year EU law have to go to court to resolve any issues outside the one-year warranty period, and who can be afford or even be bothered with that?

Microsoft isn’t the only culprit, of course. Apple, too, is guilty of not adhering to the two-year warranty law with all of its Idevices currently shipping in the UK, such as the Ipad that comes with a one-year product warranty. In fact, a simple Google search will show you that most manufacturers only provide a one-year guarantee with their products.

If Microsoft is going to follow suit and not take note of the rules like other computer vendors, it should at least not allow its executives to set a bad example and encourage future customers to use the Surface tablet as a skateboard.

Microsoft revealed the pricing of its tablets running the RT version of Windows 8 on Tuesday. Open for preorder now, the Surface tablet starts at £399.99 for the 32GB model, which is available with the touch cover keyboard for £479. The 64GB version is priced at £559 and is bundled with the keyboard-cover hybrid. µ

For much of the past year we've been hearing that Intel's Atom for Windows 8 tablets is going to be the one to beat. Ivy Bridge (and later, Haswell) will exist at the high-end of the Windows 8 tablet space but if you want Intel's answer to ARM based Windows RT tablets it's going to come from the Atom lineup. It's still too early to talk about pricing, but expect Atom based Windows 8 tablets to exist in the sub-0 space. Exactly how low they go will depend entirely on what the OEMs decide to ship at. My hope is for prices to start around 9 rather than much higher but we'll see just how seriously the Windows 8 OEMs are going to take this launch.

Intel's Atom for Windows 8 tablets has gone under the codename Clovertrail for quite some time. Today it gets official: the first Clovertrail SoC is Intel's Atom Z2760. Following similar naming to Medfield's Atom Z2460, there's a lot more that's shared between Clovertrail and its smartphone counterpart.

Similar to its approach with Medfield, Intel built a Windows 8/Clovertrail form factor reference design. The 8mm thick 10.1-inch tablet was built by a single ODM, but four manufacturers total are allowed to reuse those designs as they see fit. The FFRD approach isn't as necessary here as it was with Medfield because most of the traditional PC OEMs are already used to working with Intel. Given Intel's intense focus on driving platform power down however, building a reference design that others can follow makes a lot of sense. We'll actually see even more of this with Haswell next year.

From an availability standpoint we'll see the first Atom based Windows 8 tablets this fall. Intel announced design wins with Acer, ASUS, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, LG, Samsung and ZTE. The thinnest tablets will measure 8.5mm in thickness and weigh as little as 1.5 lbs. Not all Atom based Windows 8 tablets will be available on October 26th, but we'll see them starting a few weeks later.

Atom's big promise of course is ARM based tablet pricing with full x86 backwards compatibility, allowing the use of virtually all of your existing legacy Windows 7. It's a pretty compelling sell. If Intel can deliver the same (or better) performance/battery life compared to the ARM based Windows RT tablets, while preserving backwards compatibility Clovertrail would seem like a no-brainer. Simple solutions are rarely so simple, so we'll have to see this one play out in the market to be sure. Until then, we have some much needed architectural detail on Clovertrail and the Atom Z2760.

The Architecture Medfield vs. Clovertrail   Intel Atom Z2460 Intel Atom Z2760 Platform Codename Medfield Clovertrail OS/Platform Target Android Smartphones Windows 8 Tablets Manufacturing Process 32nm SoC (P1269) 32nm SoC (P1269) CPU Cores/Threads 1 / 2 2 / 4 CPU Clock up to 2.0GHz up to 1.8GHz GPU PowerVR SGX 540 PowerVR SGX 545 GPU Clock 400MHz 533MHz Memory Interface 2 x 32-bit LPDDR2 2 x 32-bit LPDDR2

Clovertrail is the platform name, the single-chip SoC is called Cloverview. The architecture is very similar to Medfield's Penwell SoC. The most obvious differences are in the CPU and GPU configuration. Cloverview features two 32nm Saltwell Atom cores instead of one in Medfield/Penwell. These two cores run at up to 1.8GHz, a slightly lower clock speed compared to the Penwell that ships in Motorola's RAZR i. Each core has its own private 512KB L2 cache.

The GPU is a PowerVR SGX 545 from Imagination Technologies, clocked at a very high 533MHz. Direct3D feature level 9_3 is officially supported. Intel claims that the GPU is fed by a better engine in Clovertrail/Cloverview than it is in Medfield, however any additional details were impossible to come by.

The memory controller remains a dual-channel LPDDR2-800 design. Most tablets will see two 1GB devices populating the channels. Package on package (PoP) stacks will be used for DRAM and SoC integration, similar to what you see in a smartphone.

The other changes are more subtle. Video encode/decode is handled by IP licensed from Imagination Technologies, however the encoder is newer than what was used in Medfield. Clovertrail uses the same Silicon Hive ISP from Medfield. It supports two cameras (2MP/8MP) and burst mode.

The platform supports true connected standby, meaning Intel's new S0ix sleep states (similar to what was announced in Haswell). I realized I haven't yet detailed what these mean yet but in short on DC power you can expect polling roughly every 30 seconds for new data (incoming emails, tweets, etc…) delivering an experience somewhat similar to a smartphone. Off-SoC device drivers need to support Windows 8 run time power management (RTPM) to support these new low power sleep states. Intel claims that in its lowest platform sleep state (S0i3) the SoC's power consumption is below 2mW.

Connected standby is only currently supported by 32-bit Windows 8, so although Clovertrail supports x86-64 the platform will launch as 32-bit only. There's no support for alternate OSes at this point.

The SoC doesn't support SATA, just eMMC like most other smartphone/tablet SoCs. This is a bit of a disappointment as most eMMC controllers are pretty bad, but Intel tells us they've been working to improve things with the controllers that are out there.

There's no USB 3.0 support, Clovertrail just supports two USB 2.0 ports (OTG + xHCI, although OTG isn't supported by Windows 8). OEMs can obviously integrate hubs in any docking stations they may build.

On Pricing and ARM

Intel claims that there's no reason that Atom based Windows 8 tablets, from a hardware bill of materials perspective, should be any more expensive than their ARM based counterparts. The important takeaway is that Intel is significantly reducing the price of the Atom Z2760 due to competitive pressure from ARM. Most ARM smartphone SoCs seem to be priced in the – range, and I'd expect the Z2760 to fall somewhere in that range. Intel has shipped cheap CPUs in the past, but I don't know that they've ever shipped something this cheap. ARM's impact on Intel is measurable, it is the new AMD.

On Performance and Power

Microsoft isn't allowing any hands on performance of Windows 8/RT tablets yet so we don't have any of our own performance data to share. Intel did share some SPEC CPU2000 data it ran on its own with competing platforms. The data below wasn't generated by us so take it with a gigantic grain of salt:

Intel Generated SPEC CPU2000 Comparison – Normalized to Snapdragon S4   SPECint SPECint_rate Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 (1.5GHz) 1.00 1.00 Dual-Core 40nm ARM Cortex A9 (1.8GHz) 1.14 1.14 NVIDIA Tegra 3 (1.3GHz) 0.86 1.25 Intel Atom Z2760 (1.8GHz) 1.20 1.54

Everything here is normalized to the performance of Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 (dual-core Krait, 1.5GHz). Basically it shows a tangible advantage for Clovertrail. That's not too hard to believe given what we've seen in the phone space, although we'll have to wait and see once we get our hands on final hardware. Sunspider scores at or below 800ms should be possible as that's what we've seen on preproduction hardware already.

We've already established that Medfield is competitive from a power standpoint with ARM based SoCs. It doesn't offer the best power characteristics, but it's hardly the worst. Middle of the road is the best way to put it. We don't have (and aren't allowed to have) a Clovertrail based Windows 8 tablet yet, so we'll have to reserve full analysis until then. However, Intel did share some early data with us from its own testing that points to Clovertrail battery life being competitive with other platforms:

Intel Generated Power Consumption Comparison   Idle (Screen On) Web Browsing HD Video Playback ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity 2.7W 3.4W 3.1W Apple iPad 2 2.5W 2.6W 2.5W Apple iPad (2012) 4.3W 4.5W 5.9W Intel Clovertrail FFRD 2.3W 2.8W 3.0W

Intel standardized on 200 nits for all of its battery life tests, however I wasn't allowed to study/mirror the workloads and test procedure. The data looks good for Intel. Clovertrail's power consumption appears to be lower than NVIDIA's Tegra 3 and a little worse than Apple's iPad 2. This all looks quite plausible, I'm curious to see how power consumption would compare in Intel's tests to Qualcomm's S4. We'll find out for ourselves in due time.

Final Words

Intel was pretty light on Clovertrail details other than what we've published here. The real work begins once we start getting hardware late next month. The biggest question is really whether or not the OEMs will get pricing right for these tablets. An affordably priced Windows 8 tablet running Clovertrail can be very compelling for someone looking to carry a single device instead of a tablet + notebook. As with most things however, I am worried that we'll have to wait at least one more generation for perfection. I can't tell if I'm being cynical or realistic. Let's hope I'm surprised come October 26th.

For much of the past year we've been hearing that Intel's Atom for Windows 8 tablets is going to be the one to beat. Ivy Bridge (and later, Haswell) will exist at the high-end of the Windows 8 tablet space but if you want Intel's answer to ARM based Windows RT tablets it's going to come from the Atom lineup. It's still too early to talk about pricing, but expect Atom based Windows 8 tablets to exist in the sub-0 space. Exactly how low they go will depend entirely on what the OEMs decide to ship at. My hope is for prices to start around 9 rather than much higher but we'll see just how seriously the Windows 8 OEMs are going to take this launch.

Intel's Atom for Windows 8 tablets has gone under the codename Clovertrail for quite some time. Today it gets official: the first Clovertrail SoC is Intel's Atom Z2760. Following similar naming to Medfield's Atom Z2460, there's a lot more that's shared between Clovertrail and its smartphone counterpart.

Similar to its approach with Medfield, Intel built a Windows 8/Clovertrail form factor reference design. The 8mm thick 10.1-inch tablet was built by a single ODM, but four manufacturers total are allowed to reuse those designs as they see fit. The FFRD approach isn't as necessary here as it was with Medfield because most of the traditional PC OEMs are already used to working with Intel. Given Intel's intense focus on driving platform power down however, building a reference design that others can follow makes a lot of sense. We'll actually see even more of this with Haswell next year.

From an availability standpoint we'll see the first Atom based Windows 8 tablets this fall. Intel announced design wins with Acer, ASUS, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, LG, Samsung and ZTE. The thinnest tablets will measure 8.5mm in thickness and weigh as little as 1.5 lbs. Not all Atom based Windows 8 tablets will be available on October 26th, but we'll see them starting a few weeks later.

Atom's big promise of course is ARM based tablet pricing with full x86 backwards compatibility, allowing the use of virtually all of your existing legacy Windows 7. It's a pretty compelling sell. If Intel can deliver the same (or better) performance/battery life compared to the ARM based Windows RT tablets, while preserving backwards compatibility Clovertrail would seem like a no-brainer. Simple solutions are rarely so simple, so we'll have to see this one play out in the market to be sure. Until then, we have some much needed architectural detail on Clovertrail and the Atom Z2760.

The Architecture Medfield vs. Clovertrail   Intel Atom Z2460 Intel Atom Z2760 Platform Codename Medfield Clovertrail OS/Platform Target Android Smartphones Windows 8 Tablets Manufacturing Process 32nm SoC (P1269) 32nm SoC (P1269) CPU Cores/Threads 1 / 2 2 / 4 CPU Clock up to 2.0GHz up to 1.8GHz GPU PowerVR SGX 540 PowerVR SGX 545 GPU Clock 400MHz 533MHz Memory Interface 2 x 32-bit LPDDR2 2 x 32-bit LPDDR2

Clovertrail is the platform name, the single-chip SoC is called Cloverview. The architecture is very similar to Medfield's Penwell SoC. The most obvious differences are in the CPU and GPU configuration. Cloverview features two 32nm Saltwell Atom cores instead of one in Medfield/Penwell. These two cores run at up to 1.8GHz, a slightly lower clock speed compared to the Penwell that ships in Motorola's RAZR i. Each core has its own private 512KB L2 cache.

The GPU is a PowerVR SGX 545 from Imagination Technologies, clocked at a very high 533MHz. Direct3D feature level 9_3 is officially supported. Intel claims that the GPU is fed by a better engine in Clovertrail/Cloverview than it is in Medfield, however any additional details were impossible to come by.

The memory controller remains a dual-channel LPDDR2-800 design. Most tablets will see two 1GB devices populating the channels. Package on package (PoP) stacks will be used for DRAM and SoC integration, similar to what you see in a smartphone.

The other changes are more subtle. Video encode/decode is handled by IP licensed from Imagination Technologies, however the encoder is newer than what was used in Medfield. Clovertrail uses the same Silicon Hive ISP from Medfield. It supports two cameras (2MP/8MP) and burst mode.

The platform supports true connected standby, meaning Intel's new S0ix sleep states (similar to what was announced in Haswell). I realized I haven't yet detailed what these mean yet but in short on DC power you can expect polling roughly every 30 seconds for new data (incoming emails, tweets, etc…) delivering an experience somewhat similar to a smartphone. Off-SoC device drivers need to support Windows 8 run time power management (RTPM) to support these new low power sleep states. Intel claims that in its lowest platform sleep state (S0i3) the SoC's power consumption is below 2mW.

Connected standby is only currently supported by 32-bit Windows 8, so although Clovertrail supports x86-64 the platform will launch as 32-bit only. There's no support for alternate OSes at this point.

The SoC doesn't support SATA, just eMMC like most other smartphone/tablet SoCs. This is a bit of a disappointment as most eMMC controllers are pretty bad, but Intel tells us they've been working to improve things with the controllers that are out there.

There's no USB 3.0 support, Clovertrail just supports two USB 2.0 ports (OTG + xHCI, although OTG isn't supported by Windows 8). OEMs can obviously integrate hubs in any docking stations they may build.

On Pricing and ARM

Intel claims that there's no reason that Atom based Windows 8 tablets, from a hardware bill of materials perspective, should be any more expensive than their ARM based counterparts. The important takeaway is that Intel is significantly reducing the price of the Atom Z2760 due to competitive pressure from ARM. Most ARM smartphone SoCs seem to be priced in the – range, and I'd expect the Z2760 to fall somewhere in that range. Intel has shipped cheap CPUs in the past, but I don't know that they've ever shipped something this cheap. ARM's impact on Intel is measurable, it is the new AMD.

On Performance and Power

Microsoft isn't allowing any hands on performance of Windows 8/RT tablets yet so we don't have any of our own performance data to share. Intel did share some SPEC CPU2000 data it ran on its own with competing platforms. The data below wasn't generated by us so take it with a gigantic grain of salt:

Intel Generated SPEC CPU2000 Comparison – Normalized to Snapdragon S4   SPECint SPECint_rate Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 (1.5GHz) 1.00 1.00 Dual-Core 40nm ARM Cortex A9 (1.8GHz) 1.14 1.14 NVIDIA Tegra 3 (1.3GHz) 0.86 1.25 Intel Atom Z2760 (1.8GHz) 1.20 1.54

Everything here is normalized to the performance of Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 (dual-core Krait, 1.5GHz). Basically it shows a tangible advantage for Clovertrail. That's not too hard to believe given what we've seen in the phone space, although we'll have to wait and see once we get our hands on final hardware. Sunspider scores at or below 800ms should be possible as that's what we've seen on preproduction hardware already.

We've already established that Medfield is competitive from a power standpoint with ARM based SoCs. It doesn't offer the best power characteristics, but it's hardly the worst. Middle of the road is the best way to put it. We don't have (and aren't allowed to have) a Clovertrail based Windows 8 tablet yet, so we'll have to reserve full analysis until then. However, Intel did share some early data with us from its own testing that points to Clovertrail battery life being competitive with other platforms:

Intel Generated Power Consumption Comparison   Idle (Screen On) Web Browsing HD Video Playback ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity 2.7W 3.4W 3.1W Apple iPad 2 2.5W 2.6W 2.5W Apple iPad (2012) 4.3W 4.5W 5.9W Intel Clovertrail FFRD 2.3W 2.8W 3.0W

Intel standardized on 200 nits for all of its battery life tests, however I wasn't allowed to study/mirror the workloads and test procedure. The data looks good for Intel. Clovertrail's power consumption appears to be lower than NVIDIA's Tegra 3 and a little worse than Apple's iPad 2. This all looks quite plausible, I'm curious to see how power consumption would compare in Intel's tests to Qualcomm's S4. We'll find out for ourselves in due time.

Final Words

Intel was pretty light on Clovertrail details other than what we've published here. The real work begins once we start getting hardware late next month. The biggest question is really whether or not the OEMs will get pricing right for these tablets. An affordably priced Windows 8 tablet running Clovertrail can be very compelling for someone looking to carry a single device instead of a tablet + notebook. As with most things however, I am worried that we'll have to wait at least one more generation for perfection. I can't tell if I'm being cynical or realistic. Let's hope I'm surprised come October 26th.

CHINESE SYSTEM BUILDER Lenovo predicts that Windows RT tablets will be up to 0 cheaper than those running Windows 8.

Microsoft’s Windows RT is the firm’s branding for Windows 8 on ARM based systems and is what the firm has chosen to install on its own Surface tablet. Now Lenovo, one of Microsoft’s Windows RT launch partners has said that tablets running Windows 8 will be up to 0 cheaper than x86 based tablets running Windows 8.

David Schmoock, head of Lenovo’s North America operations told Bloomberg that Windows RT tablets will be cut-price consumer devices. Schmoock said, “RT will play in consumer and retail at very aggressive price points. It will do well but it’s going to be more of a consumer price point play to begin with.”

According to Schmoock, Windows 8 tablets will cost between 0 and 0, meaning that Windows RT devices should tip up for aroud 0, in the same ballpark as most Android tablets.

Schmoock’s comments are discouraging for both AMD and Intel as both firms will try to win business in the Windows 8 tablet market. While Schmoock cited application compatibility as a strength of Windows 8, Apple’s Ipad has shown that compatibility with existing applications isn’t needed to generated huge sales.

Intel got more bad news from Schmoock as he claimed that the chipmaker will fail to meet its ultrabook sales targets. Intel expected that ultrabook branded laptops would capture 40 percent of the consumer laptop market in 2012, but Schmoock said that figure is more likely to be between 20 and 25 percent.

If Schmoock’s comments turn out to be correct, and given his position in the world’s second largest PC maker you would have to say that they carry considerable weight, then AMD and Intel could find that Windows 8 won’t deliver the year end sales boost they were hoping for. µ