Chip giant Intel has announced that it is bringing its Xeon brand, previously the preserve of servers and high-end workstations, to laptops for the first time.
Intel’s Xeon chips are typically found in servers and workstations and while laptops featuring selected model of Xeon chips have been around for a few years now, these are typically sold as ‘portable workstations’ and feature battery lives measured in minutes. Now, Intel has announced a specific Xeon variant for notebooks – the first such chip to be built with battery-powered systems in mind.
The Xeon E3-1500M v5, Intel explains, is based on the next-generation Skylake microarchitecture, and comes with platform support for error correcting code (ECC) memory, hardware-assisted security systems, Thunderbolt 3 with USB Type-C connector, and Intel’s enterprise-centric vPro feature. The company has, however, stated that it is ‘not quite ready to unveil all the details,’ suggesting that the chip will be available to customers immediately.
The shift comes as market watcher IDC reports that mobile workstation sales are on the up, rising every quarter since last year. While many of these systems will already have featured desktop-centric Xeon chips, Intel clearly feels that the market could benefit from a mobile-specific Xeon variant. The company has not, however, offered details of clock speeds, overall performance, nor thermal design profile (TDP) for the new chip family.
