Intel working on 20 Windows 8 tablets

Intel had revealed last month that they were working on 20 tablets powered by its Clover Trail and running on the Windows 8 operating system. This information was let known by Hermann Eul, President of Intel Mobile Communications Group, during an interview at the Computex trade show in Taipei. These words have been echoed once more by Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini during an investor call where he announced that there are 20 Windows 8 tablets being prepared by them that are based on the Clover Trail Atom SOC.

Over 140 Ivy Bridge based designs in the works as well

As per a report by The Verge, the announcement by Intel CEO, Paul Otellini states, “Ultrabooks continue to build momentum, and achieved our volume goals in the first half. We are very pleased with the level of innovation and invention being brought into this category, and are now tracking over 140 Ivy Bridge-based designs in the pipeline. Of those, more than 40 will be touch-enabled, and a dozen will be convertibles. With visibility into this many designs, we are confident that we’ll see $699 systems at retail this fall. We are also tracking more than 20 Windows 8 tablet designs based on our low-power and low-cost Clover Trail Atom SOC, in addition to a number of Core-based tablets.” From the looks of it, it appears that the Atom SoCs are going to be used heavily to propel the success of the Windows 8 tablets.

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Last month, when Hermann Eul revealed that Intel was working on 20 tablets, he had stated that their customers have 20 designs in their labs based on Clover Trail and that the company plans to make the most of the tablet which are loaded with Windows 8 operating system that are optimized for a touch experience.

The thickness of the Clover Trail-based tablets is said to be less than 9mm and they weigh less than 680 grams. They will also provide more than nine hours of battery. “The real tablet market starts with Windows 8,” Eul said. “The Clover Trail tablets will be targeted at consumers and businesses, and offer long battery life.” These tablets based on Clover Trail will also support 3G/4G LTE capabilities and enhanced security and manageability features. Most tablets and smartphones these days come equipped with ARM chips and the Clover Trail tablets are said to compete with tablets that run on Windows RT OS, which is the OS version using ARM processors.

To further bolster the role of the Clover Trail-based Windows 8 tablets, Eul went on to add that the x86 architecture was better than that of Windows RT because current Windows applications would not work on the tablets running on ARM processors. He went on to state that this was where Clover Trail has an edge over competing architectures.

Apart from the Windows 8 tablets, Otellini also spoke about Ultrabooks and that the notebooks designed to compete with the MacBook Air range from Apple have been well received by manufacturers. He went on to add that they have over 140 Ivy Bridge-based designs in the works as well with more than 40 of them being touch enabled and over 12 being convertibles.