Power efficiency of laptop CPUs to be up 25 times by 2020, says Intel

Speed and performance isn’t all that’s on Intel’s mind and this was made public in its 2011 Corporate Responsibility Report. Intel has now set its goals for the decade and there’s clear emphasis on going green and improving efficiency. Amongst a whole list of goals, is a clear mention of improving power efficiency of processors for notebooks by some 25 times from the levels of 2010. This, of course is also important in other ways, considering Intel has to catch up with ARM when it comes to battery life as well as performance offered for smartphones and tablets. But they have taken a step with their recent Medfield-powered devices. Lava was the first to launch a phone, the X900, which we reviewed recently and found its battery efficiency to be average, at best.

Intel sets new green goals

Notebooks have relatively poor power efficiency with most offering between two to four hours of power back-up, depending on the applications run on them. Intel’s Atom-powered netbooks offered way superior battery life in comparison. Their latest introduction to the processor family - Ivy Bridge was launched recently and Ultrabooks and notebooks based on the new architecture are slowly hitting the market. Ivy Bridge is expected to offer a boost in efficiency, results of which should be evident in these Ultrabooks. 

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

Some of the other goals by Intel, included reduction of greenhouse gases emitted, along with conservation of water and reduced chemical waste. Intel sets environment goals for a decade and it has put in more than $58 million, since 2001. More than 1563 projects on energy conservation were undertaken resulting in a total of some 825 million kWh of energy. All of these projects also helped in lowering costs. Michael Jacobson, director of corporate responsibility at Intel said, “At Intel, corporate responsibility is a crucial component to the overall growth of our business. From product to customer to employee to environment, corporate responsibility allows Intel to have a greater and more influential impact on industries, communities and the global economy.”