Technology

Intel’s new processors to give biggest bump in PC performance in years

Eighth generation of Core line will provide 40 per cent jump on predecessor

The Intel facility at Leixlip, Co Dublin. Photograph: Dave Meehan/The Irish Times

Mon Aug 21 2017 - 20:37

Intel Corp, the biggest maker of semiconductors, has said its new processors are going to deliver the biggest bump in performance that personal computer users have experienced in years.

The eighth generation of its Core line will provide as much as a 40 per cent jump over its predecessor, according to the California-based company. That is a leap in performance that arguably only happens once in a decade, Intel said. New laptops built on the chips will come to market in September.

Intel, whose chips are the heart of more than 80 per cent of the world’s PCs, has been remarkably successful in a market that’s been declining since it peaked in 2011, and is now more than 100 million units smaller than it was.

In the second quarter Intel’s PC chip unit posted a 12 per cent increase in sales even as overall shipments of PCs continued their slide.

READ MORE

Intel’s winning strategy – one that the new lineup will try to keep going – has been to persuade consumers that they need to buy up, spending extra on computers with more expensive chips even though they are not replacing their old PCs as often as they did.

Performance

The new range of chips from Intel will provide a massive leap forward in performance compared with the 450 million PCs that are currently in use and that are more than five years old, Intel said.

In that period processors have become twice as fast at crunching data and the machines themselves have shrunk to be half as thick as they were.

Editing 4K video shot on a GoPro camera might not even be possible on older machines, while with the new chips the time needed to do such tasks will be reduced to single-digit minutes versus tens of minutes on previous generation machines. – Bloomberg

LATEST STORIES