Intel launches next-generation Alder Lake laptop chip at CES 2021

Intel demonstrated its next-generation laptop chip Monday at CES 2021, a disk code called Alder Lake, which should be faster if you need performance and energy-saving if you need better battery life. The processor will arrive in the second half of 2021.

The brief demonstration, during an online press conference hosted by Intel’s consumer chip leader Greg Bryant, showed that Windows is working on the new processor. Intel has shared almost no details about the chip, but getting it up and running is an important step in showing that the chip – and the manufacturing process used to make it – are expiring. As Intel experiences years of manufacturing problems, the screen is more important than usual to telegraph confidence in the chip.

Alder Lake will arrive in a dramatically different environment than its predecessors, the Ice Lake of 2019 and the Tiger Lake of 2020. Apple is now moving its Mac family off Intel chips in favor of its own M-series processors, to begin with with the M1 in new MacBook Air and smaller MacBook Pro laptops. These machines set new expectations for the performance and power of laptops. They do not run Windows, but will appeal to Apple loyalists and may attract Windows PC owners.

To enhance the prospects of Alder Lake, Intel has turned to a trick used in smartphones and in Apple’s M1. It uses power-nipping processing cores for moments when the laptop is not busy or needs to perform background tasks with low priority and faster, but more powerful heat, for moments when performance is important, such as playing or launching a new app start.

“It combines high-performance and high-efficiency cores into a single product,” Bryant said. “It will be the foundation for computer and mobile processors for leadership that deliver smarter, faster and more efficient computer uses.”

A chip that drives both laptops and desktops is important. Intel’s most advanced 10th and 11th generation Core processors only worked in mobile processors. Intel used earlier designs that could turn up to higher clock speeds for machines that were always plugged into a wall socket.

Intel has announced that some processors will also arrive earlier. Intel’s new 11th generation H-series processors for super-thin laptops should arrive in the first half of the year. Also new is the N-series Pentium Silver and Celeron processors for the cost-sensitive market for student laptops. These chips are now built with the latest manufacturing process from Intel, which can create electronic elements with a width of just 10 billionths of a meter – 10 nm.

Intel’s shift from the older 14nm process to the 10nm took years and is still slow. Alder Lake will use an updated version of the process that provides faster transistors, an important step in keeping with the top speed of the 14nm process.

Apple does not build its own chips, but it takes advantage of the capabilities of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., which is leading Intel with 7nm and now 5nm manufacturing processes. Intel’s 10 nm is comparable to the 7 nm process of TSMC, say disk analysts. With the miniaturization benefits of the new process, Apple was able to pack more and more processing circuits, while Intel had to reuse existing designs.