Tech Preview 2012: The PC's Bright Future

Posted 12/12/2011 at 2:31pm | by The Maximum PC Staff and Loyd Case

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Ultrabooks

The Everyman's Macbook Air

According to Intel, 40 percent of all consumer laptops sold next year will be Ultrabooks. In fact, the company has staked $300 million on it. That’s the figure behind Intel’s Capital Ultrabook Fund, which goes to companies that develop hardware and software technologies to enhance the Ultrabook experience.

So what is an Ultrabook? By Intel’s own definition, it’s a notebook that’s no more than 21mm (or .83 inches) thick; that features at least five hours of battery life, but preferably as much as eight hours (as measured by MobileMark 2007); that can resume power from hibernation in seven seconds or less using Intel’s Rapid Start technology; and that exposes hardware features for Intel’s Anti-Theft and Identity Protection technology in the BIOS/firmware.

Acer's 13.3-inch Aspire S3 is a half-inch thick, weighs less than three pounds, features a Core i5 CPU, a 320GB HDD, and a 20GB SSD, and costs $900.

The cornerstone of the Ultrabook experience, however, is an Intel CULV processor. The category will launch at the end of 2011 with second-gen Sandy Bridge CPUs, but it’s expected to really take off when Ivy Bridge CPUs are released in 2012. Intel believes that the combined power efficiency and performance capabilities of its low-voltage procs with integrated graphics—when packaged in a sleek, highly portable form factor—will make Ultrabooks a compelling alternative to tablets.

Of course, another very important factor to the Ultrabook equation is price. After all, no one is going to pass over a $200 (thanks, Amazon!)–$500 tablet in favor of a $1,300 thin-and-light, no matter how capable or energy efficient it might be. That’s why Intel is strongly encouraging its OEM partners to price their Ultrabooks below $1,000. At that price point, Intel believes, consumers can be swayed by value.

Price, however, is not a requirement for the Ultrabook designation. And indeed, at least a couple of the early models slated for 2011 release appear to be priced at over a grand. Lenovo’s U300s, for example, is expected to retail at $1,200 for the base model (1.6GHz Core i5-2467M and 128GB SSD) and $1,600 for the step up (1.6GHz Core i7-2657M and 256GB SSD). Pricing for Toshiba’s upcoming Z830 Ultrabook has yet to be announced. But with Acer’s Aspire S3 debuting at $900, we might see price pressure come to bear on future models.

As Intel sees it, a ramp up in production, the development of new, focused technologies (à la that $300 million fund), and the performance enhancements of Ivy Bridge could make Ultrabooks the must-have mainstream device of 2012.

Tablets

We Need More Power!

In the span of nine months, 2011's tablet SoC of choice, the Nvidia 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2, has gone from blazing to blasé. Expect 2012 to be the year of the quad-core tablet. As early as February of this year, both Nvidia and Texas Instruments had announced the early stages of their quad-core mobile chip development.

Nvidia's Project Kal-El uses Variable Symmetric Multiprocessing (vSMP) and promises tantalizing benefits, such as lower power consumption, higher performance per watt, faster website load times, console-quality gaming, faster multitasking, etc. It packs four ARM Cortex 9 CPUs, a fifth companion core for low-power operation, and a 12-core GPU onto one chip. CoreMark benchmark results showing roughly double the performance from a Tegra 2 to Kal-El were run with 1GHz cores in the Kal-El. We expect those cores to clock in at 1.5GHz when the Kal-El hits production smartphones and tablets.

Nvidia's quad-core Project Kal-El SoC adds a fifth "companion" CPU to handle low-power and background tasks, such as email syncs and social media updates.

TI's quad-core OMAP 5 touts similar benefits and will comprise two ARM Cortex-A15 cores (up to 2GHz) and two slower ARM Cortex-M4 cores.

Typical 10-inch Android tablet display resolutions of 1280x800 will no doubt ramp up next year. Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan thinks the resolutions may double the present number of total pixels, and Ted Theocheung, VP of the PC division at Synaptics, believes tablets will gravitate to full 1080p resolution (1920x1080) as early as 2012 or as late as 2013.

However, too much added resolution increases the price of the display, power consumption, and processor load. Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate Technologies says, "A good technical and marketing compromise for tablet resolution is 200ppi. For the 10.1-inch Android tablets, 1792x1120 works out to 209ppi."

Soneira adds that the first tablets with OLED displays should debut in 2012, although at high-end prices. Meanwhile, high-performance in-plane switching (IPS) LCDs like those in the iPad 2 and Kindle Fire will become the norm as manufacturers forsake the inferior STN LCDs seen on the Motorola Xoom and Acer Iconia.

Theocheung brings further good tidings, saying that tablets will become thinner. "The removal of a discrete touch sensor will help reduce the thickness," he says, "allowing the overall stack-up of the traditional touch sensor module to shrink down to as thin as 0.55mm." Theocheung's work with Microsoft also foretells of new multitouch breakthroughs in Windows 8 that will allow slate computers to perform full-time finger tracking of up to 10 fingers, whereas most current models top out at five.

"The whole spectrum of hardware innovation that you see in the PC space will be carried over to the tablet world," Rathakrishnan predicts.

Graphics

Will GPUs Inside CPUS Take Over the Entry Level?

Prices on graphics cards have seen massive cuts in the past few months. While that’s great for gamers looking to upgrade, it’s also a sign that new GPUs are on the horizon. When are we likely to see next-generation GPUs and graphics cards?

PROCESS PERILS

That’s a tough question for several reasons. One of the key manufacturers of GPU chips, TSMC, is prepping its next-generation 28nm manufacturing process, which is likely online now. Demand has been extremely high, though, forcing the company to hike prices, and thus pushing back shipments of 28nm GPUs.

That said, AMD demonstrated its 28nm next-generation GPU at its Fusion 2011 event in Taiwan in October. And a leaked mobile GPU roadmap indicates that AMD products will ship in early 2012 for mobile applications. The AMD 7000-series desktop graphics cards will also likely make an early 2012 appearance.

RAMBUS RETURNS?

What’s interesting about AMD’s new architecture is a greater emphasis on compute capabilities. While the 6000 series was no slouch on the compute front, that GPU design wasn’t as tuned for compute as Nvidia’s Fermi architecture. AMD’s goal is to share the same memory space as the CPU, making it easier for software developers to write apps that utilize the GPU—although the 7000 series may not quite hit that target. The other interesting tidbit leaked recently is that AMD might be using RAMBUS XDR2 memory, running at up to 8,000MHz effective throughput.

There is some confusion about the process technology. One leak showed early 7000-series GPUs being built on the existing 40nm technology. This isn’t unprecedented; the Radeon HD 6970 was originally targeted for 28nm, but ended up shipping on 40nm. Whatever process technology is used, the lowest-end card to show up on any roadmap is a Radeon HD 7950. More on that in a moment.

Nvidia is also busy as a bee, prepping its next-generation graphics cards based on its Kepler architecture. It’s looking like the first samples of Kepler GPUs are on track for a late 2011 delivery to Nvidia. That means a late winter or early spring 2012 ship date for retail cards, at best. Like AMD’s new GPUs, Kepler will be built on 28nm. Nvidia’s been fairly quiet about Kepler, unlike its openness regarding Fermi, so little is actually known about features. Kepler is likely to be a significant enhancement to Fermi, but not a complete architecture redesign.

So it’s likely we’ll see midrange and high-end graphics cards in the first quarter of 2012. Meanwhile, entry level graphics are going through a quiet revolution.

THE FATE OF ENTRY LEVEL

Part of that is AMD’s push for Fusion. We’ve already seen the first Fusion APUs from AMD, and while the traditional x86 CPU performance is somewhat anemic, the GPU is clearly stronger than any previous integrated GPU. Offering up to 400 Radeon GPU cores, the GPU inside the higher-end 3800 series APUs gives a tantalizing glimpse into the future of PC graphics.

For its part, Intel made gains with the Intel HD Graphics on Sandy Bridge, particularly on the video side. When Ivy Bridge debuts in early 2012, expect the CPU itself to be an incremental improvement, but graphics to be significantly improved, offering full DirectX 11 support, double the compute horsepower, and greater bandwidth. Ivy Bridge will likely be “good enough” for entry level gamers.

High-end gamers, of course, will still want to add a discrete graphics card, but mainstream users may not need additional GPU horsepower. Intel has hinted that Ivy Bridge’s GPU will run OpenCL and DirectCompute applications entirely on the GPU cores, which would be a significant departure for an Intel GPU.

PREP YOUR WALLETS

So, yes, if you’re looking to upgrade, prices are very attractive for current-generation cards, but it might pay to hold off until new midrange and high-end graphics cards from both AMD and Nvidia partners arrive, certainly by spring of 2012. After all, every time we think that GPUs have gotten fast enough, games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and The Witcher 2 come along that crush current-card performance.

Looking Forward

The PC of 2013

Now you know what the PC is likely to look like in 2012, but what kind of rig will enthusiasts be rocking in 2013? To figure it out, we gaze into our crystal ball. We suspect LGA2011 motherboards will remain the platform of choice. By then, Intel should have introduced Ivy Bridge-E. We suspect that the thermal savings from the switch to 22nm will help Intel get the eight-core version of Ivy Bridge within reasonable thermal limits.

By 2013, DDR4 will still be in gestation, so we don’t think our machines will yet sport the next-gen memory. We do, however, suspect that RAM prices will have come down drastically. So, while a fully loaded Sandy Bridge-E machine might pack 32GB of RAM—eight 4GB modules—(for just $200), a 2013 Ivy Bridge-E rig might pack 64GB—eight 8GB modules—at proportionate pricing.

By 2013, PCIe 3.0 GPUs will have long been available, but we won’t even hazard a guess as to which brand—AMD or Nvidia—will be on top. SSD’s will have grown, but will be bottlenecked by SATA 6Gb/s, still. By then, it’s possible prices will have dropped so you can get a 480GB SSD for $250, though. HDD space will remain static at roughly 5TB, which it will hit in 2012.