Intel 'North Cape' Fourth Generation Core Reference Ultrabook
The laptop, codenamed "North Cape," isn't a real product; it's a machine that Intel's built to both test and showcase the capabilities of the Fourth Generation of Core processors (codenamed "Haswell"). Haswell chips are scheduled for general release midyear.
Intel had a few of the reference laptops at its press conference here in Vegas, and we got a little hands-on time with them. It's an impressively light device — noticeably easier to hold than like-sized laptops of today like the Lenovo Yoga. The screen is 13.3 inches, but not all the time.
What's that, you ask? The screen size changes? Indeed it does: North Cape is also a convertible, with the monitor able to detach from the keyboard to become a tablet that's just 0.39 inch thick. However, the 13.3-inch screen runs almost to the edge of the bezel, not leaving much room for thumbs. But with the press of a button, the laptop scales the display down to an 11-inch size. That's new.
North Cape's biggest improvement over the previous generation of machines will be battery life. Intel says that the jump in battery life between the current Core 3 machines and Core 4 will be the largest in the company's history. The reference laptop is said to get up to 13 hours of battery life while docked (there are batteries in both the keyboard and tablet/monitor).
The extended battery life is a consequence of Intel's aggressive move to increase the efficiency of its chips as it changes the architecture. Chips in Ultrabooks that debuted last year consume about 17 watts, though Intel recently shrunk that down to 7 watts for some Core 3 designs, such as the Lenovo Yoga 11S. Haswell will bring it down even further.
Ports on the back include a pair of USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI jack and a proprietary power port.
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