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Intel wasn't "fixing" power consumption, but rather it simply wasn't a critical requirement: The CPU was often a small part of the overall platform power consum

Intel wasn't "fixing" power consumption, but rather it simply wasn't a critical requirement: The CPU was often a small part of the overall platform power consumption, and people favoured performance over efficiency. Obviously tablets and mobile devices change that equation, so Intel adapted. Intel is in a difficult situation with their products however in that one of their biggest concerns is competing with themselves too much. Regarding the GPUs, Apple doesn't have the fastest mobile GPU - PowerVR from Imagination Technologies does. Intel can use a PowerVR SGX554MP4 if they wanted to integrate it. Is it better than an HD 4000? I honestly have no idea as I've never seen them actually compared (and note that the best mobile GPUs have miserable performance compared to discrete desktop GPUs, so don't assume that because the HD 4000 doesn't compete with a $400 gaming card that it can't compete with an Adreno or PowerVR). EDIT: Just blew my mind to learn that the HD 4000 on the Intel SoC is a PowerVR GPU.

dragontamer 14y ago
HD4000 is far more powerful than a PowerVR SGX554MP4, or whatever mobile chips are out there. http://cdn.itproportal.com/photos/ibvssb_original.jpg http://cdn.itproportal.com/photos/ibvssb_original.jpg The HD4000 is also ~20% of a 166mm^2 Ivy Bridge on 22nm. If HD4000 were made on 32nm process, it'd be well over 60mm^2 alone. The PowerVR SGX554's 8.8mm^2 at 40nm, or approximately 5.6mm^2 at 32nm. The Intel HD4000 is about 12x larger than PowerVR SGX554. They just aren't in the same class... they're no where close to the same class. -------------- BTW: the Clovertrail Atom uses PowerVR Graphics. Intel could have bought any of the PowerVR designs, but they chose a significantly weaker one for some reason. -------------- With regards to your edit: The Atom doesn't have an HD4000 at all.
- corresation 14y ago
  Indeed, I was more dovetailing off of the comparisons between the Surface RT and Surface Pro, where the latter has the HD 4000, and the GP's discussion about "Intel's" verus "Apple's" GPUs. As you mentioned in their nascent "mobile" chips they're using PowerVR (as I mentioned, apparently even the HD 4000 is licensed and derived from PowerVR), and they have all of the same capacity as Apple to choose whichever GPU they want.
  - dragontamer 14y ago
    Makes sense. Although for your last comment... http://semiaccurate.com/2013/01/02/apples-silicon-design-capabilities-increase/#.USeOomfVKUk http://semiaccurate.com/2013/01/02/apples-silicon-design-cap... For those without a subscription. That site is spreading a rumor that Apple has bought out a top-tier AMD grpahics team. Considering that Apple is now designing their own chips, and just headhunted an entire AMD (former ATI) team, we can see where Apple is going. Apple does not want to be relying on commodity parts. They are positioning themselves to build a custom GPU a few years down the line. So Intel currently can catch up to Apple GPU performance by just buying the latest PowerVR graphics. But will they be able to do that in the future, if Apple creates their own top-tier custom GPU?
mtgx 14y ago
That wasn't my point. I know they use PowerVR GPU's, but they never use the latest ones. In fact they always use very old PowerVR GPU's. They had nothing last year that was even close to the other GPU's let alone the ones in iPads and the iPhone 5, and they will have nothing this year to compete with Apple's PowerVR Series 6 GPU. Their PowerVR drivers suck, too. Why even bring the Intel HD 4000 in the discussion? We're talking about Atom here. Not a $200 17W TDP Core ULV Core i5 chip. If you want to compare HD4000 do it against Nvidia and AMD's own chips in laptops.
- corresation 14y ago
  That wasn't my point. The GPU is almost a drop-and-play component on an SoC. Given that Intel could very rapidly incorporate any licensed GPU, such as the best of the best that Apple uses, what exactly is your point? You clearly are trying to hold the notion that Intel is so far behind, led off course by their energy quest that now they can't catch up on the GPU, yet they have exactly the same capacity as Apple does (actually let me amend that -- as the world's most advanced fab and chipmaker, they have dramatically more capacity than Apple does). So why haven't they? Well thus far the only Atom-powered mobile devices have been pitched essentially to the third world. Intel is going through the mobile growing pains in the very low cost market, and when they decide to go for the mainstream I suspect that -- just like Apple -- they can decide to go for GPU performance as well. I mentioned the HD 4000 given that you oddly decided to talk about "Intel's" and "Apple's" GPUs, and while you've quite rapidly shifted course to a more enlightened position now based upon reading other replies, I suspect you weren't quite aware of what the actual GPU sources were.
- ajross 14y ago
  Note that the "latest" PVR cores are really just wider variants of the early ones. GPUs are mostly commoditized at this point, and short of increasing the core count and clock speed there's really not much that can be done architecturally to improve them. All of the "PVR SGX 5[345]5(MP[24])" are really just the same architecture.

dragontamer 14y ago

HD4000 is far more powerful than a PowerVR SGX554MP4, or whatever mobile chips are out there. http://cdn.itproportal.com/photos/ibvssb_original.jpg http://cdn.itproportal.com/photos/ibvssb_original.jpg The HD4000 is also ~20% of a 166mm^2 Ivy Bridge on 22nm. If HD4000 were made on 32nm process, it'd be well over 60mm^2 alone. The PowerVR SGX554's 8.8mm^2 at 40nm, or approximately 5.6mm^2 at 32nm. The Intel HD4000 is about 12x larger than PowerVR SGX554. They just aren't in the same class... they're no where close to the same class. -------------- BTW: the Clovertrail Atom uses PowerVR Graphics. Intel could have bought any of the PowerVR designs, but they chose a significantly weaker one for some reason. -------------- With regards to your edit: The Atom doesn't have an HD4000 at all.

corresation 14y ago
Indeed, I was more dovetailing off of the comparisons between the Surface RT and Surface Pro, where the latter has the HD 4000, and the GP's discussion about "Intel's" verus "Apple's" GPUs. As you mentioned in their nascent "mobile" chips they're using PowerVR (as I mentioned, apparently even the HD 4000 is licensed and derived from PowerVR), and they have all of the same capacity as Apple to choose whichever GPU they want.
- dragontamer 14y ago
  Makes sense. Although for your last comment... http://semiaccurate.com/2013/01/02/apples-silicon-design-capabilities-increase/#.USeOomfVKUk http://semiaccurate.com/2013/01/02/apples-silicon-design-cap... For those without a subscription. That site is spreading a rumor that Apple has bought out a top-tier AMD grpahics team. Considering that Apple is now designing their own chips, and just headhunted an entire AMD (former ATI) team, we can see where Apple is going. Apple does not want to be relying on commodity parts. They are positioning themselves to build a custom GPU a few years down the line. So Intel currently can catch up to Apple GPU performance by just buying the latest PowerVR graphics. But will they be able to do that in the future, if Apple creates their own top-tier custom GPU?

mtgx 14y ago

That wasn't my point. I know they use PowerVR GPU's, but they never use the latest ones. In fact they always use very old PowerVR GPU's. They had nothing last year that was even close to the other GPU's let alone the ones in iPads and the iPhone 5, and they will have nothing this year to compete with Apple's PowerVR Series 6 GPU. Their PowerVR drivers suck, too. Why even bring the Intel HD 4000 in the discussion? We're talking about Atom here. Not a $200 17W TDP Core ULV Core i5 chip. If you want to compare HD4000 do it against Nvidia and AMD's own chips in laptops.

corresation 14y ago
That wasn't my point. The GPU is almost a drop-and-play component on an SoC. Given that Intel could very rapidly incorporate any licensed GPU, such as the best of the best that Apple uses, what exactly is your point? You clearly are trying to hold the notion that Intel is so far behind, led off course by their energy quest that now they can't catch up on the GPU, yet they have exactly the same capacity as Apple does (actually let me amend that -- as the world's most advanced fab and chipmaker, they have dramatically more capacity than Apple does). So why haven't they? Well thus far the only Atom-powered mobile devices have been pitched essentially to the third world. Intel is going through the mobile growing pains in the very low cost market, and when they decide to go for the mainstream I suspect that -- just like Apple -- they can decide to go for GPU performance as well. I mentioned the HD 4000 given that you oddly decided to talk about "Intel's" and "Apple's" GPUs, and while you've quite rapidly shifted course to a more enlightened position now based upon reading other replies, I suspect you weren't quite aware of what the actual GPU sources were.
ajross 14y ago
Note that the "latest" PVR cores are really just wider variants of the early ones. GPUs are mostly commoditized at this point, and short of increasing the core count and clock speed there's really not much that can be done architecturally to improve them. All of the "PVR SGX 5[345]5(MP[24])" are really just the same architecture.