During a recent conference call, Acer President and CEO Gianfranco
Lanci told investors and hacks with nothing better to do that his
outfit was not pleased with Intel's CULV chips.
While the new chips could provide up to 8 hours of battery life, Acer
execs said that they just didn't live up to Acer's expectations in the
performance department. Acer Chairman J.T. Wang went a step further,
saying that new Intel CPUs will allow Acer to address the performance
issues. "This time we should be able to do it right,"
Wang said.
Although Wang didn't go into specifics, it is clear he is referring to
Intel's upcoming 32nm Arrandale parts. The new CPUs feature integrated
graphics, and with Turbo overclocking it is possible to push them to
2.2GHz, all within an 18W thermal envelope.
Acer apparently told Intel that it was concerned about single-core CULV
processors and discussed the use of dual-core processors in future
models. Intel's recently announced SU2300, SU4100 and SU7300 dual-core
CULVs could address such concerns, but not entirely.
The SU2300 for example is a 1.2GHz dual-core, but its performance is on
par with the single-core SU3500 in most applications. What's worse,
none of the new CPUs, SU2300 included, managed to get close to the
SU3500 TDP of just 5.5W. They are rated at 10W, which is still quite
low, but the performance gain doesn't seem follow the TDP increase.
More
here.