Ideas for a decently powered "portable" notebook

I'd like to see a low-powered quad-core. Each could run at 1GHz and still provide ample usage, although I'm not sure how much heat could be generated by the cores. Speed these days is negligible for day-to-day tasks, but having more thread-ability would work wonders. Here's what I'd like to see in a notebook:

* 12-inch screen (1280 x 800 would work well)
* Quad-core processor (doesn't have to be fast, 1 GHz would be good)
* 2 GB memory
* Intel X4500 (i don't see too many notebooks with this on-board...)
* WiFi (a/b/g/n)
* ~$650

Are there any on the market that have quad-core processors?

 

Well.....there are plenty of laptops out there with quads but they are mostly in the gaming laptops like the Alienware line, Sager line, Asus G series line, and such

 

What is the point of a 1Ghz quad core when 2+ Ghz dual cores are so cheap? Buy whatever 12" core 2 laptop you can find.

 

I bet in a year or two C2Q ULV processors will be in pretty much all ultraportables. But, for now at least, it's not quite feasible.

post 600

 

4 cores at 1 ghz consume less power than 2 cores at 2 ghz. thus, more slower cores means longer battery life at the (situation dependent) same performance.

i personally thought of this, too. if i would be intel, i would create ultralowvoltage xeons, and then put multiple cpu's into an ultraportable. that way, they are not placed close to each other for very good heat discipation, all run very slow (say 800mhz), and you could have f.e. 16 cores (4 quadcores, each in a different edge of the laptop).

the result would be the same as a quadcore @ 3.2ghz (or a dualcore @ 6.4ghz), but the power consumption would be quite low (they could even clock down to, say 200mhz while not in use, or even turn off cores). the cooling would be, like cooling a typical 1.2ghz core2duo, or a 1.4ghz core2duo or so. just at 4 places in the laptop.

 

Comparing number of cores to CPU frequency is comparing apples to oranges. More core's allows running more app's simultaneously whereas higher CPU frequency just means running those app's faster.

 

Not really. You make it sound as if a single core cannot efficiently process more than one thread at a time, which isn't the case.

 

I did over simplify the explanation actually. You're right in that there are ways to process multiple threads on a single core (Intel's Hyperthreading comes to mind).

 

nope, those apps that need the cpu power scale well with frequency and well with cores, at least in my cases. most other apps, that wouldn't scale well with cores, and i care about, don't really max out the cpu.

one main area of mine is audio processing and graphics rendering. both can scale well to different cores.

and yes, frequency * cores results in those cases in a a number that is very comparable.

and while a lot of legacy apps (espencially games) don't scale well with cores yet. all recent development progresses are about parallelisation, about better using multiple cores. and a lot of newer games started to use more cores.

and even while the laptop might not reach the same peak performance for a single app, it will be the most snappy laptop around, allowing multiple apps to run in parallel, and still having enough cores left for the os, a fast responsive gui, etc, all the time. and that would be it's biggest gain. it could be deadslow in the worst case (200mhz, 1core, rest turned off), but could easily always be snappy, by having always "a core left" for some important thread that pops up.


and if you think i oversimplify, then i can only say, yes, maybe, but i'm actively developing different kinds of apps for multiple cores. while it isn't simple to develop for it, the thinking should be kept that simple. only then, you don't lose focus on what multiple cores are about: always having some space to breathe. this leads to much more dynamic balancing of the cpu resources, and thus not only the goal of 100% cpu usage, but balancing it. if one particular part of your app suddenly needs a bit more, you can now just rebalance it by changing the threadcounts.

it's a very interesting field. and one of the most interesting things about it really is, that slow cores use a VERY LOW amount of power. so if you can scale your apps to tons of cores well, you can press down power consumption by clocking down the cpus. 4 xeons at 1ghz each, 4 cores each (and 2 hyperthreads each) don't consume much power, but deliver much work. it's quite impressive (and i'd love the maximum in low power design: the slowest atom, but tons of cores of it.. see how that would scale ).

 

i'd personally perfer a fairly thick yet small gaming laptop
- 2 to 2 and a half inches thick
- 12 to 13 inch screen
- external dvd drive
- a hd 4670 or a 9800 gt
- 4 gb ram
- fast dual core proc

the extra thickness would allow for a better cooling system allowing for better heat dispersion and better parts.