Intel To Launch Low-Power Sandy Bridge Chips; Will They Be Used In MacBook Air 2G Revision B?

HardMac’s Lionel reports that with the MacBook Pro’s across-the-board upgrade to Sandy Bridge silicon, a lot of people are now waiting for Apple to upgrade the MacBook Air, one of the last few Macs still running on a Core 2 Duo CPU, as well. However he notes that in a device as thin and tightly packed as the MacBook Air, adding faster CPUs presents formidable challenges. The 11.6″ Air’s current Core 2 Duo draws a modest 10W plus the power consumption of the Nvidia 320M IGPU, but Intel’s current i3 and i5 CPUs draw at least 25W.

However, Lionel reports that help could be on the way in the form of Intel’s new low consumption Core “i” processors such as the Intel Core i5 2537M CPU that is clocked at 1.4 GHz and reaching 2.3 GHz in Turbo Mode, but that even this new chip draws 17W or about three-fifths more than the Air’s current C2D CPU, but compensates somewhat by including the graphics support function on-chip.

Another variant of the low-power Core “i” family will be the Core i7 2657M featuring 2 cores (4 threads), clocked at 1.6 GHz with a turbo mode reaching 2.7 GHz, which would put the 13″ MacBook Air in the 13″ MacBook Pro’s performance ballpark, and still with a power draw of just 17W.

Recent rumors suggest that Apple may upgrade the MacBook Air with Core “i” silicon and Thunderbolt I/O support as early as June.

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