Intel’s New Apollo Lake Chips Bring Power To Budget PCs

Intel is set to bring high-end performance to cheaper laptops with a new line of processors.

The Apollo Lake range was detailed at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Shenzhen, China, with the company claiming the chips improved efficiency will allow manufacturers to build slimmer, more powerful devices at lower cost.

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Features such as 4K video and USB-C will become available on more affordable systems, without any significant impact on battery life.

Apollo Lake chips will be included in the Celeron and Pentium processor range and it is expected first PCs powered by the technology will arrive in the second half of this year.

Along with CPU performance upgrades served up by the new architecture, based on the new ‘Goldment’ Atom-based x86 microarchitecture, the chips also feature better battery life due to lower over-platform power demands.

It will also use the ninth-generation architecture (Gen9) GPU technology from Intel’s Skylake designs, which brings full hardware-based 4K video playback and a significant boost to visual performance, and also allow for more USB ports and mixed memory support.

There’s no details yet on prices, but based on prices of entry-level PCs, it’s not unreasonable to suggest a device powered by Apollo Lake should be less than £500.

Intel’s drive towards thinner, more aesthetically-pleasing devices means that the Apollo Lake chips will not just be limited to laptops, but will also appear in all-in-one desktops, miniature systems, and 2-in-1 hybrid devices, with Intel focused on so-called ‘CloudBooks’ to show the popularity of slimlime, low-cost devices.

Given the company’s timeframe for the release of Apollo Lake, we’ll likely see devices sporting the chips on show at Computex in June, which will be Intel’s first chance to show what its budget devices can really do.

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