Intel promises longer life for laptops

Intel is aiming to extend the battery life of laptops to eight hours with a range of new technologies it has showcased at its Developer Forum.

Currently, few laptops can survive on batteries alone for more than three hours.

The focus of Intel's goal is the Centrino range, shown for the first time at the forum by the company's vice president of its mobile platforms group, Anand Chandrasekher.

Centrino combines a Pentium M processor, 855 chipset family and Intel PRO wireless 2100 network connector. Speeds will vary from an ultra-low voltage 900MHz to 1.6GHz.

At rest, the Centrino chip consumes about half the power of the Pentium 4M, Intel's current fastest mobile processor, but can still outperform the faster processor on some applications.

Intel claims that laptops using Centrino have a potential battery life of five hours, although this time is reduced when processor-heavy applications like Virtual Private Networks are run.

"Centrino is the first step in achieving the goal of true mobile computing all day, anywhere," Chandrasekher said.

New Centrino laptops from Acer, IBM, Toshiba and Samsung will be launched on 12 March.

Demand from manufacturers for the new chip is strong, with four times as many companies signing up for Centrino as for the Pentium 4M. (Although this is slightly less impressive than it sounds when the delays in Pentium 4M production are taken into consideration.)

Battery life should be extended still further, and the cost per unit reduced, as Intel shifts manufacture from 130nm to 90nm technology.

The 90nm 'Dothan' Centrino processor, which will be compatible with existing chipsets, will be out by the end of the year.

Other new technologies will also play their part. Chandrasekher showed a polysilicon screen that consumes three watts of power, a fifth of current displays. These screens will be introduced into laptops from 2004.

Fuel cell technology is expected to be in use by 2006. Intel has funded a start-up called Polyfuel that hopes to have a laptop battery-sized unit that will provide three times the power of standard batteries.