POET Technologies Inc.

dash> funny how these guys don't even mention the 800MHz processor

well, we all know the journalistic integrity of the Extremetech bloggers.

fwiw, these folks do mention it.

(my bold, below ... excerpt: "the performance of Core M is more in line with Intel laptop processors of three or four years ago."

but, its case comes in gold shiny colour.

because important!

LMAO.

GLAL,

R.

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Core M: What is it?

One of the key aspects of Core M is that its among the first chip designs to benefit from Intel's new 14nm manufacturing process. This reduction in the size of the transistors that make up the processor results in it requiring less energy to do its thing, and less energy used means longer battery life and less heat.

However, Core M isn't just about Intel applying a new manufacturing technique to the same chip design as it used before. It is in fact a whole new design.

It falls under the banner of the "Broadwell" processor family which is defined by its shared set of core features. However Broadwell covers everything from Core M (Broadwell-Y) up through the more conventional laptop processors (Broadwell-U) right the way up to desktop processors (Broadwell-H), with the latter two both coming in variants labelled as Core i3/i5/i7.

The key message here is that Core M isn't quite a fully-fledged laptop processor. Instead you'll still be wanting a Core i3/i5/i7 product if you want similar performance to last year's Ivy Bridge processors.

In fact, the performance of Core M is more in line with Intel laptop processors of three or four years ago. Indeed the Core M processor in the new MacBook is likely to be slower than that in the existing 13in MacBook Air.

For instance in our review of the Asus UX305 we got a Geekbench score of 4098, while last year's MacBook Air 13 scored 5401. Another example is the UX305 score 111cp in the latest Cinebench benchmark, which is only a tad faster than the 99cp of our Asus UX31E ultrabook from 2011.

Where this is felt most acutely is in graphics, where the Intel HD5300 graphics processor of Core M is a throwback to the performance of several years ago. Again this is reflected in our benchmarks where the UX305 could manage just 9.3fps in Unigine Heaven at 1,366 x 768 with basic graphics settings. In comparison the Microsoft Surface Pro from 2012 managed 12.5fps.

As such gaming is just not a viable on these chips, especially not at the native resolution of the screens many of these lovely new laptops are using.

SEE ALSO: Intel Core M is used in the new MacBook - click to find out more

Before we put you off too much, though, realise that this is precisely the sweet-point of performance Intel was aiming for. Yes, it's a step back from Ivy Bridge but it is sufficient for general day-today computing and it's also why the new MacBook can weigh just 900g and still have nearly 10 hours battery life.

Delving a little deeper into exactly what Core M offers, its headline figure is a Thermal Deisgn Power (TDP - read max power consumption) of just 4.5W. This compares to around 10-15W for a typical laptop processor and 50-100W for desktop processors.

Previously this level of power draw was only possible in severely under-powered Atom processors, such as the Bay-Trail line, which were really only good for more simple tablet-type devices. Core M really is the first processor to bridge the gap between ultra-low TDP and acceptable laptop performance.

There are several Core M chips available but essentially they boil down to five types.

There are the M-5Y10 chips which are all clocked at 800MHz with a 2GHz maximum Turbo, and they’ve got HD Graphics 5300 cores clocked up to 800MHz.