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Intel's Windows 8 tablet: Checklist goes public

Chip giant proposes a long list of specifications for upcoming Windows 8 tablets.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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Brooke Crothers
Intel 'Clover Trail' Atom Z2760-based Windows 8 tablet.
Intel 'Clover Trail' Atom Z2760-based Windows 8 tablet. Brooke Crothers

Intel is offering more specifics on the features of future Windows 8 tablet at a conference in Beijing. It's a laudable goal, but can Intel make it happen this year?

Underneath the glass will be beat an Atom Z2760 "Clover Trail" chip: dual-core capable with "burst mode" (for quick bursts of performance when needed) and Hyperthreading -- the latter allows a dual-core chip to behave in quad-core-like fashion in some cases.

Plenty of features in the pipeline.
Plenty of features in the pipeline. Intel

Two basic tablet designs: The tablets themselves, as proposed by Intel, fall into two basic sizes: pure 10-inch tablets and hybrid 11-inch designs with physical keyboards.

Battery life: More than nine hours. That's just on paper of course. So, final products will tell the real story.

3G/4G: That's a must for tablets, of course. And Intel bought the wireless business of a little chip company called Infineon. So it can supply its own silicon here if necessary.

Weight/thickness: Under 1.5 pounds. No surprise here. The gen 3 iPad is 1.44 pounds, by the way. Thickness, as proposed, is under 9mm. Again, as a yardstick, the gen 3 iPad is 9.4mm.

Miscellaneous: NFC (near field communication) and Wi-Fi Direct.

All of the above is predicated on Windows 8 being commercially released in the second half of the year. That seems to be the plan.

And Intel is pretty adept at getting its satellite of customers and partners to make things happen. It should be an interesting fall for tablets.