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Metrics for Intel's power-frugal Ivy Bridge chips questioned

Intel used a new power efficiency measurement for its new Ivy Bridge chips. Ars Technica is calling this into question.

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 announced its new low-power Ivy Bridge chips on Monday at CES.
Intel announced its new low-power Ivy Bridge chips on Monday at CES. CNET

The yardstick used for Intel's new power-frugal chips is being questioned in article posted by Ars Technica.

The article, titled "Power saving through marketing: Intel's '7 watt' Ivy Bridge CPUs," asserts that Intel may have been over-aggressive with its power-efficiency claims.

More specifically, the 7-watt Ivy Bridge processors Intel announced on Monday at CES are actually specified by Intel on its site as 13 watts, the article says.

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"The 7-watt number advertised during Intel's keynote yesterday is actually from a new metric, 'scenario design power' (SDP), which purports to measure how much power the CPU is using during average use," Ars Technica said.

Intel's longstanding yardstick for measuring a chip's power envelope is TDP, or thermal design power.

So, based on the historical TDP measurement, the new i5-3339Y Processor -- one of the new extra power-efficient chips -- is 13 watts, as Intel's own site specifies.

Intel did not respond to a request for comment.