This is HUGE news for UMPCs in general. Very exciting.

Today, Intel announced that they will make a dedicated CPU / Chipset platform for the UMPC that, combined with advanced screen tech and low power radio components will get the average power of a UMPC down to SUB 4-Watt. The platform will be ready in 2008 and will mark the start of a massive push by Intel and its partners to bring not just 5 or 6 devices new devices to the market but tens of new devices.

Intel are obviously working on the silicon themselves (from previous news, I assume the CPU will be ‘Steeley’) and the low-power screen component looks like it will come from Samsung who have developed, specifically for UMPCs, a 7″ screen that drains just 0.6Watt. That’s about 30% of what today’s screens typically take.

4W average drain is amazing. It means that a 2006 UMPC that ran for 3 hours could potentially run for 9 hours. It also enables smaller devices to be built. It means that x86 architecture is becoming so efficient that RISC/ARM based tech loses a lot of its advantage. No wonder they sold Xscale!

A dedicated UMPC platform. Just think about it. This isn’t just a ULV notebook processor re-engineered, this isn’t screen tech taken from the automotive industry, this is a CPU manufacturer prepared to put hundreds of millions of dollars into new CPU/GPU and screen components being made for UMPCs. This step speaks volumes about where they think the UMPC is going. In fact, its really more important news than the announcement of 4 new UMPCs today. UMPC’s just became very serious business today.