Image courtesy CNET

At CES Intel is showing off their latest reference design for next-generation Ultrabooks with their next-gen CPU, Haswell. If you’ve been following Intel for any amount of time, you’ll know that they love reference designs. Reference designs package the company’s latest tech into a concept machine that won’t ever make it to market, but serves to show what is possible with their latest platform. Their latest Ultrabook reference design has a detachable screen which can be used as a tablet.

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This ground-breaking integration of Windows 8 and PC hardware will change the way you use a PC and it’s likely to be an Ultrabook-exclusive for much of 2013 and 2014. Connected Standby is ‘on’ for Windows 8 apps when the PC is ‘off.’ It means you can run Windows 8 applications like Skype to provide voice and video services when your PC is in your bag, and much more.

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Over the next 24 hours we’ll be preparing for CES. Ultrabooknews and UMPCPortal aren’t in Las Vegas this year but we will be bringing you all the news and adding the analysis that we often don’t have time for when we’re there.

To kick of the CES 2013 analysis I’ve put together a set of technology and features that you should be watching out for during next week and expecting to hit the Ultrabook ecosystem in 2013. We’ve come a long way already but 2013 is the big year. It’s the year when Intel says that the Ultrabook ecosystem will be finally ready to deliver what they planned many years ago.

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“Intel to Showcase Ultrabook™ Convertibles with Touch, Tablets and Phones at CES 2013” is the title of the media information post that’s just gone out from in relation to the CES trade show running from Jan 8-11 in Las Vegas. Clearly the big push is still with Ultrabooks.

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Chinese VR-Zone published, back in August, what looks like a roadmap for Haswell which might be worth thinking about if you’re waiting for news of next-gen Ultrabooks. We hadn’t reported on it although we’ve heard various rumors, some of which were pointing to an accelerated roadmap. This item of news aligns with that but doesn’t include the Ultrabook SKUs which are said to come in Q3 2013

Given the current state of Ultrabooks with the Ivy Bridge processor platform well integrated into the segment and a huge choice of new form factors including more mobile and tablet solutions, we though it might be worth highlighting it.

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One of the aims of attending the Intel Developer Forum last week for me was to find out as much as possible about 2013, Haswell and what it means for Ultrabooks. I’m sure there’s more detail to come soon (and possibly, a new roadmap) but I came away with a lot of useful information that I’ve summarized below. What is clear is that Haswell is more about mobility than any other Core CPU to date. It will extend down into tablet territory enabling detachable screens and new form factors. There will be a huge focus on active standby; the claimed 20x lower idle power should equate to multi-day ‘active’ idle. A ‘dual slice’ GPU will feature in Ultrabooks

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HD 3000 in Intel’s second generation Core ‘Sandy Bridge’ processor was a pretty big step forward for integrated graphics — it adds significant gaming capabilities to thin, light, and efficient Ultrabooks, without the need for discrete graphics. HD 4000, introduced with the third and current-gen Core ‘Ivy Bridge’ processor took things one step further by doubling the performance over Sandy Bridge. With the fourth and next-gen Core ‘Haswell’ processor, slated to launch in Ultrabooks and other systems in 2013, Intel is once again doubling performance over the previous generation.

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We’ve been banned from photography and video here at the first Haswell tech talk, IDF 2012 which means there’s bound to be some interesting slides up on screen. Here are my notes from the session – these focus on very deep features of the architecture.

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