The Chuwi LapBook 14.1 Review: Redefining Affordable
by Brett Howse on March 10, 2017 8:00 AM ESTPowering the Chuwi LapBook 14.1: Intel Apollo Lake
Intel’s Atom processor is their low-cost offering, with a smaller die size than Intel’s Core series, allowing them to sell them for less money, but keep their margins up. Atom has had a bit of a roller coaster of a ride over the last several years. When it launched in 2008, it was an in-order design, offering low power, but also low performance. It was originally on the 5-year cadence that Intel was still doing with their main CPUs as well, which really made the original Atom long in the tooth, despite several process changes along the way.
Eventually Intel saw the threat of ARM processors, and tried to speed up the cadence of Atom so that it could be used in thin and light tablets, as well as smartphones. We saw some brief success with Atom, partially due to a strategy of contra-revenue, and partially because Windows RT was a failure, but with Intel never gaining a foothold in smartphones and basically only available in Windows tablets, Intel made the decision to cancel the Broxton tablet platform completely. This was a bit of a shock, and I’m sure it caught a lot of their partners a bit flat footed, since they had devices being sold with Cherry Trail that would never get an update.
But this didn’t impact the low-end PC market, because Intel was moving forward with their PC platform, which they dubbed Apollo Lake. The new 14 nm successor to Airmont, named Goldmont, was going to live on, albeit in less devices. Much of the confusion about the death of Atom has to do with just how many products it was in.
Comparison of Intel's Atom SoC Platforms | |||||||
Node | Release Year | Smartphone | Tablet | Netbook Notebook |
|||
Saltwell | 32 nm | 2011 | Medfield Clover Trail+ |
Clover Trail | Cedar Trail | ||
Silvermont | 22 nm | 2013 | Merrifield Moorefield |
Bay Trail-T | Bay Trail-M/D | ||
Airmont | 14 nm | 2015 | 'Riverton' | Cherry Trail-T | Braswell | ||
Goldmont | 14 nm | 2016 | Broxton (cancelled) |
Willow Trail (cancelled) |
Apollo Lake |
So, the low-end PC market was still going to go ahead, with Intel focusing on its strengths, despite the decrease in the PC market, rather than push a new Atom against the latest ARM products in tablets and phones. While this retrenching by Intel likely seemed like a good idea for them at the time, Microsoft’s announcement that Windows 10 will support ARM processors with x86 support, surely did not make them happy. Intel is likely to get the ARM competition against Atom they never wanted, but we’ll have to wait and see how the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 compares later this year.
That brings up back to the present, which is the Chuwi Lapbook 14.1, which run on the Intel Celeron N3450, and despite the name Celeron, this is most certainly an Apollo Lake platform featuring the Intel Atom Goldmont core. Apollo Lake was first publicly announced at IDF in 2016, and it offers some nice advancements over the Braswell PC platform it replaces. The main change should help performance, with Goldmont cores replacing Airmont cores, but also with Gen 9 graphics replacing Gen 8 in Braswell.
Apollo Lake Mobile Lineup | ||||
Pentium N4200 | Celeron N3450 | Celeron N3350 | Pentium N3700 (Braswell) | |
Cores | 4 | 4 | 2 | 4 |
Threads | 4 | 4 | 2 | 4 |
Base CPU Freq. | 1.1 GHz | 1.1 GHz | 1.1 GHz | 1.6 GHz |
Turbo CPU Freq. | 2.5 GHz | 2.2 GHz | 2.4 GHz | 2.4 GHz |
CPU Architecture | Goldmont | Goldmont | Goldmont | Airmont |
iGPU | HD 505 (Gen 9) | HD 500 (Gen 9) | HD 500 (Gen 9) | HD 405 (Gen 8) |
EUs | 18 | 12 | 12 | 16 |
Turbo iGPU Freq. | 750 MHz | 700 MHz | 650 MHz | 700 MHz |
TDP | 6W | 6W | 6W | 6W |
Max Memory | 8GB | 8GB | 8GB | 8GB |
PCIe 2.0 Lanes | 6 | 6 | 6 | 4 |
Modern Standby (S0ix) | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Price | $161 | $107 | $107 | $161 |
Much of the changes with Goldmont were about improving the out-of-order execution compared to Silvermont, with a wider decoder, better branch prediction, and a larger out-of-order execution window. Goldmont can perform one load and one store per cycle, and it can execute up to three simple integer ALU operations per cycle. There’s new instruction support for hashing with SHA1 and SHA256, and there’s new support for the RDSEED instruction. The graphics are also improved, with Gen 9 offering better performance than Gen 8, as well as features like Quick Sync for H.265, and low-power H.264 encode.
Overall, Intel’s previous marketing materials have outlined what kind of performance gains to expect:
Apollo Lake Mobile Performance: Pentium N4200 vs. Pentium N3710 | |
CPU Performance | +30% |
GPU Performance | +45% |
With a lower bill of materials, higher performance, and lower power consumption, Apollo Lake is certainly a nice step forward. It remains to be seen just how competitive it will be, and Atom is still a significant step down in performance from Core, even at similar TDP numbers. It remains to be seen if Apollo Lake will be competitive with ARM offerings, and we should have a nice ability to test that later this year.
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Mikuni - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
Pointless, probably $400 in Europe.vladx - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
It's around 300 euros here in Europe.YoloPascual - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
Given the perf/watt of zen architecture, can we expect AMD to release ryzen mobile chips at this tdp?hojnikb - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
There is a chance, but not as 4 core parts. Maybe if they do a special 2C4T part with smaller gpu just for cheap and low tdp devices. Sorta like stoney ridge.YoloPascual - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
This is what I am thinking too. AMD seems to emphasize "scalability" of zen architecture. I wonder if they can scale downwards too.wumpus - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
Not directly. 4C4T 2GHz @ 6W sounds more like Bobcat/Jaguar in the AMD world (what's in PS4/XBox1). Half a raven ridge would still suck twice the power (at max, probably doing more than twice as much).On the other end, this whole architecture is a dead end. No idea how long Intel will produce it (or even update the GPU, they aren't updating the CPU). I doubt AMD is all that interested in updating the "cat" architecture either (although obviously they will continue to produce PS4/Xbox1 SOCs). Given time, "1/2 raven ridge" will probably become pretty competive for this type of thing, assuming you don't go straight to ARM chromebook/android/Linux on ARM/Win10ARM [Microsoft keeps insisting that last bit *is* a thing, but haven't managed to convince anyone else].
DanNeely - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
Maybe, but their 8/16 desktop parts being at the same TDP as Intels 4/8 ones suggests that their core design power is significantly lower than Intels, and the last few generations of their architecture can scale down to 4-6W from 90 at a 50% core count so AMD being able to do the same with Ryzen wouldn't surprise me. OTOH a 2/4 core chip at that level seems a lot more likely as a potential atom challenger. OTOH with the first Ryzen laptop parts not due until the second half of this year (and probably the 4th quarter or they'd've said Q3 instead of H2) I wouldn't be surprised if the first chip in this power class isn't available for a full year.fanofanand - Monday, March 13, 2017 - link
Ryzen 8/16 being lower than Intel 4/8 isn't as big a deal as it's being made of. The intel parts being used in that comparison all have a gigantic iGPU that takes up half the die space. This is the same issue as "Ryzen's chip is smaller than Core" well yeah because there is no iGPU! If you were to compare the non-iGPU portion of the Core die, you will see that it's smaller than the Ryzen die, and likely the same would hold true with power consumption. All that said, AMD will definitely have low power cores and they will most likely be on the Ryzen architecture. Way too early to even guess at performance but all signs point to it being a competitive chip.OnthroX - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
$230 at GearBest with a EU Plug (vs $270 at Amazon)http://www.gearbest.com/laptops/pp_602696.html
I added DHL Shipping for $5 -- order came out to a total of $235.23
My first time shopping at GearBest but I hear they are okay.
Diji1 - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
Good to see Ars covering a Chuwi product.The "Chinese manufacturers" phone, tablet and ultra/laptop recieves relatively little coverage in English speaking media which should change IMO.
It would be great if you looked at Cube, another Chinese brand on tablets andultrabooks.