Samsung might wow the crowds with a plethora of high end smartphones, smartphones for the mid-range market, as well as entry level handsets that offer a degree of quality, but they have not really made that huge of a mark where laptops are concerned. Perhaps times will change in the near future, as the South Korean company has revealed that it is currently working on a version of its always-connected Galaxy Book S laptop that will be powered by Intel's Lakefield processor. Touted to be released to the market some time next year (the exact date has yet to be determined), this particular laptop is widely tipped to be the first mobile PC powered by Intel's hybrid SoC, which will carry a combination of high-performance and energy-efficient cores in order to keep the road warrior productive while he/she is on the move.
Most laptop users these days tend to prioritize design and performance in a lightweight form factor, especially with the world getting connected in so many ways while travel costs continue to drop. Lugging around a heavy laptop is not my idea of fun, I can tell you that, which is why anything more than 1.5kg these days tend to be considered as bulky - gamers being the exception. With a sleek design that does not compromise on performance being right at the top of most people's lists, the other must-haves would be an always-on connection to the Internet and a long battery life.
Many of the newer premium x86-based laptop tend to arrive in a very compact form factor and can be armed with a 4G/LTE modem, but even when these have been properly configured to an optimum level, the 4G/LTE modem's presence continues to lose out over the non-modem model in terms of battery life. Of course, in order to offset this issue without stuffing in a larger battery (and making it heavier in the process), one might have to 'sacrifice' processing muscle by using Intel's low-power/energy-efficient Atom SoCs or Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors that have been tailored for notebooks.
In order to overcome this obstacle and achieve the dream of delivering both performance and energy efficiency in a single always-connected laptop package, the folks over at Intel have come up with the Lakefield SoC that boasts of a single high-performance Ice Lake core, a quartet of energy-efficient Tremont cores, in addition to Gen 11 graphics and media cores.
Internally, Intel's Lakefield is made up of two dies - a 10 nm Compute die and a 14 nm Base die, and these have been specially integrated into a single chip via the company's Foveros 3D packaging technology so that the overall footprint is minimized. Thanks to Foveros, the chip measures a mere 12×12 mm and can be integrated into a wide range of emerging always-connected devices for added practicality. Samsung's new 13.3-inch Galaxy Book S is proud to be the first device in the market that makes use of Intel's Lakefield, and it will be mated to Intel's own 4G/LTE modem so that you do not have to go without being disconnected from the Internet no matter where you are (as long as there is an available signal, of course).
There is still no official word from Samsung regarding pricing or availability details for the Lakefield-powered Galaxy Book S, but as Intel's production plans of the SoC happens to be Q4 2019, it is safe to assume that the new Galaxy Book S will be launched some time in 2020.
