Intel's CULV to come in Q2

Vendors expect to ship 10 million units this year

Intel's new platform for thin and light ultraportables should appear as early as Q2 2009, according to Digitimes. The new platform, dubbed CULV for consumer ultra-low voltage, is a tweaked ULV Core series architecture, designed to take on AMD's Neo platform.

According to reports, the top three notebook vendors are working on CULV based products, and expect to sell as many as 10 million CULV based units before the end of the year. As the platform is scheduled for launch in Q2, this is quite an impressive number, but the $699-899 price tag of upcoming CULV notebooks is quite tempting.

Intel apparently plans to divide the notebook market into four segments. Everything above 12.1-inches will be traditional notebooks, it will have a Atom netbook segment, Menlow MID segment and the new, thin and light 11 to 13.3-inch market segment.

Intel's CULV platform should fill the gap between Atom based netbooks and ultraportables, or even classic 12.1-inch machines, mainly due to its competitive pricing. Intel's decision not to allow Atoms in machines over 10 inches also makes sense, as it would hurt its own upcoming platform and further lower the average selling price of its mobile CPUs.

AMD launched its Neo platform on CES, and at least on paper it is in the lead, but we have still to see actual product announcements or any word from AMD on the number of design wins. When Puma was launched some six months ago, AMD boasted 90+ design wins at launch day, and we all know Puma didn't manage to make much of an impact on the market. The only Neo based machine announced so far is HP's Pavilion DV2, which should be available in April.

More here.