My apologies if this was posted before from the Globbe and Mail 3 Sep 2015

http://www.pressreader.com/canada/the-globe-and-mail-metro-ontario-edition/20150903/282007556158508/TextView

Intel Corp. for decades has been rolling out a new chip design every 12 months or so, adding processing power that historically helped persuade consumers to trade in their personal computers for newer, faster machines.

This year’s Skylake redesign needs to do much more than that. Its recent predecessors have failed to woo enough buyers to halt an unprecedented four-year slide in PC sales as Internet usage shifts to smartphones and tablets that don’t use Intel processors. The world’s largest chipmaker is showing off the new chips at the IFA consumer-electronics trade show in Berlin on Wednesday.

The new design shrinks the chips’ size and electricity consumption to the point where they can be used as the heart of complete computers built into thumb drives that can be plugged into a monitor or TV, for example. That’s just one new format Intel is hoping will catch the eye of consumers and lure them to replace the estimated 1 billion computers in use that are more than three years old, according to Navin Shenoy, Intel’s general manager of mobile products.

Together with new functions in Microsoft Corp.’s latest operating system, Windows 10, the chips will make laptops more powerful and easier to use, Mr. Shenoy said.

“We think the form factors will be better, we think the battery life will be better, the performance will be better, but that’s not sufficient,” Mr. Shenoy said. “On top of that, when you look at all of the features that Microsoft is putting into Windows 10, it’s just way better.”

Over all, Skylake will deliver about 21⁄2 times the performance of its predecessor, have 30 times better graphics and enable systems that go three times as long on one battery charge, Intel said. It will make Windows 10 more adept at things such as recognizing a PC owner’s face and eliminating passwords for signing in. Cortana, Microsoft’s voice-activated digital assistant, will also work more smoothly with the new processors, Intel said.

PC shipments have dropped every year since peaking at 364 million in 2011, and are forecast to decline again this year, according to market researcher IDC. Unit sales fell 9.5 per cent in the second quarter, Gartner Inc. said in July, for the steepest quarterly decline since the third quarter of 2013.