The Official Haswell/Z Speculation Thread

Maybe "Vaio Pro"? Or "Elite"

 

I know someone that has the W520 with 32GB of RAM. In a premium machine I also expect premium specs - not just design. Panasonic in Japan with their premiums bumps specs in addition to adding style (relatively speaking). I want light and good looking, but power too.

 

New Z? This was posted in the Duo thread.... its 13" and the aspect looks very 13.1ish.

 

Why is that video playing music from Evangelion 2.0? It can't be official if it's using copyrighted music, can it?

EDIT: Here's the track - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13EjhxaKfXY

 

This is a leak, not a press release. Looking at the Duo thread, the guy posted a training video his company got on the Duo... maybe he added the track to remove whatever voices may have been recorded at the time? Looks pretty legit to me.

 

hope that is not what the new Z will be like, words cant explain how much fail that duo like approch would be.

I hate the duo, its the ugliest Sony laptop ever. The Current Z is perfect in form, just needs more ram and few other things and sony definitely needs to allow users to upgrade the ram and hard drives. Charging £1120 for 512GB hard drive SSD is just not on.

100% agree, we need much more ram.

 

judging from the specs it listed, no way it's the Z.

 

Qwaarjet,
In fact, it is. Very likely.

 

Why do you think that? And if it is the Z, does that mean we are getting it this summer?

 

Can you elaborate on your reasoning about that?

128GB SSD, 4GB RAM and i5 is hardly the specs I'd expect for a Z. Even with a Haswell i5, it would be far slower than Ivy Bridge QC i7.
Also, the video itself only showed tablet stuff work, nothing "professional" that would indicate a Z-like product. It simply looks like a 13" Duo if you ask me.

 

If it's a Duo it's rather strange they moved the ports to the back (an exercise to plug/unplug stuff).

 

Whatever it is, they got rid of the ethernet and VGA ports. Those are not business friendly moves. New Z or Duo Mach 2, non starter for me.

I really love my Duo and it's one of the bast laptops for me - ever. Love the optical nub. Every laptop needs it from now on. It is the old trackstyk from the U70P but better IMO The ghosting on the IPS is a letdown, but outside of that, it's fine. If it only had 16GB of memory ... ah, to dream.

Complaining about the Samsung 512GB mSATA SSD option in the Duo? Much ado over nothing. That 512GB RAID wasn't commodity pricing. Neither was the VGN-Z's 128GB RAID when it was first introduced. I paid through the nose for a whopping 64GB SSD for my G from Japan. Shall I go on? And as far as I know, only the Duo and one of the Sammy Chronos have that mSATA drive. So you're paying the prremium there, too.

 

McMagnus,

to my info, the new Z (though nicknamed a bit differently) gonna take the shape of ultrathin X (if you remember this series) this summer, that is, to become lighter than current SVZ. Though 13" is preserved and confirmed. The same dimensions as well.

Will try to make it sort out in a few days. The 13" factor on the video made me puzzled.

 

Just had sent it to Engadget's guys: Mystery 13-inch Sony Ultrabook slider pops up in horribly grainy YouTube video

P.S. By the way, Chris, where are the Chinese courses? Why are they keeping silence?

 

I've also heard info about a different naming, but if it's substantially lighter, chances are it will use a ~15W CPU instead of ~35W (which are some of Haswell's TDPs). And that means dual core instead of quad, which I'm not too thrilled about.

Puzzles, puzzles, puzzles.

 

This is what I wanted, a nice tablet yet convertible but then again, it all depends, I have my S series and unlike the tablet it does have a dedicated GPU which this will not. Of course the screen will be so much better on this new device. I know this would be unfeasible or more impractical but an 8 inch tablet from sony with a slide out keyboard with full windows, running baytrail of course, that I would gladly grab in a heart beat.

 

Well, 13-14mm thin instead of 16 isn't so much a deal, I hope.

No docking, that means external PMD is R.I.P., a rumor that reached me. Yeah, puzzles...

But let's relax. Imagine it's just Duo13

 

No I was complaining about the £1120 price Sony were charging for the 512GB SSD option in the sonny vaio Z here in the UK. Its extortion prices and we could discuss if there was an engineering reason for having custom SSD units made or not but whatever it is, the price is extortion. Other manufacturers are putting 512SSD into their machines that are even thinner than the Z, so I am assuming it must not been a space issue( could be wrong) with the VAIO Z. Having said that the German prices for the 512GB were about 650 Euro which was much more acceptable. I assume its just RIP OFF BRITAIN.

Lets all pray that they don't bring a slider design to the vaio Z, Best to keep that on a separate model.

The problem with Sony is that their management has not a clue what they are doing. They make something very nice and then drop it all of a sudden. like they did with the vaio X. Rather than offer a upgraded X with dual core atom processor they just dropped the line, when demand for the machines in Europe was good. They did however use the design of the X to inspire the new Z.

 

To be honest, my Duo with its i7-3517U is snappier than my Panasonic J10 with the i7-2620M and 16GB of memory (SSD as well). Yes, I'm sure not as fast as a QM processor, but the new ULVs are not like the older ones IMO

 

yeah, my new i7 ULV is over 60% faster than my old i5 M Z13 (Passmark numbers). I used to have a ULV laptop a few years ago and it was really slow - the new ULV is pretty respectable.

 

Excellent guesser you are.

 

yodabeaups?

____________________
Sent via TapaTalk

 

You could just spill the beans if you know something. It's not nice to taunt us!

 

13inch mystery vaio..
Mystery 13-inch Sony Ultrabook slider pops up in horribly grainy YouTube video

maybe Z revamp?

 

so we are playing the game again huh?

 

Normally, future products aren't announced until shortly before they can be purchased. The reason is of course to avoid cutting into the sales of the predecessor and allowing the company to sell off the remaining samples of the old product.

However, in this case, the predecessor is already gone and there's not a single remaining one to be sold. So, one could argue that Sony could announce, or at least leak, the specs of the coming product to try to cut into the sales of the competition. They're probably not allowed to list Haswell CPUs yet though, but in a few weeks, they can.

 

No. That's a different story.

 

So, it's rather unlikely that the 13" slider-thing is the Z? I'm not interested in that Frankenstein's monster of a notebook.

I just want an small, high resolution notebook (let's go for 2560x1440). At this point I'm not even that interested in high performance. Haswell's integrated graphic should be good enough, an SSD (or two) is vital, and I'd love an option for quad core but it isn't essential.

 

I would say that looks a lot more likely to be a "Duo 13".

I work in marketing

 

Been looking at some new TDP numbers for Haswell CPUs and noticed some news. According to AnandTech | Some Haswell TDPs Revealed: 15W & 28W Ultrabooks , there are 15W CPUs which are pretty much drop in replacements for IB 17W ULV CPUs. They have ~50% faster graphics and a few % faster CPU. The next step at 28W includes a much faster (>100%) Iris GPU but at a significant cost of power. The Quad core chips seem to start at 47W which is a pretty big step up from today's 35W 3612 used in the SVZ. I can't find the a ~35W Quad core chip in those charts, perhaps they're gone or perhaps they're simply not listed there.

So, what to do with these chips? Why not put one 15W CPU together with ~2GB RAM and 32GB flash in the detachable screen to be used as a tablet when detached. Then put another 15W CPU in the base plus lots of RAM and a big fast SSD. When the screen is attached, you'd have 2 power efficient ULV CPUs with 4 cores between them. The total of 30W for CPUs are still less than 35W. The bottleneck is of course the bus between the base and screen that need to be as fast as a memory bus. Could be a deal-breaker I suppose...

 

i dont care about the spec.. i just want the next z... because my work laptop always be z.. no other non sense.. i bought every generation of the z series since the beginning of the Z.
Im very loyal to z..

 

Quite a brave idea if one considers future elitistic Pro to be a North Cape concept. Yet one also has to think well about the actual cost in output for such a double construction (welcome back to 2,000 USD+).

P.S. Have not got news about this one Vaio being a North Cape, by the way. Has anyone got the contrary?

 

I interpreted beaups' yawn post as a confirmation of my post before that, describing such a North Cape device. The Xperia Z tablet isn't much thicker than the current screen so I don't see why not. But of course it will be an expensive piece, because it would be quite unique, with some pretty advanced custom technical solutions.

Just to clarify, I still think the device in the leaked video (which is now removed), is a Duo 13. The device I'm talking about here would be the next Z/Pro. No hard evidence either way though.

 

McMagnus,
yeah, thanks, just like you, I realize Duo13 and Pro are two different lines. Just have missed hermeneutics on the previous page however , thanks for pointing towards it!

 

What worries me more is that any high end spec laptop now days coming with touch screen which automatically means glossy and thick screen.
No way it is near the current razor thing flexible vaio z screens.
This trend is very disappointing. Even KIRAbook non touch version is only in i5 configuration.
My 3 years old vaio z is still has one of the superior FHD panels. It only lucks some viewing angles. But it has perfect colors and PPI.
Sony, please don't change at least those aspects of Z line.

 

McMagnus,
wonder how GPU system can be mastered/split within such a concept. The dead Z was of that quite mighty one, yet now there are no discrete GPU...

 

Haha! Good question, and fun to think about. Makes me envy the engineers put to the task.

I've thought about it some, and the most efficient way is of course to make the two HD 5000 GPUs work together like in a SLI setup. But again, the bandwidth requirements could be too much to handle for a hot-plug interface like a detachable tablet screen entails. Ideally, you'd have the RAM in the tablet to work as Gfx mem to have it closer to the screen. The new graphics standard called Iris in Haswell seems to require 40 EUs (execution units), and the 15W CPUs I mentioned has 20 EUs each, so in theory, it would *only* require a customized driver to divide the graphic API calls onto the 2 processors and reach an Iris class GPU performance. Unfortunately, that's not entirely true because Iris seems to require a L4 eDRAM cache which is included in such CPUs, and it sounds difficult to make an external L4 cache that could be used simultaneously by all 40 EUs in both CPUs.

So, considering the difficulties arising from the hot-plug memory bus, it's probably more likely that the CPU in the keyboard is a 28W version and the tablet is only a 15, or perhaps even a 4.4W Bay Trail (Atom successor). The Bay Trail chips comes later, Aug-Oct, which would push a Pro release to Q3-Q4.

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about! I'd say bundled GPU is unlikely, the tablet mode doesn't need such a power. Also, there is a reason of power saving and battery life... By the way, we would probably get the battery in two compartments (keyboard and display sections) - and much likely - both in non replaceable mode.

Even if we suppose it is not Iris but GTE3 15W (5000)? And does 28W CPU mean necessarily GTE3 Iris (5100)?

That's too sophisticated.

In general, it is much easier to suppose that Sony will follow a single CPU scheme (display part), let's say, of 28W, as it was actually implemented in North Cape...

 

The TDP numbers are from AnandTech | Some Haswell TDPs Revealed: 15W & 28W Ultrabooks

So, assuming we're talking Quad core, we must either have two 4xxxU CPUs or one 49x0xQ (4900MQ Iris or 4950HQ Iris Pro). The 4xxxU CPUs are either 15 or 28W, and the 49x0xQ are 47W. The most power efficient combination is two 15W 4650U, but then we need a quite complex H/W and S/W to use both their HD 5000 as one Iris. The combo I mentioned in my last post with one 28W 4558U plus one Bay Trail in the tablet would only reach 2 cores (not counting the slower cores in the Bay Trail.)

Having a 28W CPU in the tablet is not possible if you don't have a fan there, and I doubt that. So a pure North Cape design is probably out of the question if you want a quad core pro machine. I mean, isn't North Cape more or less one tablet that can be attached to a keyboard? The keyboard might have some extra battery and some ports, but not much other other H/W.

So, what I want is a Quad core powerful keyboard/base with fast CPU, fast SSD, etc. The tablet could be able to work alone if it had a CPU of it's own, but it could also just be a WiDi connected screen.

As I said, I don't think a North Cape design can handle a TDP of more than 15W, and even that is probably too much. Tablets are normally <5W. This is why we need a more complicated solution than North Cape if we want a detachable screen on a powerful Pro machine.

 

McMagnus,
logically consistent arguments, well... So either 15+15 or 28+15 in case we lean on bundled CPU scheme and the time span of July-September.

Yet no reliable confirmation concerning North Cape design... Though we have the only forum participant here who can make this evidenly clear by saying "yawn" once more in case your speculations are getting the right flow.

 

I'm so anxious for this laptop now. Before I didn't want to have anything to do with a tablet design, but if they can make it more powerful than the latest Z and still make it unfold like a traditional laptop, I think I'd be excited for it. I wonder if we'll get any leaks before the June Haswell stuff.

 

One more Haswell surprise from Sony:



U4200 is 17W, ultrabook version. P=Pro? Or enhancement of current T series, though quite a pricy one?

 

Interesting... 4 GB RAM and a ULV CPU is pretty underpowered for a Z though...

 

agreed,that would be a bit of a step backwards/very similar to the T series..

 

My guess is it´s the one in the removed Youtube video, and then there´s an 11" version to replace the current Duo. The new slider design was an improvement over Duo´s. If this is called Pro, then the Z replacement must be something else. On the other hand, I see nothing professional about it, so I think the P stands for something else.

Thanks for the link! :thumbsup:

 

McMagnus,
yeah, given the price tags, it is quite possible that these are codenames for the 11" and 13" duos.

 

Definitely 11" and 13" notebooks. Looks to be a new series. Just need to go by the name. P = series. 11 or 13 = screen size. 21 = 1st gen model (last #). CXS/B = codes for specific builds.

This is most likely NOT the Z, and maybe not even the Duo. It would depend if the suffix is SVD.

 

FenderP,
B is for black, S - for silver. If not the duos then... simpy thinnest premium ultrabooks, as currently the price for the grimmicky T series is lower, even with SSD configurations. Or some new surprises in terms of hybridisation.

 

If I had to guess, and it is a new series, it will be SVP-11213CX/x or SVP-13213CX/x, where x is color. Sony's historically in the past used a slash for color (but not always).

Sony already has SVD for the Duo. Changing it to SVP makes no sense.

 

Maybe it really is the Pro/Z but all the good hardware is in some kind of uber PMD