Haswell is about to see the light of day in the quad-core notebook market. We all know that it will be a while until we see an Intel based quad-core Ultrabook, but Intel is doing really well with its 17W dual-cores. We expect the first Haswell Shark Bay 2013 Ultrabooks in Q3 2013 (July to September 2013). 

Ivy Bride as a part of Chief River 2012 platform is behind most Ultrabooks today, but in 2013 Intel plans to add a few new features to make Ultrabooks more attractive. The $699+ baseline specification for Shark Bay 2013 Haswell based Ultrabooks will require touch screens, fast wake from S3 to S4, all-day battery life (8 hours target), more sensors, context aware fresh data that lasts for a week in standby. Furthermore the $699+ baseline Shark Bay Ultrabook requires wireless display, 802.11n with 2x2 configuration, as well as U series processor that sit between 15W and 25W. The same notebooks can also use Y series processors.

In order to get some additional features such as voice recognition support, you will have to pay a bit more, $799 to $999+ to be precise. The SHB Ultrabook (Shark Bay 2013) recommended feature set includes innovative form factors such as convertibles, Windows 8 connected standby support, responsive voice command, Full HD display, Standalone SSD, Always connected WWAN, Facial recognition, CCF 2.0 and vPro for corporate users.

Touchscreen, fast wake S3 to S4, always fresh data for a week, U and Y series processors, responsive voice command are the changes that made in revision 2.0 of Intel’s Ultrabook specification.