Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage
Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage is a computing platform developed by Intel. It was estimated in January 2009 that this market could reach 10 million CULV laptops shipped during that year. Competing platforms are the VIA Nano, AMD Yukon, AMD Nile notebook platform, and graphic chips from the Nvidia GeForce line within the "Nvidia Ion platform". Some of the lowest-power-consumption processors for the ultra thin CULV category are only a few watts more than the Intel Atom, which is rated at no more than 2.5 W. Because of their low power and heat output, CULV enables very thin computer systems, and long battery life in notebook computers, such as those designed to Intel's Ultrabook specifications.
While the first processors in this category were single core, newer CULV processors are dual core. They are all based on the Intel Core 2 architecture, but the ultra-low voltage versions have a thermal rating of 5.5 W – more than the Intel Atom, but a fraction of the dual-core mainstream Intel mobile chips rated at 25 and 35 watts – and they come in a small 22 mm chip package.
The newest CULV processors come from the Intel Core product lines, and are based on a Intel 3 process.