Intel revealed a bunch of new goodies at its Computex keynote in Taipei, Taiwan, including new unlocked Haswell CPUs and wicked-fast PCIe SSDs. Company President Renée James also brought out a 12.5" reference tablet based on a next-gen Broadwell chip that’s "purpose-built for 2 in 1s." The processor is called the Core M, and it’s built using 14-nm fabrication tech.

The reference tablet is 7.2 mm (0.28″) thick and weighs 670 g (1.48 lbs). It’s passively cooled, and Intel showed a docking station that "provides additional cooling for a burst of performance." Unfortunately, James didn’t reveal how much extra speed is attainable via additional cooling or how much is on tap without it. There’s no word on clock speeds, core counts, or TDP ratings, either. The Core M is claimed to be "the most energy-efficient Intel Core processor in the company’s history," though.

Intel says the Core M will be available in systems later this year. Most of the designs will be fanless, and one of them is the Transformer Book T300 Chi that Asus introduced yesterday. That machine has the same screen size as the reference tablet, and it’s virtually the same thickness. I wonder if Asus and Intel collaborated on the reference design.