Intel executives have outlined designs for a new class of laptops that sport an ultra thin, low-power design at the Computex tradeshow in Taiwan. These new laptops, dubbed “ultrabooks” will combine a sleek, lightweight design (reminiscent of Macbooks) with the sheer power of a new Intel 22nm chip process called Ivy Bridge. According to Executive Vice President Sean Maloney, the new devices will combine “tablet-like features” with a “thin, light and elegant design.”

“Sandy Bridge [the codename for the Core iX design launched in January] is the first step in reinventing the PC,” Maloney explains. “The second step is Ivy Bridge, which is built on our industry-leading 22-nanometer process. The third step is Haswell in 2013. We will double the battery life.”

This move might be what Intel intends to use in order to oppose the rise of Chromebooks, but we’ll have to see how they manage to stack up against both Google and Apple when the market comes to bear. According to Maloney, he expects that Ultrabooks will dominate over 40% of the market by 2012. Among the first of these products, Intel presented the Asus UX21.

According to an article running in Phandroid, Intel is also moving the Atom market along to an Android 3 platform,

However, it wasn’t Chrome OS running on an Ultrabook that excited us about Intel’s Computex appearance, it was their showing of “Medfield”- their phone and tablet platform that was seen running Android 3 with promises of products hitting the market in the first half of 2012. We haven’t seen video footage as of yet, but we’re eager for Intel to enter the field as they’re virtually a non-factor on the current mobile landscape. Whether or not Ultrabooks will incorporate Android or Chrome OS is anybody’s guess, but we’re happy to see Intel picking up the pace in their diversification efforts.

We’ve seen this coming for a while now, Intel has been looking at the iPad and gearing up to counteract Apple and ARM the only way they know how: by designing new chips. While they have the intent of generating a new line of the Atom platform code-named Cedar Trail and another chip line called Medfield, which Maloney describes as “Intel’s first purpose-built 32nm platform for smartphones and tablets.”

Much of the information Phandroid is working from comes from a Guardian article on the subject. The Android angle comes from Maloney’s statement about Medfield’s direction, “It’s optimised for tablets and phones running Google’s Android [operating system] initially, so we’ll see.”

The intent of the new line of chips isn’t just to tighten the overall computational prowess of the chip in order to stack Intel up in the market, but to also lower power consumption. New netbooks and ultrabooks will need as much standby power as possible to compete in the mobile market as ultra-portables (some smartphones can last over a day without recharging and we like to leave those on.)

Intel intends to greatly accelerate their race to smaller and tighter nanometer processes over the next few years, rapidly moving from 32nm through 22nm to 14nm before 2015. With each reduction in process size they hope to increase performance and efficiency and thus extend battery life.