Intel to Unveil Centrino Update
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Intel Corp. will launch a major upgrade of its popular Centrino technology for notebook computers Wednesday, as the world's largest chipmaker seeks to expand the product's audience from business users to consumers.
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(InfoWorld) - Intel's "Santa Rosa" notebook platform will hit the streets in the first half of 2007, bringing improvements in processing power, battery life, and wireless connectivity over the current Centrino architecture. Intel has enjoyed strong sales with Centrino, which combines a low-wattage processor and wireless ability with an efficient chip set. Now the company will upgrade those ingredients to a more efficient version of theÂ Merom Core 2 Duo chipÂ and Crestline ICH8M chip set, together code-named Santa Rosa. The company will also make the Santa Rosa notebooks start up faster by augmenting current memory technology with a NAND flash-based disk cache, said Dadi Perlmutter, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's mobility group, at Intel Developer Forum on Wednesday. Compared with a Centrino PC, that "Robson" technology will allow future notebooks to load applications twice as fast and wake up from a hibernation state twice as fast. For wireless connectivity, the new notebooks will use theÂ pending 802.11n standard, capable of streaming data at 300Mbps, five times faster than the current 802.11g, Perlmutter said Wednesday. To support users until 802.11n is officially approved, Intel has arranged an interoperability program with access point vendors including Buffalo Wireless, D-Link Systems, Cisco Systems' Linksys division, and Netgear. Intel will also deliver embedded 3G (third-generation) wireless WAN technology from Nokia, Perlmutter said. In a demonstration, he played high-definition segments of a film called "Spoon" on a Santa Rosa platform running Microsoft's Vista OS. That level of broadband connectivity will also allow Intel to extend its new vPro business bundle to notebooks, after having launched it for desktops on Sept. 7. "But the jewel of the crown for wireless connectivity is WiMax," Perlmutter said. Intel plans to deliver an integrated Wi-Fi and WiMax chip by 2008. WiMax is a metropolitan-area wireless technology designed to deliver at least 1Mbps of data and in some cases much more. The company's WiMax plan will be supported by a commitment from service providers SprintÂ and Clearwire to start building mobile WiMax networks in 2007 and provide commercial service by 2008. Intel also said it would extend WiMax support to future reference designs for the handheld Ultramobile PC (UMPC) platform, including a 2.5-pound version for students up to university age. Intel displayed a sample UMPC currently sold by Asus in Taiwan and said its partners would launch a U.S. version in the first half of 2007 with an upgraded CPU and chip set. Intel also expects vendors to begin selling a low-cost "Classmate" notebook in developing nations in the first quarter of 2007, according to spokesman Larry Carr. Intel's reference design brings the price below $400 by using a small Windows XP Embedded OS and flash memory instead of a hard drive, he said. The product will sell first in Mexico, Brazil, India, and Nigeria.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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Intel Corp. (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Thursday said it has upgraded the wireless networking capabilities of its Centrino line of notebook computer chips to allow broader network access with improved security.
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Intel Corp. (INTC.O) this week is expected to introduce a chip that adds support for a relatively obscure version of Wi-Fi, analysts said on Monday, in a move that could help ease congestion on wireless networks.
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Intel gave its Centrino laptop package a speed boost this week with the release of a new, faster Pentium M processor. The Centrino package includes a Pentium M processor, a PC chip set, and a WLAN (wireless LAN) chip set.
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Intel Corp., which has led the charge in the gigahertz race, is expected to change its tune at this week&#39;s developer forum in San Francisco by focusing on improving chip performance by adding more cores to the microprocessor.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Intel continued its charge into its wireless future with news of its next generation Pentium M processor. Based on the 65-nanometer process technology, Intel is working on its &quot;Napa&quot; platform
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Intel Corp. INTC.O will unveil  next year a bundle of chips designed for home entertainment  computers, and support the move with a branding campaign  modeled on the successful launch of its Centrino chips for  notebook computers, a person briefed on the matter said.
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Intel is expected to kick off its semi-annual developer forum Tuesday by demonstrating a new dual-core processor, something rival AMD showed off last week.
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Intel Corp., the world's largest  chip maker, updated its line of Centrino notebook computer  chips on Wednesday with higher speeds and improved multimedia  features, a move the company hopes will further propel one of  its fastest-growing businesses.
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Intel Corp. is expected to release a faster version of its powerful but expensive Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor on Monday alongside the introduction of a chipset that uses a faster front-side bus to connect the processor and the memory.
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NEW YORK -- Intel is reintroducing the Blue Man Group, not used since 2001, in a campaign for its Centrino mobile technology for wireless computing.
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Both AMD and Intel are preparing to unveil new, ultra high-end processor refreshes later this month that will push the 3.5 GHz mark.
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Intel Thursday announced the latest WLAN chipset for the next generation of its Centrino wireless product set. The new radio chipset will transmit on either the 2.4-GHz or 5-GHz bands, so it can support 802.
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Intel Corp., the world's largest chip maker, updated its line of Centrino notebook computer chips on Wednesday with higher speeds and improved multimedia features, a move the company hopes will further propel one of its fastest-growing businesses.
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Intel will offer a first look at technical details of its low-power Silverthorne processor during a presentation at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) this week, setting the stage for a concerted push into the market for ultraportable devices.&quot;This is the&#160;first detailed technical presentation on Silverthorne,&quot; said Justin Rattner, Intel&#39;s chief technology officer and director of the company&#39;s Corporate Technology Group.Silverthorne&#160;is the first x86 chip designed by Intel specifically for small, portable computers. Until now, the company has taken older processors originally designed for notebooks and adapted them for use in portable devices. For example, Intel&#39;s existing A100 and A110 processors designed for these devices are based on the Celeron M chip.Intel&#39;s ISSCC presentation on Silverthorne was anticipated. The conference program contained a presentation abstract that described an unnamed 45-nanometer, low-power Intel processor designed for mobile Internet devices. That description is the same that Intel used to describe Silverthorne, although the company earlier declined to confirm or deny if the chip was in fact Silverthorne.Unlike other processors in Intel&#39;s current product line, Silverthorne uses an in-order processor design, akin to a factory with a single assembly line capable of processing one operation at a time. The chip is the first in-order processor released by Intel since it began shipping the Pentium Pro in 1995. Other Intel processors use an out-of-order design.Out-of-order chips work like a factory with multiple assembly lines. They can process several operations at the same time and generally offer better performance than in-order processors. Silverthorne will make up some of this difference by using Hyperthreading, a technology that allows the processor to work on two instruction threads at the same time.Using an in-order design for Silverthorne struck the best balance between performance and power efficiency, Intel said. But don&#39;t expect Silverthorne to match the performance available from Intel&#39;s mobile Core 2 processors, even though Silverthorne consumes less power. The performance of the new chips will be roughly equivalent to the Pentium M processors found in the first version of Centrino, released in 2003, Rattner said.Intel declined to comment on what clock speed Silverthorne will run at or how much power it will consume when it hits the market in the coming months. But the ISSCC program abstract said the chip will have 512KB of cache and use a 533MHz front-side bus.Observers had expected Intel to offer dual-core and single-core versions of Silverthorne, but Rattner said Silverthorne will have one core.Over the life of the Silverthorne processor, Intel expects to make a 2GHz chip available and plans to offer a version that consumes 1 watt, Intel said, suggesting these will not be features of the processors set for release in the months ahead.When Silverthorne hits the market, it could face competition from Via Technologies&#39; Isaiah processor, a low-power chip that is set for release at around the same time and is designed for the same portable devices makers that are Silverthorne&#39;s target market. Isaiah processors use an out-of-order design, a faster front-side bus, a twice as much cache, which could give the chips an edge over Silverthorne. But an accurate comparison of the two chips won&#39;t be possible until they are released and can be benchmarked by independent observers.Even if Isaiah outperforms Silverthorne, Via must still compete with Intel for orders and that may prove difficult.Via is tiny by comparison to Intel and cannot offer the same level of support to its customers in terms of marketing muscle. Via will also need to keep Isaiah&#39;s price relatively low to be competitive with Silverthorne, which is the smallest chip produced by Intel over the last 15 years or so.&quot;The 486 was a bit smaller,&quot; Rattner said.The small size of Silverthorne means Intel can produce 2,500 chips on a single 300-millimeter silicon wafer. That keeps unit production costs low and will allow Intel to sell Silverthorne at a relatively low price, as well. It also means Intel can produce Silverthorne without diverting too many manufacturing resources from its flagship Core 2 and Xeon products.&#160;
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SAN FRANCISCO - Intel Corp. outlined its plans for a dual-core mobile processor and platform technology Wednesday, but declined to provide any details about the dual-core future of its flagship Pentium 4 desktop processor.