IDF Fall 2003: The future of Centrino — Dothan, Sonoma, Alviso, DPST...

Today, on IDF Mobility and Enterprise Day, our Dmitry Korostelev reports from San Jose:

Plans to release new generation of wireless mobile platform were announced today. Dothan-based Pentium M will arrive in Q4 2003. As you already might know, the processor will be made using 90nm process and strained silicon. It will contain about 140 million transistors and 2Mb of power-otpimized L2 cache. No information is available about the crystal size.

The company also announced the new-generation Centrino chipset — Intel 855GME – naturally for Dothan-based systems. It features ICH6 Southbridge that will be the first in the mobile market to support PCI Express in ExpressCard slots. It will also feature next-generation Azalia sound controller, Serial ATA, Gigabit LAN and will support single-channel DDR333, docking stations and switches.

The key innovation of the new Centrino platform is the Intel Display Power Saving Technology (DPST). The idea is to save up to 25% of energy usually consumed by LCD display. According to Intel, the graphics core clock will be reduced when powering notebook from batteries. Besides, it will be monitoring the illumination as well as static/dynamic image properties to adjust brightness and save energy. The power will also be reduced for static pictures. The new-generation Calexico 2 wireless controller will work in 802.11a/b/g networks.

I will only add that Intel 855GME chipset will be a part of Intel Stable Image Platform program.

In H2 2004 the company is to announce the new Sonoma mobile platform on Intel Centrino. It will feature the future Pentium M model, 802.11a/b/g wireless solution and the new chipset codenamed Alviso. The former will have a new integrated graphics; support PCI Express, NEWCARD, next-generation DDR2, Serial ATA and Intel Azalia audio codec.

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