Intel announced next generation of its Centrino notebook platform, codenamed ‘Santa Rosa’. Designed for use with Intel Core 2 Duo (Merom) processor, the Santa Rosa will incorporate 802.11n Wireless standard, ‘Robson’ NAND Flash hard drive cache, Graphics Media Accelerator X3000 integrated card and 3G WAN card. The new Intel Centrino platform, introduced at Intel Developer Forum, will feature 667Mhz up to 800MHz frontside bus, but the bus speed can be dynamically reduced and raised, as required by the operating workload.
The Santa Rosa’s ‘Crestline’ North Bridge chip is officially named the 965GM. It connects to 533MHz or 667MHZ DDR 2 SDRAM and the platform’s ICH8M South Bridge, Reg Hardware reports.
The 965GM chipset will contain Intel’s Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) X3000 integrated graphics engine with Clear Video Technology for piping video data through the pixel shaders.
The Santa Rosa, or the upcoming Centrino generation 4, will also incorporate ‘Robson’ NAND Flash module to cache data between the hard drive and memory. Intel said it reduces application load times and wake-up-from-sleep time for 50 percent. Robson save 0.4 watts of power, according to Intel.
CNet reports that Intel can now put its laptop processor into a deeper sleep state, because the Crestline chipset is intelligent enough to recognize whether data is stored on the processor’s on-chip cache memory or in memory. This means the chipset doesn’t have to wake up the processor to check the on-chip cache memory, and waste energy.
Also Display Power Saving Technology (DPST) 3.0, will save additional up to 400mW of power by switching between progressive and interlaced display modes.
Regarding connectivity, Santa Rosa will incorporate draft 802.11n through a MiniPCI card, ‘Kedron’. “To ensure optimal user experience with this solution before the 802.11n specification is officially approved, Intel has created an 802.11n interoperability program, working with leading access point vendors – including Buffalo, D-Link, Linksys and Netgear – to perform interoperability, performance, range and stability testing”, Intel reported. The platform will also support the 3G WAN card developed jointly by Nokia and Intel. The card will support the HSDPA download speed boost technology.
Both Robson and the 3G WAN modules are optional, Intel confirmed.
Santa Rosa will also feature professional tools for administration, manageability and security for laptops, just like as its desktop counterpart featuring Intel’s vPro technology.
The Intel’s Centrino Santa Rosa platform is scheduled for introduction in the first half of 2007.
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