Centrino, previously code-named Banias, will finally appear next month. The Centrino package will be centered on the Pentium M processor, its accompanying 855 chipset, and the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 chip, which will feature 802.11a/b support.
The initial offering will debut at a top speed of 1.6GHz and will be targeted at the full-size, thin and light notebook market. Intel said it will offer around five hours of battery life.
Versions targeted at the mini notebook and subnotebook/tablet market will also appear in the first half of the year. The full size version of Centrino will run at 1.4v, while the mini notebook version will come in at around 1.1v and the sub notebook version at 0.9v.
Centrino will be built on a 0.13-micron process. However, it will move to 90nm in the second half of the year, with the launch of Dothan.
Mooley Eden, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Israel design center, where Banias was developed, said Dothan would be more than just a shift to 90nm. He said the chip would feature other performance features we couldn’t schedule in Banias. He said these additional features would further improve the instructions per cycle in Centrino.
Anand Chandrasekhar, vice president and general manager of Intel’s mobile platforms group, said that the company was working on integrating all the Centrino components onto a single die, but refused to say when the company expected to achieve this.
He also said the company would eventually offer support for 802.11g wireless networking, but only when the standard had been finalized.
Source: Computerwire
