Intel Monday officially launched Penryn-based dual-core processors for notebooks,
but also indicated that users expecting quad-core mobile processors may have
to wait until issues surrounding power consumption are resolved.

The company's Core 2 Duo processors will be delivered to laptops based on the
Centrino mobile platform. Manufactured using the 45-nanometer process, the new
CPUs (central processing units) will provide laptops with better performance
and improved battery life, said Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager,
Intel Mobile Platforms Group.

Intel's dual-core processors are good enough for notebooks at present as they
perform required tasks and do not strain battery life, Eden said. Quad-core
processors have power-consumption issues and are not ideal for laptops yet,
Eden said.

Although Eden did not talk about Intel's mobile quad-core processor road map,
he said notebooks in the near future will continue to see energy-efficient dual-core
processors. Quad-core processors may first make their way to the high-end gaming
and workstation notebooks that require heavy processing power, Eden said.

To preserve battery life, the Penryn-based Core 2 Duo processors have an advanced
power management state called Deep Power Down Technology, which reduces a processor's
power when not functional.

While cutting down on power usage, Penryn processors jump to higher clock rates
and feature cache and design improvements that boost the processors' performance
compared with earlier 65-nm processors, Intel has said. The improved processors
deliver better video performance with the help of instruction sets designed
to process graphics and high-definition video tasks.

Penryn processors feature smaller transistors and cut down on electricity leaks,
according to Intel. The processors use high-k metal-gate transistors, which
make the processors faster and less leaky compared with earlier processors that
have silicon gates.

The improved Centrino mobile platform, called Santa Rosa Refresh, will feature
the Intel Mobile 965 processor and support for 802.11n wireless networking.
An upgrade to the platform code-named Montevina is already being planned by
Intel, and is due out in the second half of 2008. The Montevina platform will
include Echo Peak, a mini-card that integrates WiMax and Wi-Fi wireless technology
on one chip.

The new Core 2 Duo processors -- the T8100, T8300, T9300 and T9500 -- feature
clock speeds between 2.10Ghz and 2.6Ghz, with 3M bytes to 6M bytes of shared
L2 cache. Prices for the chips range from US$209 for the T8100 chip to $530
for the T9500 chip.

Intel also introduced the Core 2 Extreme X9000 processor, which runs at 2.8GHz,
includes 6M bytes of shared L2 cache and is priced at $851.

No vendors made announcements of systems including the new processors at the
time of press.

Intel also added Penryn-based server and desktop processors on Monday.

It released Core 2 Quad quad-core desktop processors with clock speeds of 2.5GHz
to 2.83GHz and prices ranging from $266 to $530. Intel also released four dual-core
desktop processors, including the Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 processor, which runs
at 3.16GHz, includes 6M bytes of L2 cache and is priced at $266.

Intel will ship three new Xeon quad-core processors, with clock speeds ranging
from 2.5Ghz to 2.83GHz and shared L2 cache from 6M bytes to 12M bytes, with
prices from $266 to $530. The company's new dual-core Xeon E3110 processor,
which runs at 3GHz and includes 6M bytes of shared L2 cache, is priced at $188.

IDG News Service

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