2. Old And New Vineyards For Centrino Mobile Technology

Carmel, Sonoma, and Napa: old, new, and future Centrino platforms

The first generation of Centrino mobile technology was called "Carmel"; the second goes by the name "Sonoma," after the Californian wine-growing region. The code name of the matching chipset family, Alviso, is borrowed from the area northwest of San Jose. Like its predecessor, the new platform is made up of three elements:

What also hasn't changed is the fact that only notebooks having a Pentium M processor, the matching Mobile 915 chipset, and an Intel WLAN module are allowed to call themselves "Centrino." This means that there is a bigger marketing budget available from Intel for a mobile PC manufacturer that uses the full Centrino suite than for one that uses a competitor's WLAN module, for example.

Much better organized: the new user interface of the Intel WLAN software

Customers still have a choice of either the Pro/Wireless 2915ABG dual-band WLAN module - available since August of last year - or the single-band Pro/Wireless 2200BG WLAN module that came out at in the first quarter of 2004.

The former works either in the 2.4 GHz WLAN band in accordance with IEEE standards 802.11b and 802.11g, or in the 5 GHz range per 802.11a. Maximum nominal throughput is 54 MBit/s, with net throughput typically 25 to 30 MBit/s. In addition, there is also the Pro/Wireless 2100B WLAN module that can send a signal of up to 11 MBit/s (nominal) using 802.11b.

After Sonoma, the third generation of Centrino mobile technology to follow will be entitled Napa - again the name of a Californian wine region. When? Perhaps as early as Q1 2006, but that is mere speculation. What is certain is that Napa will represent the first dual-core CPU for the notebook platform. The two cores will probably be based on a Dothan-like architecture and use a common L2 cache. The chipset of the Napa platform is called Calistoga, and the new WLAN module is named Golan. It is not yet clear whether Golan will also support WiMAX.

Sonoma: state of the art for PC technology now also available in notebooks

Before we take a closer look at the new platform, chipset family, and components we would like to take a minute to briefly sketch the history behind the first Centrino platform, Carmel.