2. Pentium-M In The Business Segment

According to an excerpt of the latest Intel roadmap for the business notebooks sector, one can deduce the following.

For notebooks with the "Thin & Light" form factor, Intel's direction for 2003 stands unwaveringly firm. Up until the end of 2002, Intel recommended OEMs to equip notebooks of this type with the Pentium 4-M or Pentium III-M. With the launch of the Centrino Mobile Technology, the pendulum will be swinging in the direction of the Pentium-M, with Calexico and Odem (with dedicated graphics), or the Montana-GM chipset (with integrated graphics).

In the full-size notebook segment (typical three-spindle devices with hard drive, floppy drive and optical drive), the move to a new platform should be less rapid, by the middle of the year. Here we'll see a rather fair amount of Pentium 4-M-based notebooks, at least for the time being. Eventually, Intel sees Pentium-M reigning this segment as well, with the Calixo and Odem additives (i.e., the Montana-GM chipset).

Intel's roadmap for 'thin & light' as well as for the full-size notebooks shows the Banias successor Dothan appear at the end of the year. Dothan will be manufactured in 90 nanometer (0.09 µm) process technology, feature a 2 MB L2 Cache (twice the size of Banias) and, like the Pentium-M, have a 400 MHz low-power processor system bus (PSB).

The mini notebooks, sub notebooks and tablet PCs will have a few changes in store. While at the launch of the tablet PC in Fall 2002 the Ultra Low Voltage and the Low Voltage variants of the Pentium III-M were a must, Intel now wants to replace them with the ULV and LV variations of Pentium-M.

It's interesting that the launch of the Calexico will take place in two steps: first, Intel will offer its somewhat dusty 802.11b WLAN adapter as a mini PC card, which will be followed a bit later by a modern combo adapter (802.11b +802.11a) that offers higher bandwidth.

Regarding value notebooks in the business sector, Intel say that things won't change much. Here, the processor of choice, at least for 2003, is the Mobile Celeron.

As the roadmap for business notebooks shows, it is rather likely that the Pentium III-M, including the ULV and LV variants, will disappear from the market by the end of the year at the latest. Intel is probably going to give the Pentium 4-M a grace period through the beginning of 2004.