Intel tips CES news on Menlow, WiMax, SSD

By Suzanne Deffree, News Editor -- Electronic News, 12/14/2007

NEW YORK—Intel Corp. today at a press event here foreshadowed product refreshes and news the company will share at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

Much of the MPU maker's time this afternoon was spent promoting its 45-nm strategy as it pertains to mobility, a theme the company has leaned heavily on since its 2003 launch of the Centrino Wi-Fi line and more recently promoted at the Fall Intel Developer Forum, where it declared 2008 to be “the year of WiMax.” 

In doing so, Intel confirmed that its “Menlow” platform -- comprised of “Silverthorne,” a 45-nm-based processor, and next-generation chipset, codenamed "Poulsbo" -- will begin shipping in the first half of 2008. Menlow will target power savings and small footprints, important factors in the design of mobile Internet devices (MID) and ultra mobile PCs (UMPC).

“This is a first-generation, ground-up microarchitecture both on the CPU side and the chipset side,” Pankaj Kedia director, global ecosystem programs, Intel mobile Internet and UMPC platforms, said at today’s briefing. 

According to Kedia, Menlow offers a 10x power savings on previous generation Intel CPUs and in a 5x smaller package. Kedia said Intel plans to introduce a second-generation of the platform in 2009 or 2010 that will reduce power by another 10 percent, come in a smaller package and encourage longer battery life.

Intel tipped that it will showcase more than 10 MID and UMPC devices designed with Menlow from the likes of Aigo, Asus, Acer, BenQ, Clarion, Compal, Elektrobit, Inventec, Lenovo and Quanta, among others, at its CES show booth.

Stating that products based on Menlow will begin shipping in Q2, the company today also inferred Microsoft’s Bill Gates could make an announcement related to Menlow during his annual pre-show CES keynote next month.

“Bill Gates does not like Intel talking about Microsoft products,” Kedia laughed. “We will let him talk about it. We will have [Menlow-based MID/UMPC] devices on both Vista and Linux.”

Also part of the proposed Menlow platform is the Z-P140 PATA solid state drive (SSD), the smallest SSD in the industry, Intel claimed, noting the importance of storage on multimedia portable devices. Coming in January, the 12mm x 18mm x 8mm drive will hold 2 Gbyte or 4 Gbyte of storage and is expandable to 16 Gbyte. The SSD market is undisputedly a hot one, with both Toshiba and Micron entering the NAND-based SSD arena this month.

Q1 technologies

In Q1 2008, Intel plans to launch its 45-nm Penryn refresh for the Santa Rosa line for consumer desktops, the company reiterated today. Core 2 quad-core and dual-core processors will feature larger L2 caches for better performance and Intel's HD Boost technology for video, photo, and high-performance computing software applications.

On the gamer front, Intel will release the 45-nm Core 2 Extreme QX9770 processor, a quad-core product with a clock speed of 3.2 GHz and a system bus of 1,600 MHz, in the quarter.

Also in Q1, Intel will release “Skulltrail,” an 8-core platform made up of 2 Core 2 Extreme quad-core processors and 4 PCI Express x16 Gen 1.1 slots for up to 4 graphics cards.

2008 technologies

The company further said “Canmore,” its first consumer-electronics optimized SOC, will ship next year.

And, to the WiMax end, Intel reminded its “Montevina” next-generation Centrino processor for laptops will be available next year with an optional integrated Wi-Fi/WiMax module via in an adapter code-named “Echo Peak.” The company’s mobile WiMax silicon designed for mobile Internet and consumer electronics will be available in early 2008. Intel has for years promoted WiMax technology, along with the likes of Sprint/Nextel and Samsung, in efforts to hasten its widespread adoption.

Intel made its statements today one day after its rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. presented to financial analysts at the New York Stock Exchange. During its event, AMD said it plans to regain profitability in Q3 2008 and admitted to the mistakes the company made with the quad-core Opteron server chip launch during 2007.