The chipmaker unveiled three models of its latest Pentium M processor, a chip dubbed Dothan, at an event in San Francisco. The company had originally planned to launch the Dothan chip in February, but a glitch pushed back its introduction until now.
As part of the event, Intel introduced a naming system that uses a system of numbers, rather than relying primarily on clock speed. This naming system will be used to identify the three new Pentium Ms and will eventually identify most of Intel's PC chips.
The Dothan architecture, which pairs higher clock speed with performance enhancements such as extra cache and higher bus speeds, will offer greater performance for a wide selection of laptops. Manufacturers such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Toshiba are expected to incorporate the chip into notebooks of varying sizes, some of which will be geared toward businesses and others toward consumers. The Pentium M is also the processor behind Intel's Centrino bundle, which includes a chip set, or group of helper chips, and a Wi-Fi module for wireless notebooks.
While Intel regularly updates its processors with higher clock speeds and improves features such as cache, the pool of memory that holds data close to the processor core for quick access, the company's use of numbers for names marks a major shift.
Until now, Intel has relied mainly on speed to help market its chips. The new system will seek to better reflect how clock speed, cache and bus speed combine to influence the overall performance of a processor. The front-side bus is the pathway used to move data into and out of the processor.
The three Pentium Ms released are the 735, the 745 and the 755. The 735 runs at 1.7GHz, includes 2MB of cache and a 400MHz bus. The 745 runs at 1.8GHz and the 755 at 2GHz.
The successively higher numbers are designed to reflect successively better performance. The system is not unlike that of Advanced Micro Devices, whose three-digit Opteron model numbers are also designed to reflect the successively higher performance of that chip. AMD began using a number system with its Athlon XP PC chip two years ago.
The new naming system has been just one of a number of changes at Intel lately, as evidenced by a 64-bit capable version of its Xeon server chip, which counters the Opteron.
Additionally, on Friday the chipmaker revealed that it plans to redraw its desktop processor road map for 2005. As part of a shift in strategies, the company will move to dual-core processors -- PC chips that include two processor cores instead of the traditional one -- earlier than previously planned, taking the company away from single processors with large caches.
Over time, Intel will add Pentium 4 chips with processor numbers in the 500s and Celerons with numbers in the 300s.
While Dothan Pentium Ms will offer more performance, they won't cost extra. The new Pentium M chips range in price from $294 (£166) for the 735 and $637 for the 755 -- the same price as the original 1.6GHz Pentium M at its introduction. The 745 is $423, Intel said.
Intel also dropped prices on existing versions of the Pentium M chip on Sunday. The price of the 1.5GHz Pentium M was lowered by 13 percent to $209, while the 1.7GHz Pentium M dropped 30 percent to $294.
