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Engadget's 2005 / 2006 Intel's chip lineup cheatsheet

Ryan Block
Updated ·3 min read
Intel Yonah

Well, summer's drawing to a close, so it's about time for Intel's fall Developer Forum. Now that most of the news is in, we figured we'd give you bitheads a little something to chew on in the way of a cheatsheet to their new 2005 / 2006 product lineup. You Mac fans might also want to listen up too, since these are the chips that're going to be running your next Power Mac and/or Power Book.

So the big news here is in their Napa mobile computing platform—this year's take on what the Sonoma Centrino platform was late last year—and the processor at the heart of it all, codenamed Yonah, will be a dual-core mobile chip with 2MB of shared L2 cache and the ability to address 64GB of memory. Did we scare you off yet? No? Well, read on, there's plenty to go around.

Apparently process enhancements in Yonah will make ?very common media functions are 30 percent faster,? according to Intel. The rest of the Napa platform will be fleshed out with a Intel 945 chipset and 3945ABG WiFi adapter. For those paying close attention, the Intel 945 chipset includes Matrix RAID, which means new laptops will probably see SATA drive connections and integrated RAID (instead of 3rd party RAID chips on-board, as with the Qosmio, etc.). Though the 945 may also scale beyond 667MHz on the front-side bus, the Yonah will only support 667MHz speeds.

The chips

Their new processor lineup is focused squarely on reducing power consumption, decreasing heat production, increasing performace per cycle, but most noticeably, multi-core processors. Here are the names to look out for (besides Napa, of course) and some quick deets:

Yonah

(mobile)

  • To be introduced at CES, January 2006

  • Official wattage consumption not yet available, expected to be far less than 30

  • At introduction expect-

  • 1.66GHz to 2.33GHz dual-core chips

  • 1.5GHz to 1.83GHz low-voltage dual-core chips

  • 1.06GHz and 1.2GHz ultra-low voltage dual-core chips

  • 1.66GHz and 1.83GHz single-core chips

Merom

(mobile?post Yonah)

  • To be introduced in the 2nd half of 2006

  • Chips will debut in the low 2GHz range

  • Should incorporate 64-bit processing

  • Power consumption is targeted at 5 watts(!)

Conroe

(desktop)

  • To be introduced in the 2nd half of 2006

  • Introductory speeds will be between 2-3GHz

  • Power consumption is targeted at 65 watts (compared to the P4?s 95 watts)

Woodcrest and Whitefield

(server)

  • Woodcrest: dual-core / Whitefield quad-core

  • Power consumption is targeted at 80-90 watts (compared to the Xeon?s 110 watts)

Intel VIIV

Odds & Ends

  • Next gen chips will lose HyperThreading at first, and will begin to rely on true dual-core processing

  • Intel?s expects to yield power-saving processes that will run x86 code at high speeds but with ten times less power than currently?as little as 0.5 watts in the next few years. They showed off some design mockups, earlier.

  • Intel?s new VIIV spec should have the Yonah, Pentium D, or Pentium Extreme at its core, as well as requiring a 945G, 945P 955X, or Calistoga chipset, HD audio, and run XP MCE with Intel?s Integrated Media Server software. P.S. -It?s pronounced ?vive,? as in vivacious.

  • Intel also announced PCI Express II, which would break the 5GHz barrier, and have backwards compatibility with first generation products. Expect to see these devices in 2007 - 2008.

  • Prescott-based CPUs will begin to reach 4GHz clock speeds and higher

  • Xscale chips were also demoed at 1.2GHz

  • Intel also mentioned their new blade-platform chips, Sossaman. These should run up to four cores, are based on Yonah chips, and consume less than 31 watts.