Intel's Merom to Get 800MHz Bus, Santa Rosa to Acquire 802 11n --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

Intel's next-generation mobile platform that is set to be released in March, 2007, will not only acquire 64-bit capability, but also higher-speed processor system bus and even next-generation wireless networking, according to a Japanese web-site.

The code-named Santa Rosa platform and Crestine chipset will boost the processor system bus speed of the processor known under Merom name ?expected to be introduced later this year ?to 800MHz, which should significantly increase performance of this dual-core chip in multimedia tasks that require high bandwidth. It is yet uncertain whether Crestine chipset will support higher-speed dual-channel DDR2 memory, but in the past years memory bus clock-speed was usually the same as processor system bus speed.

The code-named Merom processor will feature 14-stages pipeline, down from 31 or more stages found in current Intel Pentium (Prescott) designs, 4-issue out-of-order execution engine as well as improved performance of the floating-point unit (FPU). This greatly showcases the substantial difference from the current NetBurst chips that have very deep pipeline and cannot boast with really high-performance FPUs. Furthermore, 14-stages pipeline is deeper compared to AMD Athlon 64's 12-stages pipeline, which, on the one hand, allows slightly higher clock-speeds compared to the AMD64 architecture, but, on the other hand, may mean a bit lower efficiency. Additionally, being dual-core processor made on a single piece of silicon, Merom will sport L1-to-L1 cache transfer as well as, possibly, unified L2 cache (up to 4MB) for better performance in applications that heavily rely on threading.

Besides, the platform is expected to feature code-named Kedron wireless network controller compliant to 802.11n standard, reports PC Watch web-site. The 802.11n standard will increase bandwidth to up to 600Mb/s, a major increase from current 54Mb/s in the laptops.

Intel originally planned to release Santa Rosa in 2006, but a delay of the code-named Sonoma platform caused the company to shift introduction of the recently introduced platform internally named Napa into 2006 and push the next-gen platform into 2007.

Intel representatives reportedly prove that Santa Rosa is the code-name of the company's mobile platform slated to be introduced in 2007, but they are tight-lipped over the specifications of the part.



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