By
Damon Poeter
28 May 2008 03:04PM
Tags:
intel | delays | mobile | chips | chipsets
Full release of Montevina, Intel's next-gen Centrino notebook platform, pushed back from early June to early August though some parts will be available on July 14.
Intel has pushed back the launch of its new Centrino 2 mobile processors and the first chipsets for the platform codenamed Montevina from a June date to mid-July and the full platform won't be released until early August, a spokesperson for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip maker said Tuesday.
It wasn't immediately clear how the delay would affect Intel, which hasn't suffered a major setback on a product launch in some time, but on Tuesday there was a growing buzz in the technology press that Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia could be beneficiaries.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD is scheduled to launch its own new notebook platform, codenamed Puma, in just a few days and will have the freshest mobile product on the block for longer than it had any right to expect, while Santa Clara-based Nvidia could enjoy a boost in sales of its chipsets for Intel processors as a result of the delay to Intel's own chipsets, note analysts. Both Intel rivals could see some pick-up in sales of discrete graphics as well.
Montevina, Intel's fifth-generation Centrino notebook platform, was originally scheduled for release at the June 3-7 Computex event in Taipei, Taiwan. But now Intel has targeted July 14 for the release of the new Montevina processors and discrete graphics chipsets, said Bill Kircos, head of Intel's consumer and enterprise communications group.
Kircos said technical issues with the Intel 4 Series Express chipset codenamed Cantiga and a paperwork setback on the basic WiFi chip included in the newly branded Centrino 2 platform means those portions of the platform won't be released until early August.
The admission confirms reporting by American Technology Research analyst Doug Freedman last Friday, who said Intel had "a mis-step in the completion of FCC certification" for support of the 802.11n WiFi standard and separately, that the new chipset's integrated graphics were causing failures on OEM notebooks.
"We ran into two issues pre-launch. We had to re-screen the integrated graphics chipsets and we didn't dot all the 'i's' and cross all the 't's' on the certifications for the wireless products," Kircos said.
"We apologize for any problems this may cause with our partners and customers," he added.
The processors that form the foundation of Montevina are its improved socket P mobile chips, second-generation Intel Core 2 Duo 45nm chips that bring the previous generation's front side bus from 800 MT/s to 1066 and reportedly will range in clock speed from 2.26GHz to 3.06GHz.
Consuming between 25W and 29W, the new chips promise longer battery life than their predecessors, the 34W "Merom" and first-generation "Penryn" chips featured in the current Centrino package codenamed Santa Rosa.
The Intel 4 Series Express chipset features several improvements over the Mobile 965 Express chipset in the original Santa Rosa platform and the Santa Rosa refresh Intel debuted in January of this year. The new boards feature higher-bandwidth GMA X4500 integrated graphics, native HDCP support, improved RAM support for DDR2 and newly built-in support of DDR3.
On the wireless side, the Montevina platform offers module options for a mini-PCIe WiFi adapter and add-on WiMAX card, or, in an industry first, Intel's combination WiFi/WiMAX Link 5150/5350 PCIe adapter, codenamed Echo Peak.
Kircos said the professional version of Montevina, branded Centrino 2 vPro, would also be released in August. That version of the platform will carry the Active Management Technology features like out-of-band system management that has made vPro desktop and notebook platforms popular with in-house system administrators and managed service providers alike.
"We just want to get the volume up as best we can before we do a big splashy launch. The vPro [version of Montevina] was supposed to come along after [the initial release of Centrino 2] anyway," Kircos said.
The Rich Creek 2 platform for whitebook builders, featuring the Cantiga chipset, remains in its "ecosystem prep phase" and is limited to just a handful of larger system builders. The official release of Centrino 2 is marked in Intel roadmap documentation as the beginning of the "pilot phase" for the Rich Creek 2 program, which appears to have suffered a setback as well.
It's also looking as if Canadian notebook builder Eurocom may have jumped the gun with news issued last week that it had launched the "world's first Montevina 15.4-inch high-end notebook."
See original article on CRN.com