Intel has introduced four mobile chips for small
notebooks that will operate under severe power constraints, the
company said.
The three low voltage and ultra low voltage Pentium M chips and
one ultra low voltage Celeron M chips use less power than regular
Pentium M chips. The low voltage chips consume a maximum of 10W,
while the ultra low voltage chips use only 5W, Intel said.
Power consumption is also a measure of heat dissipated by the
processor. Regular Pentium M chips and low voltage Pentium M chips
require some type of cooling mechanism to remove heat from the
processor surface, but ultra low voltage chips can be used in
ultraportable notebooks without a cooling fan because of their low
power consumption.
The three new Pentium M chips are all based on the Dothan core,
Intel's code name for the processing engine behind its 90NM Pentium
M processors. These chips have twice the Level 2 cache of their
Banias predecessors, with 2Mbytes of storage as well as faster
400MHz front-side bus.
Intel's new processor numbering system applies to the new chips.
The Pentium M low voltage 738 processor runs at 1.4GHz, the Pentium
M ultra low voltage 733 runs at 1.1GHz, and the Pentium M ultra low
voltage 723 chip runs at 1GHz. The new chips cost $284 (£154), $262
and $241, respectively, in quantities of 1,000 units.
The Celeron M ultra low voltage 353 processor runs at 900MHz.
Like all Celeron chips, it comes with a reduced amount of Level 2
cache but is otherwise based on the same architecture as its more
powerful counterparts. This chip comes with 512Kbytes of Level 2
cache and costs $161 in quantities of 1,000 units.
Tom Krazit writes for IDG News
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