Roadmap Intel's fourth-generation Centrino notebook platform, 'Santa Rosa', will take the hardware's frontside bus speed to 800MHz when it ships, provisionally sometime in H1 2007.

So suggests roadmap information seen (http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2006/0116/ubiq145.htm) by Japanese-language website PCWatch. Santa Rosa will be based on the upcoming 'Merom' mobile CPU, the first of Intel's next-generation architecture chips, and the part that will bring 64-bit support to the chip giant's mobile line-up.

Merom is due to ship this year, in the Q3 timeframe, within 'Napa', the third incarnation of Centrino. Napa was formally launched at the start of the month alongside Intel's Core Duo dual-core processor. At launch, Merom will maintain Napa's 667MHz frontside bus speed, but come Santa Rosa, the FSB clock will be upped to 800MHz. Merom will provide 4MB of L2 cache, up from Core Duo's 2MB.

Santa Rosa will incorporate 'Crestine', the successor to today's Express 945GM and 945PM mobile chipsets, both part of Napa. It will also include 'Kedron', Intel's next-generation WLAN chipset and undoubtedly the means by which either WiMAX or 802.11n - possibly both - will be brought to the Centrino platform. Of the two, 802.11n appears the most likely technology to be delivered by Kedron, PCWatch says.

Crestine will almost certainly sport an updated graphics core, no doubt one capable of supporting DirectX 10, the site suggests. ®

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