Intel pushes next-gen Centrino at compact desktops

Not just a mobile product, you know

By Tony Smith in Beijing • Get more from this author

Posted in PC Builder, 17th April 2007 08:28 GMT

IDF Intel formally offered up its upcoming 'Santa Rosa' Centrino laptop platform as the basis for future small form-factor systems.

Intel has been pitching Santa Rosa as a foundation for SFF PCs for over a year now, touting the platform's key mobile-friendly feature - low power consumption - as an enabler for compact, fixed-location computers that can't be equipped with complex cooling systems.

The so-called Santa Rosa DT - the DT's for 'desktop' not 'delirium tremens', we assume - platform comprises an 800MHz, 35W second-generation mobile Core 2 Duo CPU, Intel's Wireless Link 802.11n next-gen wireless networking module and its Turbo Memory Flash-based data cache to accelerate operating systems capable of utilising it.

Announcing the platform at Intel Developer Forum today, the chip giant's Digital Home Group chief, Eric Kim, also pointed to Santa Rosa DT's "better graphics". He didn't say how they were better or what enabled them to be so, but we'd hazard a guess that the GMA 3000 graphics core has something to do with it, now that it's soon to be appearing in a mobile chipset, the 965GM.

Santa Rosa (for laptops) is due to arrive next month, so Santa Rosa (for desktops) isn't likely to be offered before then - look to a Q3 push, we were told.

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