Intel to launch Pentium M in six speeds next week

Intel Corp. will launch a major foray into the notebook computer market next week with the launch of six new processors under the name Pentium M.

The chips will be announced on Wednesday and kick off a multi-million dollar marketing campaign that pushes both the chips and also its new Centrino architecture, which includes the Pentium M, the companion chipset and a wireless LAN adapter.

The first Pentium M processors, which pack around 77 million transistors, will be available at speeds of 1.6GHz, 1.5GHz, 1.4GHz and 1.3GHz as well as a low voltage version at 1.1GHz and an ultra low voltage version at 900MHz, according to Intel.

In addition to the new processor, Intel is launching a new chipset, which is the chip that connects the processor with most of the rest of the computer. The chipset will be available in two versions, the 855PM and 855GM, the latter of which has integrated graphics support. To match the Pentium M chips, both chipsets support the 400 MHz processor front-side bus being used on the new processor. They can also support up to 2G bytes of DDR (double data rate) memory, which is twice that supported by Intel's current mobile chipsets.

The wireless LAN adapter that makes up part of Centrino will support IEEE802.11b.

IDG News Service

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