Roadmaps The most recent notebook roadmaps from Intel shows that the firm is humming-and-hawing on whether to include its SpeedStep battery saving technology on all future mobile chips, including the mobile Celeron.

And, at the same time, the firm is set to intro the new Tualatin .13 micron core in the second quarter of next year for notebook processors, allowing speeds of 1GHz+ for mobile warriors toting ThinkPads and the like.

The key time for Intel to intro chipsets and products based on the Tualatin core is currently set at Q2 next year, according to the roadmaps. In that period we will see a Pentium III 950MHz mobile component, with 800MHz and 750MHz mobile Celerons arriving early next year.

Intel will improve its thermal management on the mobile Celeron package, the roadmaps indicate.

Q2 of next year will also see the Almador chipset, although the documents we saw was sketchy about specifics. It could be that Intel will use DDR memory for the first time in machines based on the Almador. AMD certainly will...

There appears to be no trace whatever of Rambus-based notebooks on next year's roadmap.

If Intel does make the decision to include SpeedStep on all mobile Intel parts, including its Celeron family, it is likely to be a response to the ambitious rival technology from AMD, formerly codenamed Gemini. ®