Intel is sticking to its plan to launch 'Sonoma', the second generation of the Centrino mobile platform, in Q1 2005, despite rumours to the contrary.

According to a DigiTimes report, citing sources from among Taiwan's notebook manufacturing community, the chip giant continues to tell customers that Sonoma, comprising the 'Alviso' chipset and updated 90nm Pentium M processors, will ship next quarter during the week 17-20 January.

The whispers that Sonoma would be put back to Q2 2005 seem few and far between. Certainly, a number of Far Eastern vendors have demonstrated prototype Sonoma-based systems and one or two even inadvertently announced new kit for this Autumn based on the new technology. Many vendors were annoyed with Intel's decisions to delay Sonoma's debut from Autumn 2004 to late Q4 and finally early Q1 2005, and they'll be looking to the platform's revival to boost post-Christmas sales.

Intel this week slashed Pentium M, Celeron M and Centrino prices, and today added the 2.1GHz Pentium M 765 to its line-up.

Sonoma will take Centrino's frontside bus up to 533MHz and add support for DDR 2 SDRAM, PCI Express and Serial ATA to the notebook-oriented platform. It will also feature Intel's integrated DirectX 9-compatible Media Graphics Accelerator 900 engine and support for its Hi-Def Audio system. ®

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