Intel will ship its first Core 2 Duo-derived Celeron M budget notebook processors in Q1 2007, Taiwanese industry sources have claimed. At the same time, the chip giant will offer low-voltage versions of its current 'Merom' line-up, they say.

The Merom-based Celeron M series will debut with the 520, a 1.6GHz single-core part containing 1MB of L2 cache and operating over a 533MHz frontside bus. According to a Chinese-language HKEPC report, the part will cost $134 - exactly what Intel currently charges for the 'Yonah'-based 2GHz Celeron M 450.

Come Q2 and Intel will roll-out the 1.73GHz Celeron M 530. In Q3 it will release a version designed to work with the new mobile processor socket the chip maker is expected to introduce with 'Santa Rosa' - the next incarnation of Centrino - mid-H1 2006, the report claims.

The low-voltage Core 2 Duos will ship initially in January 2007 in two forms: the L7200 and L7400, clocked at 1.33GHz and 1.50GHz, respectively. Both run on 667MHz FSBs. In Q2, it's said, those parts will be joined by the L7300 and L7500, which up the FSB clock to 800MHz and are clocked at 1.4GHz and 1.6GHz, respectively. The second pair of processors will use the Santa Rosa CPU socket.

Between Q2 and Q3, Intel will launch the ultra-low voltage U7500. It's a 2.66GHz part operating on a 533MHz FSB. None of the low-voltage chips are vPro certified, the report claims, but they are Viiv-ready. The L7200 and L7400 are expected to ship priced at $284 and $316, respectively. Prices for the other low-voltage parts are not known. ®