90nm Dothan to lead consumer Centrino drive

IDF Intel today promised to push its Centrino notebook platform at consumers, a scheme backed by the arrival next quarter of the long-awaited 90nm Pentium M processor, 'Dothan'.

Speaking at IDF today, Anand Chandrasekher, general manager of Intel's Mobile Platforms Group, confessed that he was "disappointed" that the chip maker had been forced to put back Dothan's release at the eleventh hour.

Most recently scheduled for an early Q1 launch, the 90nm chip will now ship during Q2, probably in May.

However, Chandrasekher pledged to ramp up Dothan quickly through the rest of the year, promising to converge the company's 90nm and 130nm products during that period - essentially to replace the latter with the former.

Bill Siu, general manager of Intel's Desktop Platforms Group, later said that Intel currently has two fabs punching out 90nm processors, with a third coming on line later this year.

Dothan will initially ship with a 400MHz frontside bus before being upgraded to a 533MHz FSB next Autumn when Intel ships 'Sonoma', the next generation of Centrino. Sonoma is set to offer significantly better audio and graphics performance than the current version of Centrino, and both capabilities are likely to feature heavily in any move to drive consumer Centrino sales. ®

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