Intel 'delays' Centrino 2 chipset

Intel has put back the release of Centrino 2 to 2005, unnamed sources from Taiwan's notebook manufacturing community have alleged.

The second generation of the chip giant's thin'n'light notebook platform, codenamed 'Sonoma', was expected to ship this coming autumn, though Intel has never publicly narrowed the schedule beyond H2 2004.

Sonoma comprises the 90nm generation of the Pentium M processor, aka 'Dothan', along with the as-yet-unreleased 'Alviso' chipset. Alviso is essentially a mobile version of 'Grantsdale', the Pentium 4 chipset Intel is expected to launch formally on 21 June.

It's Alviso that has been put back, the sources claim, according to a DigiTimes report. According to Intel, Alviso will increase the Pentium M's frontside bus speed to 533MHz, add support for DDR 2 SDRAM, PCI Express and Serial ATA, and incorporate Intel's Hi-Definition Audio and third-generation Media Graphics Accelerator 900 technology.

Since Alviso is the key component that will differentiate Sonoma-based kit from today's Centrino systems, any delay to the chipset will almost certainly affect the release of the platform.

Sonoma will also include Intel's next major wireless adaptor, its 'Calexico 2' tri-mode 802.11a, b and g card, but it's questionable whether that alone is enough to push Sonoma without Alviso.

The sources claim that Sonoma-based will now appear in Q1 2005, as opposed to Q4 2004. ®

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