Robson Tech is key to Intel's Vista efforts

IF YOU BUY a Centrino notebook today, even when equipped with Core 2 Duo (Merom) processor, chances is that the product you own won't be powerful enough for Windows Vista, once that glorious operating system hits the road in its Ultimate version.

Santa Rosa is the code name for the fourth generation Centrino platform and the launch is expected in Q1 2007. In two mobile-oriented workshops, we learned that Intel is planning to have the platform on time for Vista launch, but it is possible that Vista Ultimate will appear before the platform is ready. This would not be the good news for Intel folks, since Vista pretty much requires at least 50MB of flash memory on the motherboard itself.

The fourth generation Centrino is nothing more than mixing the G965 chipset in its mobile iteration with 802.11n Wi-Fi chip and Robson Technology aka NAND Flash memory on the motherboard. We have talked with several people from the Intel Flash Memory group about the tech in detail: Robson Tech is a code-name for NAND flash chip that accelerates load time for Vista, and significantly improves load times of applications, often even in a factor of two.

When compared to Santa Rosa without the flash memory, the load times for applications showed double improvement, while the performance was raised by the factor of 1.5, which only speaks about just how much app components stays on the hard drive, even if the amount of system memory isn't a problem.

Besides notebook platform, you can pretty much expect that the technology will debut on gaming platforms as well, since gaming applications could benefit from having the most often accessed data closer to the CPU. µ