Intel pre-announces Centrino Sonoma

VP Anand Chandrasekher, VP of Intel's mobile group, told the Wall St Journal that it will use next week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to set out its notebook stall.

Chandrasekher told the Journal that third party firms will show off 150 notebooks using Sonoma when it's launched.

As the INQ has told our readers for many months now, the notebook Pentium Ms to be launched soon will use a 533MHz frontside bus, and have better chipsets and better graphics.

But such features are likely to come at a price, with notebooks nudging the $2,000 mark. Chandrasekher also waxed lyrical about the future technology called Yonah, Intel's dual core notebook answer. That's unlikely to see the light of day until early 2006, according to so-called "roadmaps" seen by INQ staff.

AMD has a foothold in the notebook market, but is expected to introduce notebook chips in 2005 that will give Intel's chips a run for their money. It has nothing to compare with the power of Intel's marchitecture in the shape of the massively funded "Centrino" campaign, however. µ

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