Prescott notebooks will scale to 4GHz

SOURCES DISCLOSED that when Intel succeeds in creating Prescott processors aimed at the notebook market, they are likely to scale to 4GHz before that particular avenue reaches a dead end.

The Intel plans for notebook Prescotts are similar to those of the current family of notebook Pentium 4s - that is to say these are and will be essentially desktop processors but with better thermal characteristics.

As such, they're expected to be positioned as desknote replacements, while Intel still appears to be on track to release 2MB Dothan/Pentium Ms clocking to 2GHz and more during the first quarter of 2004, and using the 90 nanometer process.

We're very much looking forward to seeing how the Dothan Pentium M performs - the current Pentium M is a classy chip that breaks all the megahurts madness rules.

The choices will be hard for buyers. But easy after Intel introduces the Dothan 2MB chip and 802.11g to boot -- because the previous Centrino notebooks are going to be ten a penny. Well, not exactly ten a penny, but certainly cheaper than they are right now.

It appears that Intel has been successful moving away from its Pentium 4M chip to desknote style Pentium 4s.

Early next year, for example, notebook vendors are readying for example Dothan chips using ATI's M10-64MB, and supporting iCH 4, as well as 800MHz Pentium 4 desktop replacements based on Nvidia's NV34-64.

The earliest 1.8GHz Dothan chips - although we should not talk about megahurts and Pentium Ms in the same breath, will support DDR333, but that's likely to change after June next year.

What's perhaps more exciting is that as PCI Express starts to emerge, we'll see two Express Card modules - the replacement for PC Cards, at sizes of 34mm and 54mm. And soon we will see notebooks supporting JPEG2000, and PCI Express will allow us to see a new dawn in the history of computing. Provided, of course, that Microsoft gets its skates on and helps the hardware manufacturers along by producing software that takes full advantage of all of this. Perhaps Intel could give Microsoft a helping hand?