Intel Merom is way ahead of schedule

THE SUCCESSOR to the Yonah mobile processor, Merom, appears for the first time on the roadmaps Intel showed to its customers last week.

But that's little more than a placemark on the notebook roadmap and scheduled for the second half of 2006, along with a Yonah T2700. We reported in September that Intel will make it a 64-bit chip with 4MB of L2 cache.

Nevertheless, Intel Israel has been singing its praises. According to an Israeli reader, Channel 2 recently reported on the firm's Haifa centre.

The reader who watched the programme said Merom is already taped out and working a month ahead of its original schedule.

The programme showed what he described as an odd looking CPU, with cache set up in a strange manner, spread over the chip die in rectangular blocks.

The only other mention of Merom we saw in week 46 roadmaps was that Intel has added the CPU to support "mini entertainment PC platforms", scheduled for Q4 2006.

Intel is already on schedule with its Yonah processors. As we reported last week, pricing and name/numbering for these dual and single core CPUs are available for its partners, and a launch is scheduled for early January 2006.

Early January is also when Steve Jobs presides over Macworld. Will Yonah be the star of that show? The answer is we don't know. µ

See Also
Intel's Merom misses tape out by a month
Intel decides on clock speeds for Yonah processors
Intel readies 65 nano chips for 1st of January
Apple wants Intel chips early, oh flipping Dell
Intel Meron is 64 bit and with 4MB L2 cache
Intel Merom is designed from the ground up
Intel's 45 nanometre is good to go
Pentium M to get 64-bit support, Extreme Edition