Intel Sonoma and Yonah put to death

A FEW MORE Intel mobile chips and programme updates for you on a boring Saturday. They range from the mysterious Centrino Pro to new CPUs. Sit tight and enjoy the show.

First the Centrino Pro details, starting with the logo. It looks like the familiar blue and pink Centrino non-Pro logo with a red 'placeholder' written across it diagonally. As far as the functionality, it is Santa Rosa, a Core 2 Duo Mobile Squared to a Power with an 800FSB, 865 GM or PM chipset, 82566MM NIC and the 4965 AGN or AG radio. Basically, it is Santa Rosa with AMT 2.5 firmware.

On the chip side of things, the T7700 replaces the T7600 as top dog in Q3/07. This is a 2.4GHz Merom to replace the 2.2GHz part. All other chips waterfall down as normal. Q2/07 will also see a T7100 1.8GHz Merom, a solid value part and the end of the Yonah upgrades.

Chipsets see a stunning new part, the GL960. Well this one is actually boring beyond belief, a 533FSB part that replaces the 940GML and 943GML. There is little here for enthusiasts, but corporate bean counters will have heart palpitations.

Sonoma will be axed in the near future, last orders will be in February of 07, and parts will trickle out until the end of the year. Yonah is set to be put on death row in September of 07 with the last orders taken in January of 2008. The last ones will be sold before the end of 08, but the ULV parts will live on for a bit, basically as long as people buy it.

Also specced in the grey area that doesn't fall neatly into any single category is Robson, the flash HD accelerator. There are two variants, a 1GB for Q2/07 and a 512M for hopefully Q2/07. Nothing earth shattering, just more speed and less power.

In the same not quite a category we have some wireless updates. There is a WWAN part, also known as WiMax and called Ala Moana, and a connection manager called Frankton for Q2/07. These co-exist with Proset V11.1, but that will be replaced by Edmunton in Q3. Yay wireless software.

If there is anything else cool about Intel wireless, we will bring it to you. In the mean time go out and binge read while speccing out your fantasy laptop. Have fun. µ