Sonoma to bolster laptops

Sonoma, so far so good

IT Week, 20 Jan 2005

Intel in January introduced Sonoma, an update for its Centrino mobile technology for laptops. The overhauled platform includes an updated Pentium M processor family and new motherboard chipsets. The changes will improve performance without affecting battery life, Intel said, and will lead to a wider range of laptop designs.

Laptops based on Sonoma will continue to be branded as Centrino, but the update adds new Pentium M chips with clock speeds up to 2.13GHz. The new Mobile 915 Express chipset family also delivers an embedded graphics subsystem with twice the performance of earlier products, plus support for up to 2GB of DDR2 RAM in dual-memory channels.

Sonoma brings laptops the high-speed PCI Express bus architecture for connecting adapters and other components; plus Intel's Pro/Wireless 2200BG dual-mode or 2915ABG tri-mode WLAN adapters.

Andrew Greenhalgh, Intel's mobile marketing manager for Europe, said that Sonoma was a more balanced platform than the original Centrino. "We believe this is the best mobile technology solution, full stop," he said. Users should not expect to see greater battery life, however, as some enhanced features cancel out the power-saving technologies that have also been introduced, according to Greenhalgh.

Intel's Pentium M processor chips feature a power-optimised front-side bus clocked at 533MHz, previously 400MHz. They now also support the Execute Disable bit that lets operating systems like Windows XP mark areas of memory as being data-only to help combat buffer overflow attacks.

The Mobile 915 Express chipset comes in three versions: the 915GM with Intel graphics hardware; the 915PM without graphics; and the 915GMS, a low-power version in a compact chip package for ultralight laptop designs.

PCI Express support means Sonoma laptops may feature slots for plug-in ExpressCard devices instead of the familiar PC Card slots. ExpressCards are smaller and support higher data transfer rates, but the 915 chipsets still support PC Cards, allowing vendors to add slots for either during the transition period.