Intel's Dothan debuts as 735, 745 and 755

Intel's first 90 nanometre Pentium M chipsets, known as Dothan, are to be unveiled in San Francisco today.

The reduced sized of the transistors, down from 130 nanometres, doubles the number of transistors to processor to 140 million allowing them to run faster and cooler.

To further increase processing speed the three new chipsets, called 755, 745 and 735 under Intel's new naming policy, have 2MB of cache which is double anything seen on Intel's mobile platform to date.

The processors run at 2GHz, 1.8GHz and 1.7GHz respectively, and will cost $637, $423 and $294 each in quantities of 1,000. Wireless capability is also built in.

"The new naming highlights the fact that processor speed is only one part of the equation. The front side bus, cache and wireless potential also need to be recognised," said an Intel spokesman.

Intel hopes the new processors will consume less power and generate less heat. Better power management should extend laptop battery life, as the chipsets save at 21.5W instead of the 24.5W of the previous Pentium M design.

But Intel has also signalled the end of two planned chipsets: Tejas, a Pentium 4 chip due for release in late 2004 or early 2005; and Jayhawk, an entry-level Xeon server product.

Both will appear with dual core processors within the next three years, according to the company.