Intel shines light on next Centrino

Next-generation mobile platform delivers a claimed 28 per cent power saving

Intel's next-generation mobile platform, codenamed Napa, will deliver average power savings of 28 per cent and run 68 per cent faster than its predecessors, the company claimed at a meeting with reporters in San Francisco.

The chipmaker had not previously shared power or performance benchmarks for its upcoming mobile platform scheduled to ship in January 2006.

The processor, chipset and wireless radio will use 3W of power, down from 4.2W for the previous generation. Together with the remaining components in a notebook computer, Napa is expected to cut power consumption by about 10 per cent.

"That translates into notebooks that have [battery life of] five hours and beyond," said Keith Kressin, Intel's director of marketing for mobile platforms.

Intel boasted at the meeting that computer manufacturers will launch 230 different models in the six months following the product launch.

"Napa will be the fasted ramp in Intel history for mobile computing," said Kressin. "No one is making any compromise. No one can say, on this previous platform I got something that I didn't get on Napa. Everything is better."

Napa will be using Intel's Yonah dual-core processor, a mobile version of the Intel 945 chipset with integrated graphics processing. The mobile platform also promises improved wireless performance over the current generation.

Intel launched the Centrino mobile platform in 2003. Aided by a huge marketing campaign that cost an estimated $300m, laptop computers have quickly caught up with desktop shipments.

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