On 12 March Intel introduced its Centrino technology, designed to improve the performance and battery life of laptops. Vendors including Toshiba, Dell, IBM, Samsung and Sony are launching new systems based on Centrino, but some are also offering wireless capabilities other than those specified by Intel.
These moves add to the range of mobile choices already available to companies, and may force IT departments to support drivers and disk images for yet another Intel platform.
The Centrino label covers a new processor - the Pentium M - plus two 855 chipset options, and an Intel wireless LAN (WLAN) solution. A laptop must have all three to carry the Centrino brand, Intel said.
"To be compliant, [a laptop] must have Pentium M, Intel WLAN and one of the two chipsets. You can't call it Centrino otherwise," said Simon Muchmore, a technical marketing engineer at Intel. This supports Intel's verification work to avoid interoperability problems for wireless kit from different sources.
"Intel verification is the 'goodness' of Centrino. We are branding interoperability as much as anything," said Muchmore.
However, Intel's wireless solution only supports the 802.11b standard operating at 11Mbit/s. Many vendors are offering laptops with a choice of wireless adapter, badging the system as Centrino when it has Intel's Calexico mini-PCI adapter, or as Pentium M when it does not.
"Many customers trust Dell to meet all their needs," said Mike Petersen, Dell's senior manager for Latitude marketing in Europe. Buyers will be able to choose the Intel wireless option or a Dell TrueMobile adapter at the same price, he said, adding that Dell will offer a card supporting 802.11a/b/g later in the year.
IBM is likewise offering a choice of wireless kit with its new ThinkPads.
"Some customers want Cisco Aironet [adapters], as the rest of their infrastructure is already Cisco," said Adrian Horne, ThinkVantage specialist for IBM.
The Pentium M chip at the heart of Centrino is available now at speeds of 1.6GHz, 1.5GHz, 1.4GHz and 1.3GHz, and with 1.1GHz low-voltage and 900MHz ultra low-voltage versions. Centrino is not a version of the Pentium 4, but was designed from scratch to offer good performance while extending battery life, Intel said. "Thin and light laptops are the 'sweet spot' for Centrino," said Muchmore.
Though early tests in IT Week Labs have not shown much increase in battery life, some vendors said Centrino was a big step forwards. "It makes a huge difference in battery life," said IBM's Horne, who said that the new ThinkPads could last for up to nine hours with extended battery packs. Intel said that Centrino laptops with standard batteries should run for four to five hours.
Power saving extends to a new mobile chipset, which manages up to 2GB of double data rate (DDR) memory with aggressive use of power-down when idle. Two versions are shipping: the 855GM has integrated Intel Extreme graphics functions, while the 855PM links to a separate graphics chip. Both consume about half the power of current 845 mobile chipsets.
Intel said that Centrino is backed by its Stable Image technology to help firms manage software configurations. "We guarantee to IT managers that [their] disk image won't need to change for at least 18 months," said Muchmore. But current laptops using the 845 chipset can share a common disk image with Pentium 4 desktops, while the same may not be true for Centrino systems.
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