Intel moves to Santa Rosa early next year

Personalisation of the Internet on the move is the next big leap for mobile technology, Intel said today, as the company showed off a number of wireless technologies and Santa Rosa, its next generation chipset.

These technologies included a Wimax chip that covers all the frequency spectrums, allowing it to be used around the world, the Santa Rosa integrated graphics chipset and the Robson Nand flash, for instant PC on/off.

Speaking during his keynote at the Intel Developer Forum, Sean Maloney, executive vice president and general manager of the mobility group, also pushed the ultra mobile PC (UMPC), a device that sits between the laptop and PDA in terms of size, but allows people to stay connected when they are out and about. It runs on Microsoft's much vaunted Origami software.

Partners here include hardware manufacturers and Internet companies such as Yahoo, which is interested because it fits tightly into its Yahoo Go offering, which it launched at CES in January. Go offers a broad range of Yahoo's services, such as email, instant messaging and entertainment, while away from the PC.

The UMPC devices, which look a little like oversized PDAs but with a sliding backpanel behind the screen to reveal a keyboard and other functions.

If to become popular though, they rely heavily on other technologies falling in place, such as ubiquitous wireless access, so that owners are always connected, and the applications and services that will attract consumers.

Among the new processors launching later this year as part of Intel's Napa refresh is its mobile dual core CPU, Merom. Intel claims this has a three times performance per watt improvement over the Banias chip released a few year ago.

Merom will tie in with Santa Rosa , its next generation Crestline ICH8-M integrated graphics chipset which Intel announced today, and the Kedron 802.11n Mimo wireless Lan chipset. It comes out in the first half of 2007.

It will also use the Robson Nand flash technology, currently at 256MB in size mainly due to the cost. By using Nand, boot time is significantly reduced, giving laptops instant on and off capabilities, and making them more suitable for use as home entertainment systems.

Intel hopes this will attract consumers to its Viiv entertainment platform, and the 11n Mimo wireless Lan is central to that because it means high definition video can then be streamed around the home.

On the much vaunted 802.16e Wimax front, Intel demonstrated it in use in the US for the first time today. Maloney showed off Intel's Wimax chip that can work across the three frequency spectrums, which will be released later this year.

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