Montevina - Er... Centrino 2 Cometh; New Apple ‘Books Should Soon Follow
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
by Charles W. Moore
On Tuesday Intel unveiled its new Centrino 2 (aka “Montevina”) Mobile Technology with five new processors for starters – three of which that run at 25 Watts (a roughly 30 percent improvement over the Penryn CPUs in the current MacBook Pros and MacBooks which draw around 35 Watts) – plus all-new chipset and wireless products, some of which will find their way into the much-anticipated next generation of MacBooks and MacBook Pros in the near future.
But first a little history skim. Intel’s Core (2) (Duo) brands are the company’s consumer 64-bit dual-core and quad-core CPUs with the venerable x86-64 instruction set, based on Intel’s Core microarchitecture and derived from the 32-bit dual-core Yonah laptop processor that shipped in Apple’s original MacBook Pro notebooks in 2006.
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Core 2 was rolled out on July 27, 2006, offered in Core Solo (single-core), and Duo (dual-core) for notebooks. The relevant notebook Core 2-branded CPUs to the Apple laptop orbit have included “Merom” and “Penryn” (used in MacBooks and MacBook Pros). Penryn CPUs are used in the current models of these machines. Merom, officially released in July, 2006, and based on 65 nanometer (nm) chip technology, was a low power consumption variant of the Conroe desktop CPU, also offering improved 3D rendering and media encoding, and was the first Intel mobile processor to feature Intel 64 bit architecture. It has a thermal profile of 34 watts current draw, and is pin-compatible with the Napa motherboard architecture.
A second generation of Merom processors came along in 2007, with an 800 MHz front side bus on the fourth-generation Centrino Santa Rosa platform that replaced Napa. and also soon found their way into the MacBook and MacBook Pro families.
The next wave of Core 2 Duo notebook processors, incorporating Intel’s 45 nm chip technology was Penryn, Using a combination of new materials including hafnium-based high-k gate dielectrics and metal gates, and with roughly twice the density of Intel 65nm technology, Intel’s 45nm manages to pack roughly twice the number of transistors into the same silicon space - more than 400 million transistors for dual-core processors and more than 800 million for quad-core. This facilitates including up to 50-percent greater L2 cache, combined with increased energy efficiency. Penryn also includes Intel’s GMA X3100 graphics technology in the version used in the MacBook, and has a 35W thermal profile, about the same as Merom, but in real-world service, Penryn runs somewhat cooler.
“Centrino” is platform-marketing brand rather than a chip family per-se, and refers to a CPU, mainboard chipset and wireless network interface combination for notebook computers. The Centrino nomenclature has never been used by Apple, since the platform bundles and feature sets tend to be Windows-oriented. For example, OS X is not optimized to take advantage of Santa Rosa’s “Robson” NAND flash-memory cacheing, branded “Intel Turbo Memory.” Computer makers like Apple that only use the respective CPU and chipset are authorized to use other Intel branding, such as Core 2 Duo.
Napa, Santa Rosa, and the forthcoming Montevina are all Centrino platform development code name designations. Centrino 2/Montevina, released yesterday, is the fifth-generation Centrino platform, and will support second-generation Penryn CPUs with enhanced processor performance for faster multitasking, high-bandwidth Wi-Fi (802.11agn) and for the first time, an optional integrated WiMAX/Wi-Fi module, and well as more advanced power-saving technology to help it run cooler with longer battery life.
Intel will also offer an Extreme Edition version, which the company claims to be the world’s highest performing dual-core mobile processor, and says it will introduce eight more ultra-low voltage CPUs and the company’s first-ever quad-core CPUs for laptops within 90 days. Will there be quad-core MacBook Pros? A fascinating line of speculation. Later in the summer will come second-generation CPUs for ultra-thin and light notebooks (EG: the MacBook Air). Intel has also announced the world’s highest-performing dual-core mobile CPU, the Intel Core2 Extreme processor running at a brisk 3.06 GHz, as measured by SPECint*_rate_base2006, an industry benchmark ( www.spec.org ). In total, Intel says it will bring 14 diverse new laptop processors to the market over the next three months.
The five new Intel Core2 Duo processors will be incorporated in close to 250 new consumer and business notebook computer products (hopefully including MacBooks) which Intel says are are on the way. Indeed, Toshiba already has launched theirs.
Intel Centrino 2 processor technology will require new motherboard architecture and is claimed to improve on every facet of a laptop’s main features, including performance and battery life, faster 802.11n wireless (with WiMAX support arriving later this year), and new business-class manageability capabilities.
“When we first introduced Intel Centrino back in 2003, there were very few Wi-Fi hotspots, YouTube videos and social media didn’t really exist, ‘thin and light’ only referred to weight goals and desktop PCs outsold notebooks by a very wide margin,” comments Mooly Eden, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the company’s Mobile Platforms Group. “Today, notebooks outsell desktops in the U.S, and we’re paving the way to HD entertainment, rich online gaming, faster broadband wireless speeds and an easier and more secure way for businesses to manage, update and repair their notebook fleets.”
First up will be five new dual core processors based on Intel’s 45-nanometer manufacturing process described above. These second-generation Core 2 Duo Penryn CPUs will come with yet another front side bus advance, from Santa Rosa’s 800 MHz to 1066MHz, coupled with up to 6MB of L2 cache, and three of the five products reduce processor wattage draw by about 30 percent to 25 watts. Another new feature is dubbed “Deep Power Down Technology” which powers down processing components such as core clocks and cache memory when the laptop is idle, resulting in greater energy economy and contributing to cooler running.
Intel also unveiled its Mobile Intel 45 Express Chipset and wireless Intel Wi-Fi Link 5000 series that is shipping to computer manufacturer customers now, with some new models (but probably not Apples that soon) arriving later in July and August. Delivering five times the speed and twice the range of older 802.11a/g technology, the Intel Wi-Fi Link 5000 series provides 802.11 draft-N support that delivers up to 450 Mbps.
Switchable graphics, another new optional power-saving feature available on Intel Centrino 2-based notebooks, provides both integrated and discrete graphics on a single notebook, enabling users to easily switch between the two options. Switchable graphics delivers greater 3-D performance when needed while providing the option for greater power savings for the best of both worlds. It will be interesting to see if the next generation MacBooks will incorporate this feature, which would pretty much eliminate complaints about poor high-end (eg gaming and serious video) graphics performance with the MacBook’s current integrated GMA graphics that “borrow” up to 144 MB of system RAM for graphics support. At minimum, MacBook fans can look forward to Intel’s new GMA X4500 integrated graphics technology in Penryn 2, clocked at 533/640MHz and containing ten unified shaders, up from the eight provided by Penryn 1’s GMA X3100 graphics support system.
Looking farther ahead, the sixth-generation Centrino platform is under development, code-named “Calpella” and projected for release in Q3-4, 2009, with second-generation Nehalem processors - Nehalem being Intel’s next family of Core 2 Duo 45 nm CPUs.
The Nehalem microarchitecture represents the next step in processor energy efficiency, performance, and dynamic scalability, and has been designed from scratch to take advantage of Intel’s hafnium-based 45nm hi-k metal gate silicon technology, Nehalem will also be the first Intel CPU to incorporate proprietary QuickPath technology offering what Intel calls performance “on-demand.” and support for 2-8+ cores and up to 16+ threads with simultaneous multi-threading (SMT), and scalable cache sizes, system interconnects, and integrated memory controllers.
Intel’s 45nm Hi-k silicon process technology increases transistor switching speeds to enable higher core and bus clock frequencies and thus more performance in the same power and thermal profile, rather than just cranking out ever higher clock speeds and with commensurate increased energy demands and heat production, with the objective being to achieve more performance within the same power consumption envelope or even reduced power demand. Nehalem will include the ability to process up to four instructions per clock cycle on a sustained basis compared to just three instructions per clock cycle or less processed by other processors.
Other Nehalem advances are projected to include simultaneous multi-threading for enabling a more energy-efficient ways of increasing performance for multi-threaded workloads, superior multi-level cache, including an inclusive shared L3 cache that can be up to 8 MB in size, more sophisticated microarchitecture facilitating two to three times more peak bandwidth and up to four times more realized bandwidth, performance-enhanced dynamic power management, and a higher-performance integrated graphics engine, and much much more.
Nehalem is not pin-compatible with Penryn, requiring a larger socket and more pins, and the the CPU itself is substantially bigger.
So, what does this all mean to you as an Apple ‘Book user? Well, Applying Intel’s “Tick-Tock” CPU development metaphor, Nehalem’s microarchitecture marks the second step (a “tock”) to Penryn’s “tick” in delivering a new process technology (tick) or an entirely new microarchitecture (tock) each year. The first Nehalem-based processors are projected for release in the latter part of 2008.
Nehalem is shaping up to be a honey of a notebook processor when it arrives, but that won’t be until late 2009 if current projections hold, and in the meantime, the focus will be on the Penryn 2 Montevina/Centrino 2 rollout - I’m guessing in the context of MacBook Pros and MacBooks in the very late summer or early/mid fall.
I’ve personally been teetering on the edge of buying a Santa Rosa/Penryn ‘Book for the past six months or so, but have held back in anticipation of Montevina’s arrival, probably with a substantial form-factor revamp. I figure that Montevina might be well worth waiting for, and suspect that I could be kicking myself in a month or two if I lost patience and settled for an older model. Of course I may end up with an older model anyway, but I want to be able to make an informed choice. Looks like that will be facilitated soon.
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