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Intel Announces New, Slower, Chip
kshkval writes "According to Business Week, Intel is marketing the Centrino, a 1.6 Ghz chip that is slower than previous laptop processors from Intel, but does more. Hey, isn't that what Apple and AMD have gotten so much guff about? The worm turns..."
Perhaps now we will see a new wave of marketing, measuring and such from Intel, although I doubt it.
/.ers with their honesty.
They have made a tremendous amount of money due to the ignorance of "moms and dads" who assume that bigger numbers mean faster computer.
They are more typically going to say "yea, but this is for laptops only, they are different" and still focus the race on ghz. I mean, you can't blame them. their job is to make money for their shareholders, not impress
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
The Centrino is not a single processor but a "mobile technology" including microprocessor, wireless networking, etc.
Processor is a misnomer.
One has to realize that the new chip competes directly with the Transmetia Processors, not with Intel P4. So instead of looking at it as a step back 1.5 Ghz, look at it as an increase of 600 Mhz over the 1 Ghz Crusoe. I wonder what the will market it as (fade to daydream of "Intel-Pentium-4-Mobile-Hyperthreading-Altra-Mobil e")
Actually, you'll need to get one of the new 3.06 GHz P4s; it's power dissipation is above and beyond any Athlon. The highest an Athlon ever got was ~74 W max; the current P4 has an average of 81 W and a max of ~105 W.
5
http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=5000036
AMD said several months ago they are getting out of the megahertz race and focusing on application of technology, meaning doing more with the die space instead of doing faster. Intel is now taking back leadership by...being sure to have a slower chip than AMD that does still MORE with the die space.
The speed race is over. You will continue to hear about who has the fastest, but it will be more "gee whiz" stuff than "I need that" because you just won't need it. Before long you won't be able to even FIND a retail desktop computer that runs over 2Ghz, and when you open the hood it will have ONE chip in it, right in the center of the logic board. In the end probably everything sold as a desktop system will have power consumption below that of today's laptop computers, power supplies the size of a deck of cards, no fan, 1.8 inch HDD, wireless input on all I/O (including the monitor) and the whole thing will fit in a pocket and run for an hour on a built-in backup UPS battery, thus finally bluring the distinction between what is a portable computer and what is not.
Think iPod on steroids, and yes you will use your "portable desktop Pee Cee" to listen to MP3s most of the time, using a wireless headset.
That's just the way it is going folk, because with all the price pressure that is where the profit will be. Besides, all that sounds tre kewl to me!
Give it...what? Two years? Now that the race has turned to "less is more" it might not even take that long. And to the winner go the spoils.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
...but I can't be the only girl who'd rather get hardware than flowers or chocolate.
Can I?