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Page 1 of 6  Almost five years ago, Intel promoted its first uniform solution attended for notebooks, under the brand – Centrino. This brand was launched with intention to consolidate a position of Intel on notebook’s market as number one. Many people are making a mistake if they think that Centrino is some Intel processor attended for notebooks and is based on “rocket science” technology. Centrino is constitute of processor, chipset, network subsystem that supports 100Mbit/1Gbit LAN connection and also an optional WiFi adapter.
The whole “package” is produced under Intel Corporation’s patronage,
which wasn’t the case with other rival manufacturers up to these days.
So, Centrino brand guarantees that all you can find inside your
notebook is signed by Intel Corporation.
For the last five years technology went few steps forward and so did Centrino platform. Since year 2003 up to today, Centrino passed through several CPU upgrade phases, increasing FSB from initial 400MHz up to 800MHz, graphics performances improvements (which are constantly the sore spot of this technology), transitions of memory standard, improvements in power consumption, increasing computer autonomy and advancing of network interfaces.
Centrino 2, as evolutional step, brings advanced power savings with increased performances thanks to revolutionary 45nm process, DDR3 memory with low power consumption, support for quad-core processors on notebook platform and extreme edition variant with consumption not bigger than 45W.
Intel’s PR machinery says that Centrino 2 is revolutionary product, if we observe it from user’s side.
Portfolio that encompass Centrino 2 platform includes all targeted market segments from ultra-thin notebook segment with power consumption from only 22W to DTR – Desktop Replacement segment that actually includes processors with speed up to 3.06GHz with reasonable consumption in range up to 45W. If we look at price, Montevina platform is involved in all market segments.
If we take a look back, the most interesting time was when Intel had in offer CPUs for desktop and server market, CPUs based on Pentium 4 – Netburst Architecture. These types of processors didn’t show themselves in best light, when it comes to relations between performances and power consumption. But suddenly, Intel’s Israel Development Team developed for portable platform new CPU (actually “old” CPU based on trusted Coppermine PIII core, but with faster bus and bigger L2 cache) with some additional improvements (µOps Fusion, etc.) which resulted in low consumption and great performances. Doing this, Intel hit a strike to all its competitors in that critical moment (on ascending mobile segment). Launching Centrino, Intel brought on world yet another brand with big-name as it was Pentium in its time. We shouldn’t waste our breath talking about notebook market ascending in last seven years, and that is expected that number of sold notebooks in few upcoming years will surpass number of sold desktop configurations. Powerful Intel development teams, led with that strategy, are reoriented on CPU development with low consumption and high efficiency, instead of former gigahertz race.
After appearance of Centrino platform almost complete offering of notebooks based on Intel processors reoriented on Pentium M, which was trump card on notebook’s market. Only few of cheaper and bulkier models were based on inefficient NetBurst microarchitecture, that is Pentium 4m and Celeron M processors.
We can say that Intel made a parallel development of CPUs for notebooks and desktop solutions that are, now, well known Core 2 Duo processors. Power efficiency and good ratio performance/watt paid off even for desktop. After appearance of Core 2 Duo processor, just like it was with appearance of Pentium M on its time, NetBurst architecture went into retirement.
45nm Penryn Core
Centrino 2 is actually based on very successful Core 2 microarchitecture, but this time as 45nm edition under code name Penryn. Last generation – Santa Rosa supported 45nm processors but this time in limits from 25W TDP. The original version of Core 2 based on Centrino platform was equipped with Merom core made in 65nm process that had 4MB L2 cache. Penryn core arrives this time with 6MB L2 cache, bigger FSB, new instruction SSE4 set and also with additional improvements like Fast Radix-16 and Super Shuffle Engine, which regarding on already fast Merom core brings up to 20% performances on same clock. Average expected differences can be in range up to 10%, thanks to bigger L2 cache, which is exceptional result. Penryn is made in revolutionary 45nm High-K dielectric, metal gate process, where is used metal instead of polysilicon gates, for the first time after 40 years from beginning of development of planar semiconducting technology. Original transistors in LSI technology were made also with metal gates but because of big warming, gate was melting very often and after that transistor couldn’t be in function anymore. So, very soon manufacturers abandoned this concept. On the other hand, polysilicon gate is far more resistant on high temperatures, and it was used even despite the fact that its electrical resistance was much higher than it was for metal gate. Using metal gates brought significant improvement in transistor’s speed, and if it’s up to Intel’s officials, up to 40% increase. This still doesn’t mean that new processor can work on 40% higher clock, but certainly means that higher frequencies are possible regarding previous 65nm process. Besides that, thanks to High – K dielectric process, Intel reduced so called “current leakage”, which positively effected on warming up and consumption.
When gate is supplied with power, drain can read logic “1” or “0”, depending on transistor type. If dielectric, that separates gate from transistor body, has a small dielectric constant you can expect current leaking, bigger power consumption, smaller speed and definition of logic state comes to question.
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