Intel has formally announced its Merom chip for notebooks. Dell's Alienware and Toshiba have already
announced new models built around the processor.
Intel will use the chip to upgrade its keystone Centrino package of
power-efficient, wireless-enabled technologies for laptop PCs, a bundle that
combines the main central processing unit (CPU) with a mobile chipset and
wireless card.
Merom is the third launch in recent months from Intel's new line of dual-core,
65-nanometer process chips built with the Core 2 Duo architecture. The company
launched its Woodcrest Xeon 5100 chip for servers in June and its Conroe
Core 2 Duo chip for desktops in July.
A laptop running the Core 2 Duo chip instead of Pentium M will offer twice the
CPU performance while drawing 28 percent less electricity from the battery,
said Dadi Perlmutter, senior vice president of Intel's Mobility Group.
Intel hopes the new Merom chip family will help stem its leak of market share
to rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and AMD's dual-core Turion 64 X2 processor.
In worldwide sales of notebook processors, Intel has watched its market share
drop from 87.6 percent in the first quarter of 2005 to 86.0 [cq] percent in the
first quarter of 2006, according to Gartner. The fall has been steeper in the
U.S., where Intel tumbled from 81 percent share during the month of June 2005
to 66 percent in June 2006, according to Current Analysis.
Since Intel began shipping the new Core 2 Duo chip to vendors last month,
computer makers have come up with 200 notebook designs that specify the chip,
including its placement in Intel's Viiv bundle for entertainment PCs.
Indeed, the Core 2 Duo chip will offer users improved multitasking power, media
capabilities and battery life, said Alienware, who will use the chip in three
of its high-end gaming and media notebooks.
Alienware will use Core 2 Duo chips in the 17-inch Area-51 m5750, 15.4-inch
Area-51 m5550 and 14.1-inch Sentia m3450.
Likewise, Toshiba announced it would use the new chip in its Qosmio G35-AV660,
a multimedia notebook PC with an HD DVD-ROM drive and two 120G-byte hard drives
for storing TV programs and music files. Adding the powerful new chip to the
high-end features in this audio-video notebook model will boost processing
performance for HD DVD playback as well as music, gaming, TV, video editing and
PC multitasking, said Jeff Barney, vice president of marketing for Toshiba's
Digital Products division.
Despite that heavy computing load, the Core 2 Duo is still Intel's most
energy-efficient dual-core performance mobile processor, conserving power
resources while reducing fan noise and heat, he said.
That power efficiency capability could be reassuring to customers made nervous
by recent reports of notebooks overheating and catching fire.
In the past month, Dell and Apple have recalled a total of 5.9
million defective notebook batteries manufactured by Sony Energy Devices, with Apple advising users to plug their notebooks into AC outlets while
they wait four to six weeks for replacements to arrive in the mail.
Intel is shipping five versions of the Merom Core 2 Duo chip, priced per chip
in 1,000-unit quantities at US$637 for the 2.33GHz T7600, $423 for the 2.16GHz
T7400, $294 for the 2.00GHz T7200, $241 for the 1.83GHz T5600 and $209 for the
1.66GHz T5500.
