Intel Unveils Montevina, Centrino 2 Platform
Intel Unveils Montevina, Centrino 2 Platform
Notebooks based on the Montevina platform will fall under the Centrino 2 brand. And enterprise targeted notebooks with additional security and manageability features built in will carry the Centrino 2 vPro moniker. The processors for the platform don't differ much from current offerings, except for their FSB frequencies and final clock speeds. The new Mobile 4 Express Series of chipsets, however, bring a number of new features to the table. For one, the chipset's MCH can support DDR2 and DDR3 memory technologies, so high-speed DDR3 memory will be coming to the mobile space finally.
The chipset also sports a new DX10 graphics core, capable of offloading all of the major HD video codecs from the host CPU. We recently met with Intel and briefly got to see a Montevina-based notebook playing back a Blu-Ray movie. CPU utilization was expectedly very low. Intel reps were also eager to point out the video-playback image quality of the platform, which can output deep, artifact-free black tones among other enhancements.
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Intel gets HUGI for power conservation -
The new chipsets, in conjunction with the latest mobile processors, also have a new capability Intel calls "HUGI" -- for Hurry Up and Get Idle. According to Intel, HUGI is designed to add more processor power for a certain set of computing tasks, yet it can more quickly turn off or spin down un-used portions of the processor to get back to a more energy-efficient state. The net effect of HUGI is that processing is more power-efficient and batter life is improved.