Mobile
Intel changed the roadmap for the mobile platform. The delay in the Sonoma announced at the end of January has repercussions on the Napa, whose release date has been postponed from the end of 2005 to early 2006. The new chipset, in addition to Dual-Core compatibility will integrate a new graphic core and a new smaller Golan WiFi component, whose power consumption will be lower than the relatively consumptive current component.
Golan will be a more compact WiFi component with a lower power consumption Mobile dual-core
Expected at the end of 2005, the Yonah will be the first dual- CPU for laptops. Like the Smithfield, the Yonah will use a single die including both cores. This, however, is the only similarity. The Yonah will be necessarily based on the new 65 nm fabrication process, because there can´t be an excessive heat source in a laptop. Mooly Eden, the Mobility Group Vice-President said that the Yonah´s average power consumption will be equivalent to the current latest Pentium M. This, despite the presence of two cores and thanks to more advanced energy saving systems and, especially with the possibility to deactivate one of the cores.
One Yonah particularity is that it is the only Dual-Core CPU in Intel’s roadmap to use a shared cache L2 instead of two distinct caches. It will be 2 MB and provide equivalent performances to the Dothan cache L2. It´s also the only CPU of Intel’s roadmap not to support the EMT64! The 64 bit mobile will not be available until the end of 2006 for Intel. This situation could be a great opportunity for AMD and the Turion even if the 64 bit improvement hasn’t yet been proven.
The Yonah will include several innovations on the architectural level. Intel´s objective is to improve FPU and SSE performances in order to standardize them with the whole line of CPUs. Current ones are indeed a little behind in this respect compared to the Pentium 4. To successfully increase performance Intel has decided to increase the decoder transfer rate for SSE instructions. All 3 decoders now have the capacity to process SSE instructions. Some SSE operations will then be fused by the Micro Ops Fusion Engine like some instructions of the current Pentium M. And finally, SSE3 will be supported and the FPU slightly modified to improve performance… for games! Does the fact that Mooly Eden modifies the Pentium M use for games mean that the Yonah will be of interest for other products than laptops?
