Intel Monday began shipping five new processors for mobile devices including the world’s first microprocessor designed to operate at 2 gigahertz (GHz) — or two billion cycles per second.
Made for business and consumer laptops, the processors are expected to compete with Transmeta’s Crusoe chips and the Athlon 4 and Duron mobile chips made by Advanced Micro Devices
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor making giant said its Mobile Intel Pentium 4 processor-M at 1.90 GHz and mobile Intel Celeron processors at 1.50, 1.40 and 1.33 GHz are shipping in volume. The fist two Celeron chips feature a 400 MHz system bus and the 1.33 GHz features a 133 MHz system bus.
The new P4-M was designed using Intel’s new NetBurst Micro-Architecture. The form consists of a 400 MHz processor system bus, Hyper Pipelined Technology, an Execution Trace Cache, Rapid Execution Engine, and 144 Streaming SIMD instructions (SSE2). It also includes a 512k on-die L2 cache.
The processor also includes mobile-specific features such as Enhanced SpeedStep technology, and Deeper Sleep for low power state and small mobile packaging for thinner, lighter mobile PCs.
Intel said its entire line of mobile processors is designed on its 0.13-micron technology, which it says is great for running several applications at once simultaneously while running background programs such as encryption, compression, virus scan, client management, and Virtual Private Networks.
In 1,000-unit bundles, in Micro-Flip Chip Pin Grid Array (uFCPGA) packaging, the Mobile Intel Pentium 4 processor-M at 2 GHz and 1.90 GHz are priced at $637 and $401, respectively. In 1,000-unit quantities, in Micro-Flip Chip Pin Grid Array (uFCPGA) packaging, the mobile Celeron processor at 1.50, 1.40 and 1.33 GHz are priced at $170, $149 and $134, respectively.
The No. 1 chipmaker said it wanted to introduce the 2 GHz mobile chip by the end of the year but moved up its goal in April.
“It took the industry 11 years to reach 1 GHz in mobile computing. We’ve doubled that frequency to 2 GHz in only 15 months,” Intel Mobile Platforms Group vice president Anand Chandrasekher.
