Unlike PC brands and electronics manufacturers, such as Asus, Benq and Lenovo among some of the companies mentioned in passing in last Friday’s presentation, Apple has not been explicitly mentioned by anyone affiliated with Intel. But the chipmaker is the sole supplier of processors for Mac hardware; And if ebien in the previous press events held by Intel there was no mention of Apple either, the truth is that the different processors have always appeared in the mac hardware, as happened for example after the presentation of the Core 2 processors Duo made by Intel last July 2006, and which had its presence within the Mac world in the laptops presented at the end of summer.
And again it is laptops that seem to be among the teams most likely to benefit from the announcements made by Intel last Friday. The chipmaker has released an update on its Centrino chipset.
Called Santa Rosa Refresh, the next update will offer improved graphics and take advantage of the new 45 nanometer Hi-k Core 2 Duo mobile processors. Intel expects these mobile chips, codenamed Penryn, to boost both performance and battery life in systems that implement them. Intel indicates that it will introduce the Santa Rosa Refresh update in January.
Intel introduced the original Santa Rosa chipset last May. The elements of said chipset, a greater speed of the frontal bus and greater capacity RAM, were introduced later in the lines MacBook Pro and MacBook, as well as in the last iMac.
Intel has also shown a new product: a solid state drive slightly smaller than a fingernail. The PATA Z-P140 solid state drive, with a size of 12 x 18 x 1.8 millimeters, will be available to hardware manufacturers in capacities of 2 and 4 GB, although Intel officials have pointed out that the Z- P140 can use up to four memory chips for a total of 16GB for storage capacity that provides fast boot-up and lower power consumption. Intel indicates that the unit is part of the Menlow platform proposed for mobile Internet devices and ultra-mobile PCs.
The company will offer more details of its plans next month when CEO Paul Otelline delivers the introductory presentation at CES on January 7. Just over a week later, Apple’s CEO will do the same at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco.
