IDF: Santa Rosa brings super fast Core 2 Duo

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 17 April 2007 13:02

Your IT - Entertainment

However, anyone offering Draft-N technology has the same problem, so the entire industry is hoping that an easy upgrade through software will be in place. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if that ends up being the case, although my guess is that it will be.

Questions were also asked about Intel and Nokia’s decision to drop the 3.5G HSDPA module from the Santa Rosa platform. Eden explained that there is only a single digit attach rate for 3.5G HSDPA modules which are already available from other manufacturers for inclusion into notebook computers. He also explained that Intel’s focus really is on WiMAX, which Eden believes will ultimately offer consumers a lower dollar cost per month for wireless broadband that will be much faster than 3.5G solutions can offer.

The only real problem with that statement is that 3.5G is being rolled out across the world by telecommunications companies today, and is the fastest wireless Internet standard that most people will be able to access from major capital cities in the developed western world, often at speeds of 1Mb and faster.

Clearly, the whole 3.5G and WiMAX battle is one that Intel is fighting with the telco’s, but hey, if it means cheaper and faster wireless broadband, it’s one battle I’m happy to see take place.

We were also given a demo of ‘Intel Turbo Memory’, which can dramatically speed up your computer’s operation by using flash memory instead of needing to continually access the hard drive. This memory was previously known by the codename ‘Robson’.

In a demonstration that we saw featuring two identical notebook computers, with the same hard drive, the same processor, the same amount and type of memory but with one featuring Turbo Memory and the other without it, the Turbo Memory equipped notebook was able to do some photo stuff with Adobe Elements twice as fast as the computer without it, in what was a pretty powerful demonstration of the speed that Turbo Memory brings.

Also included in Santa Rosa is the Intel 965 graphics chipset. This is said to run Vista’s Aero interface quite nicely, although on my current Core Duo Fujitsu Tablet PC with the 945 graphics chipset, I am already running the Aero interface very nicely indeed and have been since Vista RC1. 965’s real advantage besides whatever speed and graphical increases it brings will be eventual DirectX10 compatibility, although unfortunately this will not be out of the box – Intel is still working on graphics drivers to make that happen.

Therefore, if true DirectX10 compatibility is what you need, you’ll have to look for a notebook that offers parts of the Santa Rosa platform, but comes with a separate ATI or Nvidia graphics module that has DirectX10 drivers available for it.

We were also told that in the first half of 2008, the 65nm Core 2 Duo chip currently in use would be replaced by a 45nm version dubbed ‘Penryn’, which will pack more transistors into a smaller space and offer better performance.

There were a range of other demonstrations during Day 0, including improvements to the radio antennas used in today’s notebooks, where you’ll find different flavours of Wi-Fi and  Bluetooth in your computer, which also have to fight against the signals from your mobile phone, which include GSM, Blutooth and increasingly Wi-Fi as well. Instead of using multiple antennas, a ‘smart antenna’ has been developed which can better tune into specific wavelengths – and tune out background noise that would otherwise cause great interference.

When listening to a demonstration of some audio with the special antenna technology turned off, the audio sounded terrible and the voices hard to make out. With the special technology enabled, the voices were clear and easy to hear.

The conference so far has also been plagued by wireless Internet difficulties, as it seemed there were too many people trying to connect to the hotel’s wireless network, which was overwhelmed. This made it difficult, or rather, almost impossible, to post stories while watching the briefings as the Wi-Fi turned on, and then turned off on a regular basis.

There was always the possibility of using a wireless broadband 3G card which would only have worked at GPRS speeds, if this was set up before leaving Australia and by requesting that international data roaming be turned on, but seeing as data roaming is even more expensive than voice roaming this would have been a slow and very expensive option, although as the Internet kept on flickering on and off, it’s something I wish I had done.

More news from the Intel Developer Conference (IDF) soon.

Alex Zaharov-Reutt travelled to the Beijing Spring IDF as a guest of Intel.