Power management key to thinner Montevina notebooks: Intel

Angus Kidman
Wednesday, 19 September 2007 21:08

Your IT - Home IT

Promising "way smaller" packaging in its forthcoming Montevina notebook chipset, Intel is staking the creation of smaller and lighter notebooks on improved power management techniques.


Presenting the second day keynote at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Dadi Perlmutter, senior vice president of Intel's mobility group, said that Montevina systems, which will use the company's 45nm Penryn processor, would see dramatic changes in overall motherboard size, largely because of changes in power management approaches.

"In order to define the size of notebooks, especially the thickness, the physical sizes are not the only determination factors," Perlmutter said. "The thermals, the power, matters as well. Next year we're going to take the power down to 25 watts. This will enable thinner, less thick machines."

"With the packaging technology and reducing the power, we're going to get to 60% of the size of the motherboard and 25% thinner."

A day after Intel showed off a prototype Montevina box in a Perspex case, Perlmutter demonstrated a full Montevina notebook, though those won't be generally available until mid-2008.

Since 2005, battery performance on notebooks has improved 40%, Perlmutter said. "This is despite the fact that machines are becoming more capable," he added.

Perlmutter also talked up the importance of WiFi and WiMAX as enabling technologies, noting that Intel's Echo Peak technology to enable both communications systems would be a key feature of Montevina.

"Being wirelessly connected does matter," he said. "When we introduced Centrino in 2003, less than 10% of notebooks came equipped with WiFi. It has changed. Ninety percent or more of notebooks today come equipped with WiFi."

However, internal Intel research cited by Perlmutter suggests that connectivity is still of relatively low importance for many notebook users. The top priorities for notebook owners were performance, data protection and battery life.

In recent years, Intel has consistently pursued a policy of not emphasising performance numbers for its processors, but Perlmutter acknowledged that users are still concerned about the issue.

"Performance does matter. If all you do is text editing, you don't care about performance. But life is becoming more sophisticated."

Disclosure: Angus Kidman attended IDF as a guest of Intel.