Intel Santa Rosa (New Centrino Duo & Centrino Pro) launch

Santa Rosa the 4th Centrino platform officially launched. New platform come with new processor, chipset, wireless solution and extra features.




New Core 2 Duo processor (Merom)
FSB 800Mhz
-Increases from 667Mhz to 800Mhz, faster performance because the bandwidth between CPU and system is increases, improves the potential of Core 2 Duo

Dynamic FSB Switching
-FSB scale dynamically according to loads, thus more power efficient during low utilization because reduces of chipset and CPU voltage

Enhanced Dynamic Acceleration Technology
-As many applications still not utilizing multi-core processing, Santa Rosa can detects single thread programs and overclocks one of its two core while put the other unused core to sleep, this will boosts the performance of single thread applications

Enhanced Intel Deeper Sleep
-Increases power saving

Intel Mobile 965 Express Chipset (Crestline)
800Mhz support
ICH8M southbridge
GMA X3100 graphics
-500Mhz clock speed (before is 400Mhz)
-Shader Model 3.0 support
-Maximum allocated video memory to 384MB (before is 224MB)
-Support for Windows Vista Aero interface

Turbo Memory (previously called Robson)
-NAND flash memory cache that holding system files and other data that the operating system requires at start-up, restoring from sleep or during application switches that designed to work with Windows Vista ReadyBoost, to improve performance and lower power consumption.

Wireless
Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN (Kedron)
-support 802.11n standard - faster speed and wider range



Santa Rosa business system is branded as Centrino Pro, while consumer system will carry the existing Centrino Duo name. Centrino Pro come with Intel's AMT(Active Management Technology) 2.5 firmware and an AMT/VT-capable BIOS that are not included in consumer system.


However WiMAX(802.16), DirectX 10 support have been delayed and the RAM support is not 800Mhz, still stuck at 667MHz, all of these technology may included in a refresh Santa Rosa platform that come with 45nm Penryn processor which release end of this year. Another technology - HSDPA is also not included in Santa Rosa.