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A funny thing came to mind when I learned that Intel was going to take another stab at the Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) market; I saw a movie in which somebody said that smokers are getting heckled for smoking and they in turn replied by saying "I'm gonna quit, I've tried quitting" and so on, but nobody is heckling fat people for eating
so much, and although I cannot replicate the terms being used, I recalled the scene when I thought of what Intel is doing to the market, its eating it up.
There is proof to back-up that statement, they have already began expansion in other domains such as NAND memory manufacturing, the SSD, still untapped market, chipsets, and so on. But rather than actually becoming fat, they are instead getting fatter pockets, to fill them up, with, you know what. One of their initiatives hadn't been received with applauses, and of course, they had to do something about it. It's the UMPC initiative where they have encountered great competition; one of the competitors was the VIA C7M processor.
Their future plans include swapping their current line of products based on the Dothan ULV processor with a new platform and processor. Current Dothan processor occupies 35x35mm, has a 900MHz operating frequency, 512KB L2 cache, Execute Disable Bit and a 12.6W TDP; the platform also supports Wireless LAN, Bluetooth, a 2-3 hours battery life and Intel's 915GMS ICH6 chipsets. The new platform Intel is preparing is called McCaslin, and the processor for it will be codenamed Stealey. The CPU will still be built on the 90nm process node and it will also be based on the Pentium M microarchitecture.
The difference is that it will, for once, occupy a lot less space, at 14x19mm, and for it, there will also be the Little River NB and the ICH7-U SB. Their proposed target is to have a smaller TDP of 9.3W, which would result in a 4-5 hours of battery life; it will also include along side current features, WWAN (WiMAX), GPS and a TV tuner. The processor will feature some enhancements, such as Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology with Deeper Sleep Support (C4). On a long term basis, Intel hopes to launch the Menlow platform for UMPCs by the second quarter of 2008, with the processors being built then to be shifted to the 45nm process node. According to HKEPC.com, the expected launch date for the McCasley platform is the 18th of April, 2007.
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