Intel to Announce Quad-Core CPUs for Notebooks

It's been almost one month since the leading chip maker Intel finally unveiled its latest mobile platform, the Centrino 2. Since that date, a number of portable systems manufacturers have went ahead and released their own implementations of the company's high-end mobile platform. As a matter of fact, just recently, Lenovo and HP announced new notebooks, which are expected to support the computing power of Intel's mobile Core 2 Quad processors.

On that note, recent rumors have it that Intel will announce the availability of several new CPUs at this year's Intel Developer Forum, which will be held next week (August 19-21), at the Moscone Center. Two of these new processors are designed for notebooks, and will be equipped with four cores meant to significantly boost the performance of any portable computer system out there. They will be the company's first quad-core processors designed for notebooks, and will be branded as the Core 2 Quad Q9100 and Core 2 Extreme QX9300.

As far as technical specification go, not many details are available, except that the Q9100 will be clocked at 2.26GHz, while the Extreme model will have its four cores running at 2.53GHz. Both CPUs integrate an FSB1066, but the Extreme QX9300 is the only one of the two to have an unlocked multiplier. The new mobile CPUs are identical to their desktop counterparts, albeit with a reduced FSB clock (266MHz QDR, instead of 333MHz QDR or 400MHz).

Both CPUs will feature 12MB of L2 cache. However, as far as pricing is concerned, Intel has really set a premium price tag on its latest flagship processors. According to TGDdaily, the tray-pricing for the Q9100 will be $851, while the Extreme model is likely to sell for $1,036. With all that, this detail is still pending confirmation, as the Santa Clara chip maker is yet to officially unveil the new products.

Treading in the footsteps of Lenovo and HP, many other systems vendors are likely to introduce their own quad-core supporting portable computer systems based on Intel's latest technologies.