14 DAY TRIAL // At first, INTEL wanted to postpone Kedron's launch at least until the 2nd quarter of 2007, but it seems that the new Wi-Fi chipset will be unveiled at a private event which is said to take place next Tuesday. I don't know why INTEL is in such a hurry to launch the 802.11n adapter, but they've probably got some reasons to do that.
Kedron is a wireless adapter, but it wasn't designed for desktop use. Motive for which, from what we can tell, it will be integrated into "Santa Rosa" - INTEL's upcoming mobile platform. Kedron is based on the draft-n standard and is said not only to increase the transfer rates but also the functional range of the adapter.
Kedron is on mass production from November 2006 and has probably been shipping to laptop integrators for quite a while now. Officially called "WiFi Link 4965 AGN", it will probably be integrated in the first portables at the beginning of this spring. A b/g only Kedron will also be available ("WiFi Link 4965 AG") but it will do without the draft-in capabilities.
Santa Rosa will succeed Intel's Napa64 platform and will bring ICH8 and 965 chipsets into the mobile world. The platform will support a number of new features including CPUs with FSB800. Four new CPUs based on the Merom core will be integrated into this new platform, ranging from the Core 2 Duo T7100 (1.8 GHz, 2MB l2 cache) to the Core 2 Duo T7700 (2.4 GHz, 4MB l2 cache). Pricing for the CPUs alone will start at $209 for the T7100 and go as high as $530 for the T7700.
Santa Rosa will probably also integrate "Robson", INTEL's proprietary NAND flash technology. Translated into numbers, Santa Rosa laptops could come with 512MB to 1GB of onboard flash which will be mainly used as supplementary cache in Windows Vista (the cache is build especially for Vista's "ReadyBoost" feature).