14 DAY TRIAL // After the hot news regarding the delay of the 802.11n ratification that will be completed in 2008, everyone expected a response from Intel about the release of the Santa Rosa platform, which will feature a Crestline mainboard chipset, Memron 2 processors and 802.11n support by using Kedron's networking chip, informs Daily Tech.
Mooly Eden, VP and GM of Intel's mobile platforms group, stated for Cnet that the company will continue the development of the Santa Rosa platform and it will retail it with support for the draft 802.11n. "Releasing Santa Rosa with a draft standard networking chip could possibly lead to sporadic performance and a number of interoperability issues as witnessed by the latest 802.11n testing from eWeek," commented Daily Tech.
On the other hand, the Santa Rosa is, in fact, a make-over of the company's well-known Centrino mobile platform which will feature a dedicated chipset and a new technology named Robson. The most important development which will be launched under Santa Rosa umbrella will be a new chipset that will offer a fourth generation integrated graphics core, an enhancement of Intel's current GMA X3000 delivered by the desktop G965 Express chipsets - the Crestline GM965 Express chipset.
However, the technology dedicated market is expected to shift slower to the draft 802.11n wireless local area networks (WLAN) standard than it previously has in the case of 802.11g, even if no less than 300,000 compliant product launches took place this year, most of them being released by Linksys, D-Link, Netgear, Buffalo or Belkin. But the weird thing is that the IEEE 802.11n WLAN standard has not been yet officially accepted and it could take two years until it will.
"Although we expect Draft n/802.11n chipsets to be only 3.6 percent of total WLAN chipset shipments for 2006, In-Stat expects this percentage to grow to almost 20 percent in 2007," said In-Stat Senior analyst Gemma Tedesco. "Although 802.11g will remain strong in some segments, such as in Portable Consumer Electronics devices, over the next three to four years, 802.11n is the future and eventually all product segments will shift to this standard."