DigiTimes is reporting on some new Ultra Low Voltage CPUs from Intel’s Santa Rosa platform, as well as the CPU roadmap/price guide for Intel’s Montevina offering (aka Centrino 2) which is geared towards Small Form Factor computing (SFF).
The Santa Rosa offerings are the Celeron 550, Celeron 560, and Celeron 570, launching in April, from $86 – $134 (USD).
Next up is the Intel Montevina (or Centrino 2) pricing. These CPUs are geared towards smaller devices (think MacBook Air) and have TDP (Thermal Design Power) of 5.5W to 25W.
6MB L2 Cache:
– SP9400 – 2.4GHz, 25W, $316
– SP9300 – 2.26GHz, 25W, $284
– SL9400 – 1.86GHz, 17W, $316
– SL9300 – 1.6GHz, 17W, $284
3MB L2 Cache:
SU9400 – 1.4GHz, 10W, $289
SU9300 – 1.2GHz, 10W, $262
U3300 – 1.2GHz, 5.5W, $262
1MB L2 Cache:
Celeron 723 – 1.2GHz, 10W, $161
The ones that should interest us the most are the SU9400, SU9300, and U3300 – those are the Low Voltage (LV) and Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) designs.
Just as an example, the current Core 2 Duo CPUs in the ULV area include the Core 2 Duo ULV U7600 (1.2GHz, 10W, 2MB L2, $289) and 1.33GHz U7700 which is featured in the Fujitsu LifeBook P8010, Fujitsu LifeBook B6230, and the Sony TZ2 series
These are going to be about the same prices, however they are upping the L2 Cache from 2MB to 3MB, and the LV CPUs will match the TDP of the former ULV CPUs (U7600 / U7700), while the new ULV U3300 is going to be dropping from 10W TDP to 5.5W TDP, which means a substantial increase in battery life. The bus speeds should go up, but that’s all dependent on the manufacturers.