Centrino laptops get new superchips in Autumn

Particulars have leaked from Intel that detail the corporations plans for next-gen laptop processors later in the year. We knew the company was moving to the 45nm High-K process for its new line of Penryn chips, but weren't clear whether the line would definitely make the transition to the laptop.

After all, Intel has only just moved to the latest Santa Rosa version of the Centrino platform and, although rumoured, a change to the Core 2 Duo processors used might not have come about until the next regeneration of Centrino. That's codenamed Montevina and will be here early in the new year with new chipsets and wireless parts.

According to DailyTech the big news is that the four Penryn mobile processors detailed don't make changes to the Front Side Bus (FSB) speed of the chips in the current range. It remains at 800MHz. Intel's desktop Core 2 chips already boast 1,066MHz and 1,333MHz FSB speeds.

Also of note is the amount of Shared L2 cache, which is 3MB on the lower end chips and 6MB on the higher end. That compares with today's mobile parts that have a maximum of 4MB. Clockspeeds range between 2.1GHz and 2.6GHz.

There's also news of a Penryn spin of the just-announced Core 2 Extreme mobile processor. It too will get a speed bump to 2.8GHz from 2.66GHz and will also get the 6MB of Shared L2 cache.