Intel Centrino Pro Logo and Branding Revealed

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It appears that Intel will be launching a Centrino Pro branding this April or May that will represent the Santa Rosa mobile platform. The Intel Centrino Pro branding seems that it will be pushed hard at business IT professionals based on a document received from an anonymous tipster. The document also includes the actual logos Intel will be using for this new marketing push.

In an email Intel sent out this week the body contained the following message:

&quot;Is it even possible to make the Intel® Centrino® brand any better? Yes it is! In April/May, Intel will launch Intel® Centrino® Pro Mobile Technology representing premium Intel technology for business empowering IT managers to inventory, diagnose, repair, and protect their PC fleet even when they are powered off or when the operating system (OS) is inoperable. Intel Centrino Pro mobile technology represents energy efficient performance for quick responsiveness and productive multitasking, battery life for sustained productivity, small and innovative form factors, and wireless connectivity for untethered data access.&quot;

So based on this it seems the Intel Centrino Pro branding will be targeted strongly towards business and IT professionals for its integrated security features and enhanced wireless access, but it's likely Centrino Pro will be used to target consumers as well. Basically, Intel Centrino Pro is what will be the release name for the current code named Intel Santa Rosa platform.

Some specifics on how the Intel Centrino Pro branding will be presented (view large image)

Santa Rosa / Intel Centrino Pro Overview

Intel announced last year that its next update to the mobile processor platform, code named &quot;Santa Rosa&quot;, would include the following enhancements:

• 800MHz front side bus (current Merom tops out at 667MHz FSB)
• 64-bit support (as the current Merom already offers)
• dual-core (as the current Merom already offers)
• 4MB L2 cache
• GM965/PM965 chipsets (Crestline for improved graphics)
• 82566MM Gigabit Network chip
• 4965AGN wireless chip (Kedron) with 802.11n support
• Wi-Max and HSPDA integration (rumored)

The Intel T7700 processor is one of the Centrino Pro offerings we know of, it will be a 2.40GHz processor with an 800MHz FSB. Below is a screen capture from an Intel document that shows how they want the Centrino Pro branding used and how the T7700 processor should be marketed:

In case you wanted to know how the branding should not be used, here's a snippet from the document that shows just how anal Intel is and what won't fly with them in terms of usage of the Centrino Pro branding:

(view large image)

 

The purple lettering doesnt work properly. They should have made it the same blue color as the Intel logo.

I dont see the big deal with Santa Rosa. Its merom with a slightly faster fsb and memory, and a new chipset that will add better integrated graphics. Which is somewhat pointless, because not many people game on integrated graphics, even the ATI ones, and GMA 950 already supports Aero, so the upgraded graphics are relatively meaningless. These new chipsets might mean lower power consumption, which is nice, but still, not worth the upgrade from merom. (Wasn't I just saying this six months ago about merom from yonah?)

 

It's not so much the upgrade for Merom-owners. It's more of a nice performance boost for those who are looking to upgrade an older system during that time.

LOL. Chaz, you're going to have to get a Centrino Pro notebook now because I know you want that purple logo .

But is it just me or are the inappropriate terms (at least a number of them) just easier to say/remember? They teach you to have four or less syllables in the name if you want to be remembered.

And I feel like I'm playing one of those "study this picture and then tell me what's different in this picture" games with the logos. I lose ;p.

 

isnt there built in wireless too?

 

There was built in wireless with Centrino Duo Merom, Centrino Duo Yonah, Centrino Yonah (Core Solo), Centrino Sonoma , Centrino Dothan, and Centrino Banias. The definition of Centrino was a fast and low powered mobile CPU with a wireless card.

Chrisyano: well thats nice to know. I'll just buy a merom model for cheap

 

I'm very excited about Santa Rosa - we should also see some other technologies coming with it, such as hybrid hard drives with flash memory banks. And of course, Windows Vista.

How'd you guess? I do admit that the logo is quite attractive.

 

Nice article Andrew. But does Santa Rosa give us 800 MHz DDR2 support?

Penryn is coming May/June. I think I will wait for that... Time to buy a Merom for me. I will be fine with DirectX 9 for a year I think. PCI-E 2 and SATA-2 will be out in notebooks with Penryn or the version after that. Time to do a great upgrade then.

Charlie

 

Looks pretty cool! better chipset for integrated graphics (meaning 50%+ of the notebook market will be happy ). and faster fsb will just boost performance i guess. but still a sweet upgrade.

 

Another nice leap forward in technology. Its quite exciting that the platform is finally revealed. It looks like Notebook performance levels are starting to equal Desktop performance...

I reckon Intel have been a little TOO specific with the colours of their logo, and "Correct" and "Incorrect" terminology table is a little confusing too.

 

Well, since I have lasted until now (Jan) with a Pentium M processor, looks like I can hold off on getting my next notebook until April.

 

Yah, the integrated gaphic upgrade is nice. Now more people can get cheaper systems with higher battery life and can do much more gaming.
Plus the incrased bus speed make a nice improvement. Now Merom will run at it's real speed.

 

Better gaming with GM965/PM965? Really? Are these newer integrated graphic chip sets really going to mean much to anyone looking for some gaming - or perhaps just a little better Vista Aero performance?

Other than that as was mentioned these just look like faster C2D's to me. Will they be marketing two groups ? C2D's (with sticker) versus this new Centrino Pro Sticker ? I would think this might be confusing to some notebook buyers.

 

I think you are right about the Aero performance. I would doubt that better gaming would happen - it might be that the new integrated chips support DX10...but still, they won't have the power of dedicated chips.

 

wondering if i should get one when this comes out, or wait for 45nm penryn...
not really in a hurry but do need some upgrading

 

To find out about how gaming on the Santa Rosa is going to be like, read up on the Intel GMA X3000 here: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3024

It actually does support DX10 and SM4 with hardware T&L (finally). Core clock is expected to be 667Mhz! This is above average factory clocks in most cards from Nvidia/ATI. It has 8 unified pipelines for doing vertex/shader/texture tasks.
Considering we haven't heard much from Nvidia / ATI about their mobile DX10 GPU offerings, this bit of news is definitely interesting on how notebook gaming is going to be like later.

 

Wait...an Intel graphics chip that actually has some of the features of low-end graphics cards put out by Nvidia and ATI? Now this could be worth watching. I'd really like to see Intel vs. AMD/ATI vs. Nvidia. Graphics technology in particular I think should be advancing at a higher rate and costs should be going lower isntead of where they've been going recently. With Microsoft starting to push Games for Windows I hope they corner Intel into stepping up their baseline graphics chip offerings.

 

Is Santa Rosa going to be Vista only? I hope not.

 

I wonder how much extra power those new laptops will consume

Right now I am using a retarded p2 thinkpad lol, waiting for a good deal before I buy a laptop...

 

Considering that the Santa Rosa platform is coming out in April-May, Windows Vista will already be out. I would assume that all of the laptops using that platform will come with it. I don't see why Windows XP would not work on them. If you use XP though, you won't be able to take advantage of some of the features (such as the hybrid hard drives with the flash memory banks).

The increased FSB speed from the current 667MHz to 800MHz will increase power consumption; Intel is counteracting this by giving the system and enhanced Deeper Sleep mode, which will help it reach a lower power state.
The use of NAND flash memory will also help with the power consumption.

You've waited this long for a laptop, a few more months won't hurt. It is definitely a good idea to wait.

 

Oh! Oh, I want that logo! Can I have one Mommy, please? Oh, pleeezzzee!

 

I was hoping for something better...

 

klas,
You r right, this will go on & on & on.........It's better to buy when u "NEED" a notebook, not keep on waiting for better technologies to come out months later.

 

I just came across the following set of benchmarks for the Core 2 Duo Merom processors, and while it performs extremely well on just about all of the tests when compared to the desktop versions of Core 2 Duo, it performs quite badly on the compression benchmarks. I'd be very interested to see if the faster FSB on Santa Rosa will increase the speed a lot:

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=c2dm&page=12