Intel Santa Rosa Revealed

I was browsing the web and found this , thanks to Riyad Emeran author of this subject ,for more info please check
http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebooks/review/2007/04/17/Intel-Santa-Rosa-Revealed/p1



No one can realistically deny that Intel revolutionised the notebook market when it launched its original Centrino platform at the back end of 2003. What made Centrino different from anything that Intel had done before was that it was an entire platform, rather than just a CPU option. Obviously the newly developed Banias, or Pentium M processor was key to the success of Centrino, but there was so much more to it than that.
For a notebook manufacturer to attain Centrino branding for a machine it had to include a Pentium M chip, an Intel motherboard and an Intel Wi-Fi card. Intel launched a truly massive marketing campaign around Centrino, with wireless networking being sold as the key benefit. The result was that the Centrino platform did more to drive mass Wi-Fi adoption than anything else – with everyone buying notebooks with integrated Wi-Fi, the need for wireless networking in the home and in the office became paramount.




Last year the Centrino platform took a giant leap forward with the introduction of a 65nm dual core CPU codenamed Yonah. This was followed up a few months later with the launch of the Core 2 Duo platform, and the Merom processor. Now Intel is about to launch its new Centrino platform, codenamed Santa Rosa, and for anyone thinking of buying a new notebook, you’ve got a lot to look forward to.
Santa Rosa will feature an all new Core 2 Duo chip with a number of enhancements over the outgoing processor. Like the Merom chip before it, the new Core 2 Duo will feature up to 4MB of on-die cache, but there are plenty of other changes. First up, the new chip utilises an 800MHz Front Side Bus, while the outgoing one was limited to a 667MHz FSB. This will speed up overall system performance, although there’s more to the new FSB than just its speed.





In an effort to promote even better battery life at every opportunity, Intel hasn’t just increased the FSB speed, it has also made the FSB dynamically switching. This means that when the notebook is in a low power active state, as when playing back a DVD, the FSB can throttle back, thus saving battery life.




Intel has also improved the power saving when in an idle state. With the Enhanced Deeper Sleep state, both the CPU cores and the chipset will power down, thus drawing as little power as possible, without actually shutting the system down completely.




But for me one of the best features of the new chip is Intel’s Dynamic Acceleration Technology. Despite the fact that dual or even multi-core environments are clearly the way forward, Intel is well aware that a great many applications still execute via a single thread. When this occurs you end up with one core running at full whack, while the other sits there twiddling its thumbs.


Now, Intel started to address this problem with its Smart Cache technology that was first seen in the Core Duo chip over a year ago. Rather than allocating cache to each CPU core, Smart Cache was a single pool of memory that both cores had access to, the upshot being that if only one core was under load, it had access to all the cache rather than just its allocated portion.





Dynamic Acceleration takes the model a step further by balancing the allocation of resource even more carefully. When a Santa Rosa platform is executing a single threaded application it will actually switch off one of the CPU cores, thus eliminating wasted cycles. But the innovation doesn’t stop there, once the second core is idle, the clock speed on the active core will be increased to improve performance. Intel has also been very careful not to affect the TDP envelope, so increasing the frequency on the active core will produce the same amount of heat as if both cores were running at the standard clock.


With Dynamic Acceleration Intel has created an extremely versatile mobile platform that will perform as efficiently as possible, regardless of what type of application is being executed. Gaming notebooks will obviously benefit from this technology, where most games run in a single threaded environment. Firing up a game will, to all intents and purposes, give you a faster CPU to play with.

The Santa Rosa platform will be split into two distinct product lines. The Centrino Duo moniker will remain for consumer based notebooks, while business based machines will adopt the new Centrino Pro title. Despite the obvious title differentiation, both platforms will be based on the Core 2 Duo processor.


The Centrino Pro platform is targeting corporate customers that have an install base of Intel vPro enabled desktop systems on site. Centrino Pro is the first mobile platform to incorporate vPro, which means that an IT manager will have the same Active Management Technology running on company notebooks as desktops.





The beauty of Centrino Pro is that users are far more likely to end up with malicious software on a notebook than a desktop, since it is obviously taken off site and used at other locations. Thus if a user does bring an infected notebook into the office, that machine can be quarantined, cleaned remotely and then brought back online without any end user intervention.


For most corporate IT departments, desk-side callouts represent the most costly factor, so the ability to access systems remotely and cure the majority of issues will save untold man hours, thus reducing costs. An IT manager will be able to schedule regular backups from each and every client system in the corporation, then if a user does manage to develop a serious virus infection, the system can be restored to the last backup remotely.





As with desktop systems, Centrino Pro notebooks can be woken up from a sleep state remotely for maintenance or repair. However, the machine needs to be plugged into the mains and connected via wired Ethernet. Pretty much all the AMT functionality is available over a wireless connection as well, but the notebook can not be woken from a sleep state, since this would require the Wi-Fi adapter to be constantly powered on and have an adverse effect on battery life.


The hardware required for Centrino Pro certification is somewhat different from Centrino Duo. As well as the CPU, motherboard and wireless module, Centrino Pro also requires Intel’s Gigabit Ethernet adapter and AMT compliant drivers, firmware and BIOS.

The backbone of the Santa Rosa platform is the Mobile 965 Express Chipset. As already mentioned, one enhancement is the support for Intel’s AMT environment, although this only applies to Centrino Pro machines.


The GMA X3100 graphics solution sports a unified shader model, like the Xenos chip in the Xbox 360 and nVidia’s latest GeForce 8800 graphics cards. The latest iteration of Intel’s integrated graphics offering is also fully Vista compliant, so you can make use of all those snazzy Aero effects. Intel also assured me that this latest graphics solution is fully DirectX 10 compliant, but I wouldn’t go expecting to play Crysis or Alan Wake on your GMA X3100 equipped notebook if I were you!





Of more importance is that the the GMA X3100 supports HDMI output, complete with HDCP compliance and the ability to playback 1080p content. This means that if you happen to buy a notebook with a Blu-ray or HD DVD drive, you should be able to stream HD content straight out of an HDMI port to your high definition TV.


Meanwhile, Intel’s Clear Video technology is on hand to ensure that jaggies are dealt with and that video playback is smooth. Clear Video also allows the end user to manually adjust hue and saturation of colours, along with the brightness and contrast. Of course most good monitors give you access to the latter, but when you’re using the panel built into your notebook, having those controls via Windows can be useful. To be fair, Clear Video isn’t offering anything new over what nVidia’s Pure Video and ATI’s Avivo have been doing for years, but that’s not to say that it isn’t a welcome addition.





Intel hasn’t missed a power saving trick with its graphics solution either, with Santa Rosa being able to dynamically change the refresh rate on the display. Now I know that a TFT panel doesn’t actually have a refresh rate in that there is no scanning going in, but the liquid crystals are still twisted or untwisted a certain number of times a second. What Intel has implemented is that when the user is using the machine for duties that don’t benefit from a fast refresh rate – like editing a Word document - it will drop from say 60Hz to 30Hz. How much power will actually be saved by reducing the amount of liquid crystal twisting is debatable, but Intel works on a cumulative saving, so any small percentage of power saved is worth while.


The Mobile 965 chipset also supports up to 10 USB 2.0 ports, but I somehow doubt that the market will be flooded with machines sporting USB ports squeezed into every spare inch of space. In fact some of the USB ports could be used internally for devices like the keyboard or even a Bluetooth adapter. There are also three SATA ports on offer, but despite this the Intel Matrix RAID controller will only allow for RAID 0 or 1 arrays, whereas a three disk RAID 5 would be preferable – assuming that anyone produces a chassis large enough for three drives that is.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this feature, one of the key benefits of the original Centrino platform was integrated Wi-Fi. The original Centrino utilised 802.11b with a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 11mbps, while the second generation Centrino platform, codenamed Sonoma, implemented 802.11g with a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 54mbps. Santa Rosa moves the wireless game on once more by utilising the Draft 802.11n standard, which offers a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 300mbps!


Anyone who’s been watching the ratification process of 802.11n will be well aware that the process has taken an inordinately long time to come to a conclusion, and even now we have no officially ratified standard. I’m hoping that the fact the Intel has implemented the current Draft N standard into its next generation Centrino platform will push through the ratification and allow 802.11n to become a set standard. It’s worth noting that the original specification for 802.11n stipulated a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 540mbps, or exactly ten times the speed of 802.11g. But pretty much all of the Draft N kit on the market today states 300mbps, and even then, actual real world performance comes nowhere near the theoretical maximum.





Santa Rosa will ship with Intel’s new Wireless Wi-Fi Link 4965AGN card, which as the name suggests, will support 802.11a, g and n. The Draft N standard makes use of MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) technology, where multiple data streams are sent concurrently to improve throughput. MIMO requires a minimum of two antennae, but performs optimally with three. Despite this, notebook manufacturers will only be required to have two antennae to achieve Centrino certification. So, if you’re concerned with Wi-Fi performance, you better check the number of antennae before you purchase a new laptop.




Channel bonding is also employed to allow twice the amount of data to be sent. Channel bonding has been common place in the wired networking world for some time, where two Ethernet adapters are employed to send twice the amount of data. A similar system has been used for DSL installations in areas where high bandwidth single line connections aren’t available – two DSL lines are channel bonded to create say, a 2mbps link in an area where only 1mbps is achievable through a single line.




Meanwhile Payload Optimisation allows for more data to be delivered per transfer, with the network overhead becoming far less significant. One of the key benefits that the Draft N standard will bring is the ability to stream video wirelessly. Of course there are lots of wireless digital media adapters out there now, based on 802.11g, but it really isn’t fast enough to ensure smooth playback of high quality video – Draft N should solve this problem.




However, encouraging as Intel’s inclusion of 802.11n technology in Santa Rosa is, the theoretical performance is unlikely to reflect the real world performance. Our experience of Draft N hardware shows a real world maximum throughput of around 70mbps, which is still way higher than what 802.11g can offer, but clearly a long way from 300mbps. On thing’s for sure though, the MIMO technology does allow for better wireless range, especially in Europe where houses are built from solid brick walls, rather than wood and paper. Another major plus point for the new Wi-Fi adapter is that Intel assured me that it uses 90 per cent less power than the outgoing module.


Expect Draft N products to start carrying “Centrino Compatible” branding soon after Santa Rosa launches in May, with most of the networking community already working with Intel.




Remember those old Pentium systems from about ten years ago? You know, the ones that used COAST or Cache On A Stick modules to speed up system performance? Yep, back in the days before CPUs had masses of on-die cache, you could actually buy a PC that had no Level 2 cache whatsoever, while the high-end systems sported little memory modules that slotted into the motherboard, providing the much needed cache memory.


Well, with a feeling of déjà vu Intel is introducing Turbo Memory to the next generation Centrino Platform, which is essentially the same thing as COAST. Well not exactly the same thing, since the Core 2 Duo chip has up to 4MB of on-die cache already, so Turbo Memory is more like a Level 3 cache, of sorts.





Intel Turbo Memory is basically a chunk of NAND flash – either 1GB or 512MB, depending on what the notebook manufacturer decides to implement. Turbo Memory will be made available as either a slot in module, or a chip kit that can be mounted directly onto the notebook motherboard. Obviously the latter is the cheaper option, but it means that the decision of which capacity to go with has to be made at the manufacturing process, whereas the module allows for flexibility for the reseller.


As well as the Turbo Memory hardware, a driver is also necessary – the driver also requires Intel’s Matrix Storage Manager 7.0, which is part of the Mobile 965 Express chipset. Finally DFOROM software is needed to allow the Turbo Memory chips to be accessed at BIOS level – this will allow boot up files to be stored there, thus reducing the boot time of the notebook.


The key benefit that Turbo Memory brings to the party is faster access times for your applications, both when opening them and working with them. By cutting back on the need to access the hard disk, you’re not just reducing latency, in true Centrino style you’re also reducing the amount battery drain.

Obviously Turbo Memory is designed to work with Windows Vista and its Ready Boost feature, so you may be wondering why you would want this instead of just plugging a USB memory key in and enabling Ready Boost. Well there are a number of very good answers to that question.


1 - You don’t need to have a USB key sticking out of the side of your notebook.


2 - Turbo Memory utilises the PCI Express interface, which is faster than the USB 2.0 interface.


3 - Turbo Memory will consume approximately one third the power of a USB based device.


4 - The user doesn’t need to remember to insert a USB module to get the Ready Boost benefit.


5 - A USB key can not improve Windows boot times, since Vista will not store boot files on non-persistent memory. Turbo Memory on the other hand can improve Windows boot times by up to 20 per cent.





Intel showed me two identical notebooks, one with Turbo Memory and one without. Identical automated scripts were then run on both machines, with the Turbo Memory equipped machine finishing the script in literally half the time. Of course I always hold off judgement until I’ve tested hardware myself, but I have to say that I think Turbo Memory could be one of the best features of Santa Rosa, especially for a power user like me. If you regularly have to use Photoshop on a notebook to manipulate 8-megapixel images, you’ll know that anything that can speed that process up is a blessing!


Unfortunately Windows Vista only allows one Ready Boost device to be used at a time, so you can’t use Turbo Memory and a USB key simultaneously. Even more disappointing is that you won’t be able to use Turbo Memory and one of the new hybrid hard disks that have recently been announced. Whether this situation will change with a Vista Service Pack remains to be seen, but hopefully Microsoft will see sense and allow multiple devices.

With Santa Rosa yet to officially appear, Intel was keen to talk about the platforms that will follow it at the Intel Developer Forum yesterday. About a year from now we should see the introduction of the Montevina platform, which will combine the 45nm Penryn processor with a new chipset codenamed Cantiga. There will also be a big change to the wireless proposition with a combined Wi-Fi / WiMAX solution on the cards, codenamed Echo Peak.





Montevina will also bring with it the second generation of Intel Turbo Memory, although what that will mean is still unclear. It could simply mean an increase in capacity, while it could indicate a speed improvement.




Although concrete details are still a little thin on the ground when it comes to Intel’s forthcoming 45nm mobile parts, it is confirmed that the new SSE4 instructions will feature, while even larger cache sizes and faster bus speeds are also on the cards. Most important of all though, Intel claims new levels of energy efficiency, which should equate to even better battery life.


But rather than getting too excited about what’s on the horizon, I’m looking forward to getting my paws on some Santa Rosa hardware. Review units should start arriving in the lab any day now, and with the embargo lifting in a couple of weeks, make sure you check back for full reviews of the first batch of Santa Rosa notebooks.

 

It's a nice write-up, but in talking to product designers and engineers building Santa Rosa notebooks, they're mostly not so happy with Intel, they all say Santa Rosa is hotter and worse for battery life, though more powerful of course. 73Watt draw versus sixty something for current Napa. Lenovo has had to re-engineer their notebook to get temps down and battery life up.

 

Props for Lenovo. Is there an article about Lenovo re-engineering Santa Rosa?

I guess I don't feel as bad owning the current gen Macbook now.