News Bits: AMD Next-Gen Chipset Details, New Core 2 Duo LV Processors, D-Link Mobile Broadband Router

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Intel launches low-voltage Core 2 Duos

Intel has discretely launched two low-voltage Core 2 Duos, the L7200 and L7400. They run at clockspeeds of 1.33 and 1.5GHz respectively, and feature a 667MHz FSB and 4MB L2 cache. TDP is 17W for both chips.

Expect to see Socket P versions of the chips, the L7300 and L7500, in Q2. They will have an 800MHz FSB. Socket P is part of Intel's Santa Rosa Centrino platform.

Read More (RegHardware)

AMD's next-generation chipset details

New details have been uncovered about the next-generation AMD South Bridge, the SB700. It will be part of AMD's next notebook platform, codenamed 'Trevally,' which will go head to head with Intel's Santa Rosa. Trevally will include the SB700 South Bridge, RS690T North Bridge, and Socket S1 Turion 64 X2 processors.

RST690T is comprised of an integrated graphics core with separate access to its own DDR2 memory bank, as well as PCI Express lanes for an 8X graphics card connection.

It is not known when the platform will be launched.

Read More (RegHardware)

Quanta shipped over two million notebooks in January

Quanta Computer shipped over two million notebooks in January, a 58.3% increase over the 1.3 million it shipped the year before. Quanta says that revenues in January hit the company's record, US$1.53 billion. Strong notebook sales were supported by the launch of Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system.

Read More (DigiTimes)

Compal has strong January

Notebook maker Compal Electronics had strong January notebook sales and its revenue skyrocketed 81.5% compared to the same month last year. Revenues topped $1.1 billion in January, representing a 3.5% drop compared to December, which is small. Compal shipped a total of 1.73 million notebooks, beating the forecasted 1.5 - 1.6 million.

Read More (DigiTimes)

Dell cuts all employee bonuses for 2006

Michael Dell announced that he is cutting all bonuses for the 2006 year, and will be cutting its executive staff. No one is receiving a bonus because of the company's poor performance in 2006. Stock vesting times will be reduced from five to three years as well. Dell will also be reducing the number of executive staff from 20 to 12. Dell said in a statement, &quot;We have great people...but we also have a new enemy: bureaucracy, which costs us money and slows us down. We created it, we subjected our people to it and we have to fix it!&quot;

Read More (TGDaily)

OQO Announces Model 02 with Integrated EV-DO

OQO announced today that they are now offering the model 02 computer with integrated EV-DO Wireless WAN capability compatible with the Verizon Wireless BroadbandAccess service. Customers in the United States will be able to access email, the Internet and business and personal applications utilizing Verizon Wireless' service. This means customers now have two WWAN options to choose from either Sprint or Verizon.

The OQO model 02 was just released at CES 2007. (view large image)

The OQO model 02 with embedded Verizon Wireless BroadbandAccess capability is available now and starting today it can be ordered with Windows Vista pre-installed.

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D-Link Announces Mobile Broadband wireless router for sharing EV-DO with others

D-Link has announced a mobile broadband wireless router that allows you to connect to EV-DO, UMTS or HSPDA services and then share the connection over the D-Link wireless router with any other Wi-Fi enabled device. This device will compete with the Linksys Wireless-G Router for Mobile Broadband WRT54G3 we reviewed last year.

The D-Link 3G Mobile Router will be available in two different models, one for EV-DO (model DIR-450, available now) and the other (DIR-451, available next month) for UMTS or HSDPA networks. It will start at $300 without service, so pretty expensive.

Read More (press release)

 

Can't wait to see those LV core2's make it into production. Maybe i'll be getting a ultraportable soon

 

I wonder what it might do to the battery life of a non-ultraportable machine...

 

I expected to see the Sony Vaio TX series pick up these new ULV procs, but they recently had their refresh for Vista...any news on what companies are offering ultraportables with the new procs?

 

The TXs use ULV processors, these are LVs. The Asus S6Fs are the same footprint as the TXs and currently use Core Duo LVs.

 

Michael Dell must not be very popular in his own building right now.

I too am looking forward to seeing those L7300 and L7500 processors hitting the market.

 

I guess the amd platform will have intgrated radeon x700 based graphics, that sounds nice now if they only would make a 4mb L2 cache turion x2 I think it could compete much better.

 

That would be awesome... integrated x700 would spank everything integrated... but somehow it's hard to believe that will happen soon

 

I think Asus will be the first introduce c2d uv with their laptop

 

The only issue I see with integrated X700 graphics is that the card still lacks Shader Model 3.0, but it's really a mute point considering that it won't have the power to run games with that enabled anyway . . .

The ThinkPad X-series also uses the low-voltage Core Duos; I haven't looked to see if they picked up the Core 2's yet.

 

The specs for the L7200 and L7400 were included in the January 2007 datasheet for the C2D (but no trace of the T2060 in that document). I was less interested in the maximum power drain (One can undervolt most of the existing C2Ds - I have a T7400 running at Vmax 1.05 and at T5600 at Vmax 1.00) but in the power drain in the various sleep states because this is what will stretch out the battery life. Details are on pages 74 and 75 of the datasheet. Key points are (i) at 1GHz the L series have max TDP of 15.1W vs 20W for the T series; (ii) power requirement for the L series at the intermediate sleep states is approximately 3W down on the T series. This could give an extra 20% running time.

My guess is that Intel have dropped the operating voltage for the L series, but I'm sure that most of the T series CPUs would run at these lower voltage if they weren't locked.

John