Intel has offered an insight into its next generation
laptop platform at the
Intel Developer’s Forum in Taiwan this week. Mooly Eden, corporate vice president and Intel’s Mobile Platforms group General Manager, said that the new platform, called Calpella, was designed to be more
energy efficient and would have a longer
battery life. The new platform will be based on Intel’s new Nehalem architecture, which makes it easier to switch from two to eight Intel Core chips.
The first Nehalem chips are expected to be shipped this autumn, with the quad-core sever chips expected to be ready first. The
desktop chips, dual-core, more quad-core and eight-core chips are scheduled to be shipped over the course of 2009.
Experts have lauded the new Calpella platform, claiming it is a marked improvement on anything Intel have done to date. Hitherto, Intel’s laptop platforms have contained a
CPU and a Northbridge chip, in which the
memory controller and
graphics chip are located. Calpella, however, will integrate the memory controller into the CPU, and although the
graphics chip remains separate, it will be packaged with the CPU to provide better access to the memory controller and CPU.