Intel reaches 2GHz barrier for mobile processor

By Alun Williams

Posted on 24 Jun 2002 at 16:18

Intel has released a new series of Pentium 4 M (Mobile) chips aimed at the notebook market which clock at the milestone 2Gz mark. At the same time, the company has also announced a new range of faster'mobile' Celerons.

Clocking two billion processor cycles per second, the new processor will power the increasingly popular desktop-replacement notebooks. While 2Gz represents a symbolic milestone for the progress of notebooks, the release is an incremental - rather than revolutionary - development on previous Intel processors. The new versions - a mobile Pentium 4 running at 1.9GHz has also been released - use the same chipset (Mobile Intel 845, which was created for mobile P4 systems) and system bus (400MHz) as the current 1.8GHz models.

'High performance, speed, memory and good battery life are the main features European business customers are looking for in notebook PCs today,' said John Woodget, marketing director for Intel in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). 'Crossing the 2GHz performance threshold will enable PC manufacturers to design notebook PCs which meet all these needs along with the growing demand for connectivity via wireless LANs and for small form factor mobile PCs.'

New mobile Celerons were also announced by Intel. The new 1.5 and 1.4GHz versions - in the manner of their recently announced 1.8GHz desktop Celeron equivalent - feature the Pentium 4-style NetBurst architecture, with its advanced transfer cache and system bus running at 400 MHz. Left out from that particular party is the new 1.33GHz Celeron, which works with a 133 MHz system bus.

The new P4-M processors are priced at $637 for the 2GHz version and $401 for the 1.9GHz version based on 1000 unit quantities. The mobile Celeron processors, running at 1.5, 1.4 and 1.33GHz, are priced at $170, $149 and $134 respectively.