X-bit labs

Intel East Fork: Centrino-like Desktop Platform.

Category: Chipsets

by Anton Shilov

[ 11/11/2004 | 01:35 PM ]

Having made “Intel Inside” one of the top brands in the world and making “Intel Centrino” synonymous to long battery life and flawless wireless networking, Intel Corp. is reportedly preparing another platform brand-name that will promote Intel’s microprocessors, chipsets and network controllers for desktops.

Currently Intel is said to name its forthcoming initiative East Fork. According to reports from DigiTimes and Reuters, East Fork will promote the forthcoming dual-core processors, future core-logic sets and network controllers, including wireless network controllers. Intel’s representatives say they do not comment on unannounced products, however, analysts believe that such branding brings higher revenues to company’s like Intel.

“East Fork will include a newly designed Intel microprocessor with two processing cores, a supporting chip set, and a Wi-Fi wireless radio. The package will be designed for “digital home” PCs, which shuttle music and movies around the home and can store TV shows digitally,” according to Reuters news agency.

Currently Intel sells three components to grant notebook makers right to place “Centrino” sticker on their production. It is unclear how Intel will promote its new branding among white-box PC makers, who get mainboards, central processing units and other components from different sources, perhaps, not directly from Intel or its local sale representatives.

Intel’s future chipsets – chips that power all the I/O capabilities of platforms – code-named Glenwood and Lakeport will support 1066MHz Quad Pumped Bus, 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory, PCI Express x16 and x1 busses for add-in cards, 4 Serial ATA-300 (Serial ATA II) ports with RAID capabilities, Intel’s high-definition audio, USB 2.0 and certain other features, such as iAMT, EnrgyLake and so on.