Intel’s Conroe, Merom Chips to Be Called Core 2 Duo

by Anton Shilov
05/08/2006 | 05:24 AM

Intel Corp. will continue withdrawal of the Pentium brand from the market later this year when it unveils its new generation desktop and mobile processors under the Core 2 brand-name.

For the first time in years Intel will have the same trademarks for its desktop and mobile processors, something, which should emphasize good performance per watt ratio for the new chips known under Conroe, Merom and Woodcrest code-names and also their low power consumption. The new desktop Core 2 Duo chips will consume only up to 65W, whereas modern high-performance Pentium D chips have thermals of up to 130W.

Intel Core is the name for the company’s dual-core mobile processor code-named Yonah that sports several performance enhancements over the previous-generation Pentium M chips, but does not provide certain modern features, such as 64-bit capability. Intel Core 2 processors, however, will support 64-bit technology and also employ many performance-boosting features compared to the Core or the Pentium D chips.

Intel Core 2 Duo processors for desktops – Conroe – will be offered within E4000- and E6000-series, while Intel Core 2 Duo processors for mobile computers – Merom – will exist in T5000- and T7000-series. The code-named Woodcrest processors are unlikely to use the Core 2 brand-name, but will be branded as Xeon central processing units.

Intel’s processors code-named Conroe, Merom and Woodcrest will utilize a new micro-architecture with shorter pipeline and high performance per clock ratio. The new processors will feature 14-stages pipeline, down from 31 or more stages found in current Intel Pentium (Prescott) designs, 4-issue out-of-order execution engine as well as improved performance of the floating-point unit (FPU). Also, the new chips and platforms on their base will also feature capabilities like virtualization, LaGrande technology, x86-64 in addition to EDB, EIST and AMT2.