Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of mainboards, said this week it had ramped up production of its DDR2 SO-DIMM modules earlier this month in order to be in position to support high-volume production of notebooks powered by Intel’s recently announced Sonoma mobile platform.

Samsung Ramps Up DDR2 Output

“Earlier this month, Samsung increased production output of its DDR2 SO-DIMM (small outline, dual inline memory module) for notebook and laptop computers by an additional 45%,” Samsung Electronics said in its statement.

Samsung DDR2 SO-DIMMs are available globally in densities from 256MB to 1GB at speeds of 400 and 533MHz. DDR2 memory provides significant benefits to notebook manufacturers including lower power consumption, cooler operating temperature and improved system performance with speeds up to 533MHz.

While DDR2 SDRAM still had not acquired a truly significant share in desktops, after being on the market for over 6 months, some analysts think DDR2 will account for 90% of notebook memory shipping late this year.

New Intel Centrino Gets More Performance, Features

In accordance with expectations, new Intel’s Centrino platforms feature higher-performance Intel Pentium M processors with 533MHz processor system bus, specially designed chipsets – Intel’s i915GM, i915GMS, i915PM and i910GML, dual-channel DDR2 memory, PCI Express bus, DirectX 9.0-supporting Intel Graphics and Media Adapter 900, high definition 7.1 audio, Serial ATA-150 as well as Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG Network Connection that sports all three widely adopted wireless standards – 802.11a,b and g.

Intel said that the Sonoma platform primarily targets the consumers, while the initial Centrino incarnation addressed the needs of business and enterprise users, who are not much interested in loads of multimedia capabilities, but are more concentrated on battery life and wireless LAN capability, still, Intel incorporated a number of technologies that further reduce power consumption of notebooks, such as Intel Display Power Saving Technology 2 (Intel DPST2), which reduces display backlight power by up to 400mW with minimal visual impact.

80 Notebook Makers Adopt New Centrino Today, 150 by Year End

Intel originally planned to release the Centrino platform code-named Sonoma in 2004, but after a number of roadmap changes, the company said its partners would commercially ship their products based on Sonoma in 2005.

Intel’s President and COO Paul Otellini recently said 80 notebook makers planned to adopt the new Centrino flavour at launch and more than 150 would ship products based on the Sonoma by the end of 2005. Samsung believes the majority of those notebooks would feature DDR2 memory despite of the fact that even latest Intel’s mobile chipsets support single-channel DDR SDRAM.