Centrino Platform has not yet appeared all around the world, but the luckiest Tokyo citizens can already get a Pentium M processor 1.60GHz in retail package. This weekend Intel’s latest CPUs appeared for sale in certain stores on Akihabara market, as Akiba PC Hotline reports.

The novelty is priced at enormous $747 and at the moment can hardly be used anywhere. Since Centrino notebooks and Pentium M-based personal computers are not widely spread on the market, there will be hardly any end-users, who want to upgrade such computers. On the other hand, there are some enthusiasts, who may want to try the processor in their current desktop systems. Pentium M processors utilise Socket 479, while conventional Pentium 4 chips use Socket 478 and our hardware analysts believe that there is possibility to install a Pentium M chip on a desktop mainboard. In fact, Intel itself even demonstrated Pentium M and E7205-based computer at IDF earlier this year and everything worked quite fine.

The Pentium M CPU is manufactured using Intel's 0.13 micron process technology and consists of 77 million transistors. The microprocessor inherits a lot of architectural solutions from the P6 (Pentium Pro, Pentium II and Pentium III), but features 400MHz power optimized Quad Pumped Bus and SSE2 extensions, granted by the Pentium 4 processor. Pentium M boasts with the largest L2 cache of 1MB ever had by a mobile processor. 1.60GHz Pentium M processor has 1.484V core-voltage and can dissipate up to 24.5W of heat, but is able to automatically reduce Vcore to 0.96V and core-frequency to 600MHz in order to prolong battery life. Intel offers i855-series core-logic sets for the Pentium M chips.

Remember that Intel has nothing against using its mobility processors on desktop systems, it means that eventually we may see mainboards based on Intel’s mobile chipsets.