Sources close to Intel released some of the company’s future plans concerning portable computers. In the fourth quarter of the current year and throughout the whole next year the company will continue its further aggressive penetration into the segment of desktop replacement notebooks with even more powerful microprocessors, chipsets, wireless options and so on.

Later this year Intel will release its 3.20GHz Mobile Pentium 4 processor for portable computers, the last Mobile Pentium 4 chip for notebooks. The processor will utilize the good-old 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus, but will boast with the Hyper-Threading support, a feature previously unavailable on portable platforms.

Intel will use its ordinary strategy of pushing technologies into the market with its Hyper-Threading enabled Mobile Pentium 4 CPUs. The firm will unveil four new chips on the 21^st of September. Besides the 3.20GHz version, expect 3.06, 2.80 and 2.66GHz CPUs to emerge. Their prices will not be too high even at the launch: $653, $433, $294 and $234 respectively. Moreover, starting from the 26^th of October, the mentioned products will cost $433, $294, $234 and $202, a nice option, isn’t it?

Mobile Prescott CPUs will substitute the Northwood chips early next year: in Q1 Intel will reveal 3.46GHz chip, in Q2 there will be another Mobile Prescott with yet-to-be-decided speed and in Q3 the company will release its monstrous 3.73GHz Prescott processor. All Mobile Prescott CPUs will feature 533MHz QPB, 1MB of L2 cache, PNI and the Hyper-Threading technology. What definitely makes me wonder is the way Intel plans to cool down the 3.73GHz Prescotts.

Celeron processors for desktop PCs and portable computers will also continue their clock-speed increase. In the fourth quarter 2003 and in the first quarter 2004 Intel plans to launch 2.70 and 2.80GHz chips respectively, while already in Q2 the co will release 3.06GHz Celeron with Prescott core incorporating 256KB of L2 and using 533MHz QPB.

Intel Pentium 4 processor-M and its brethren Mobile Celeron processors have already stopped their evolution and no new processors, except 2.50GHz Celeron in Q4 2003, are expected to be launched in future.