Intel Quietly Adds Another 'Dothan' Chip into Lineup

by Anton Shilov
11/24/2004 | 04:14 PM

Intel Corp., the world's largest producer of microprocessors, has started to sell its lower clocked 90nm Intel Pentium M processor with 710 model number without making any kinds of announcements and enlisting the chip into the official price-list.

Intel Pentium M 710 microprocessor based on the core known as Dothan runs at 1.40GHz clock-speed, contains 2MB of L2 cache and is intended for 400MHz infrastructure. All Dothan chips are manufactured using 90nm process technology. 1.40GHz clock-speed is lower compared to the speeds of other Intel Pentium M chips at 90nm.

The ‘unofficial’ processor currently can be acquired in at least one type of notebooks from Acer. For instance, Acer advertises model Extensa 3000WLMI laptop in Germany via Saturn stores; the computer with Centrino logotype on it has 512MB of DDR SDRAM memory, 80GB HDD, MOBILITY RADEON 9700 graphics chip and all the other necessary capabilities, such as combo-drive and so on. It costs around 1200 Euros.

Earlier this year Intel started to quietly supply Intel Pentium M 705 processor. That chip, however, had 1MB of level-two cache and was produced using 130nm process technology. Intel Pentium M 705 chip operates at 1.50GHz, but unlike its higher-end brethren, such as Intel Pentium M 715 or Intel Pentium M 710, packs in only 1MB of L2 cache. The central processing units that was offered by leading computer makers, such as Dell and HP was said to be based on the “revamped” Banias core that has been available since early 2003.

The initial 130nm implementation of the Pentium M – the chip code-named Banias – has some important advantages over the previous generation P6 architecture, such as support for SSE and SSE2, Advanced Branch Prediction, Micro-Op Fusion, Power Optimised Processor Bus, Dedicated Stack Manager technology as well as Enhanced Intel SpeedStep technology for optimized power consumption

The second 90nm silicon implementation of the Pentium M processor is code-named Dothan that enhances the array of Banias’ innovations with improved pre-fetch mechanisms as well as revamped system of access to CPU’s registers. Additionally, Dothan integrates 2MB L2 cache, two times larger on-die memory compared to Banias.

Intel officially supplies Intel Pentium M “Dothan” microprocessors under 755, 745, 735, 725 and 715 model numbers at $637, $423, $294, $241 and $209 price-points respectively. According to certain reports, the model 705 costs less than $209. Additionally, the company ships Intel Pentium M chips based on Banias core with 1.70GHz, 1.60GHz and 1.50GHz core-speeds.

Officials for Intel Corp. did not comment on the story.