Posted on Friday, April 06 2007 @ 20:10 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
HKEPC
got their hands on some slides and info which indicate that Intel plans to release a new UMPC platform on April 18th at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing. The new UMPC platform is called McCaslin:
According to the source, Intel’s UMPC products currently adopt the former Dothan ULV processors (35mmx35mm), while the chipsets take up the 915 north bridge (27mmx27mm) which collocated with ICH6 south bridge (31mmx31mm). The total space occupied by these three chips is 2915 mm². Compared to the UMPC solution provided by VIA, the space occupied by whose C7-M processor is 21mmx21mm, in addition, VIA takes up the single-chip design of CX700M (27.5mmx37.5mm), and the total space occupied is only 1847.25 mm². For the tight and precious PCB layout of UMPC, the product design provided by Intel lacks flexibility, and the additional functions which can be added in are also relatively restricted. As a result, most of the manufacturers are considering adopting VIA’s C7M.
In order to reduce the large chipset area, Intel has planned to launch a brand-new platform of UMPC which codenamed “McCaslin”, while the processor “Stealey”. Though still adopting the 90-nm manufacturing, the total space occupied is tremendously reduced to 14mmx19mm, and 78% of the space is free when compared to the previous models. The microarchitecture will still base on Pentium M, and the clock rate will be 600MHz and 800Mhz respectively. The whole system will be electricity-saving with the 512 KB L2 Cache and the additional mode of Deep Sleep Support (C4).
McCaslin will also use less power than the previous generation.
