Intel's Santa Rosa For Providers

On May 9th, 2007 Intel debuted a new laptop platform code-named 'Santa Rosa' along with a new range of Core 2 Duo processors (code-named 'Merom'), a new integrated wireless card, and a new laptop chipset. Santa Rosa is the most significant update to Intel's laptop platform since the original Centrino. It will be available in two versions, the first being an update of the Centrino Duo and the second being a new brand called Centrino Pro, which adds Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT).

In mainstream laptops where a combination of good battery life and high performance is desired, Santa Rosa is intended to replace the Centrino laptop platform.

Like Centrino, Centrino Pro is an umbrella brand - one that describes the combination of four Intel products:

Centrino Pro = Core 2 Duo (Merom) + Intel 965 chipset + Intel 802.11a/b/g/n + AMT

Along with the new Centrino Pro branding comes a new logo, seen at right.

As with previous versions of Centrino, laptop manufacturers will not be willing to adopt Santa Rosa exclusively, preferring in some cases to use non-Intel Wi-Fi cards. Dell, Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard, Sony, and Toshiba are all adopting Santa Rosa for most, but not all, of their professional laptop product lines.

What's New

Santa Rosa offers many new features and capabilities. Among the most important are:

• Faster processors - Santa Rosa includes the new Merom 64-bit Core 2 Duo processors
• Faster bus - Santa Rosa includes an 800 MHz bus that can throttle down to 400 MHz to save power
• Faster integrated graphics - the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X1300 has significantly improved performance over previous integrated graphics
• Integrated FireWire - though not all manufacturers will implement it on all models, FireWire is significantly easier to implement on a Santa Rosa laptop
• Intel Turbo Memory - code-named 'Robson', Intel Turbo Memory is an optional add-on that refers to an add-on Flash cache unit that substantially increases the efficiency of hard disk operations
• AMT - the defining feature of Centrino Pro, Intel's AMT will allow laptops to more easily fit into a highly managed environment

Santa Rosa Laptops

Although Apple has not as yet revealed their Santa Rosa product plans, it is reasonable to assume that Santa Rosa will make an appearance in these laptop product lines:

• MacBook - a revision of Apple's lightweight and value laptop design


• MacBook Pro 15-inch - a revision of Apple's mid-weight laptop design


• MacBook Pro 17-inch - a revision of Apple's full-size laptop design

Dell plans to release Santa Rosa-based laptops across their entire Intel-based Latitude product line. For the initial round of releases, Dell has announced (from smallest to largest):

• Latitude D630 - a modest revision of Dell's mid-weight laptop design. Note that the Latitude D630 is not currently available with a discrete video card and thus does not meet Information System's & Computing's (ISC's) mid-weight laptop specification (though it does meet the value laptop specification). For more information, see ISC's Latitude D630 product notes.


• Latitude D830 - a modest revision of Dell's full size laptop design. Note that the Latitude D830 is not currently available with a discrete video card and thus does not meet ISC's full-size laptop specification. For more information, see ISC's Latitude D830 product notes.

Lenovo plans to release Santa Rosa laptops in their X, T, and R lines. For the initial round of releases, Lenovo has announced:

• ThinkPad T61 - a significant revision of Lenovo's mid-weight laptop, with the addition of 14.1-inch widescreen availability in the product line and the deletion of the 15-inch 4:3 screen configuration. For more information, see ISC's ThinkPad T61 product notes.

For More Reading

Intel's laptop products web site

ISC's Laptop Computer Purchasing Guide

--John Mulhern III and Vern Yoneyama, ISC Technology Support Services (May 9th, 2007)