Dothan debut due 15 February

'D' day

Intel will officially launch 'Dothan', the 90nm version of its Pentium M mobile processor, on 15 February, a date also earmarked for price cuts to its desktop Pentium 4 line.

Dothan will launch at 1.8GHz, as expected, and be priced at $637 - Intel's traditional price-point for new top-end CPUs. It will also ship at 1.6GHz and 1.7GHz, for $326 and $455, respectively, according to an Xbit Labs report.

A 1.3GHz Low Voltage Pentium M will debut at the same time, priced at $284, alongside a 1GHz Ultra-low Voltage part with a $241 price tag. Both parts have 1MB of L2 cache, suggesting they're based on the current generation of the technology, 'Banias'. A second 1GHz ULV chip - dubbed the 1.0A by Intel - contains 2MB cache, presumably because it is a Dothan derivative. Its higher price, $262, lends weight to that assumption.

According the Xbit Labs story, the 1.8GHz Dothan consumes up to 31W, rather more than Banias' 24.5W, despite being fabbed at 90nm rather than 130nm. That should come as no surprise, not only given the fact that Prescott has a higher power consumption than the current, 'Northwood' Pentium 4s, but that Intel said as much when it first announced Dothan, back at the Centrino launch last March. The process may be 'smaller' but Dothan's transistor count isn't.

Looking beyond 15 February, Intel is expected to offer Dothans with a higher, 533MHz frontside bus clock, with core frequencies to match: 1.87GHz and 1.73GHz. Initial Dothans will support a 400MHz FSB, as will the 2GHz part launched later this year. A 2.13GHz,533MHz FSB version will follow in due course. The 1.9GHz part listed on earlier roadmaps now appears to have been dropped - Xbit Labs doesn't mention it, at least. ®

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