Centrino Pro laptops boast eight-hour battery life

The chip maker demonstrates Turbo Memory technology and also previewed its remote wireless management capabilities

Intel has claimed that some early customers have reported battery life of between seven and eight hours in its new Centrino Pro based notebook PCs, set to debut in May.

At this week's IDF show, the chip maker also demonstrated Turbo Memory technology, which can halve reboot times in some cases, and gave a preview of the remote wireless management capabilities that will be supported by its next-generation notebook PC platform.

The Centrino Pro platform, previously codenamed Santa Rosa, will comprise the next-generation Core 2 Duo processor, the Mobile 965 Express chipset family, an integrated 802.11n wireless connection, Intel's 82566MM and 82566MC Gigabit Network Connection, and optional Intel Turbo Memory. The platform will subsequently be refreshed in the first half of 2008 with Intel's 45-nm, high-k dual-core mobile Penryn processor.

By caching data in an integrated flash memory rather than the slower hard drive, Centrino Pro notebooks can substantially reduce the time it takes to reboot, load the operating system and restore any open applications. It took 18.1 seconds to close every open application and 39 seconds to completely reboot and restore the previous system state during a live test.

“If you look at any access to data that is not in memory, it is a slow operation because the system is turning the send clock off and on while you wait,” explained David Perlmutter, Intel's senior vice-president and general manager of the Mobility Group.

Centrino Pro laptops will also support the web services management (WS-MAN) standard and include active management technology (AMT), designed to reduce the spread of viruses and worms. The platform will also adopt an upcoming Desktop Mobile Work Group specification for interoperability across PC hardware and software developed by the Distributed Management Task Force.

“It provides out of band management using wireless, which allows support staff to remotely diagnose the system and hardware configuration, push down the latest security upgrade then reboot the system as well,” said Intel senior vice-president and general manager of the digital enterprise group Pat Gelsinger.