Intel Pentium M Yonah planned for Q1 2006

The Intel Pentium M 'Yonah' dual-core processor is planned for the first quarter of next year. This 65nm mobile processor's FSB will be clocked at 667MHz and the target clock-rate for launch will likely be 2.17GHz.

The processor will contain two cores with a shared 2MB L2 cache. Intel explained this will significantly boost performance because the chips communicate with the cache through a single bus embedded in the chip. Intel further added that the dual-core Yonah will mean a large improvement in performance, it won't just be 10 to 20 percent but a lot more.

Intel's Pentium M Yonah will have three important new features:
The first is Intel Digital Media Boost, an instruction set for rich digital multimedia content creation. The second is Intel Advanced Thermal Manager which will give users enhanced thermal monitoring, accuracy and responsiveness. The third feature is Intel Dynamic Power Coordination to dynamically adjust the performance and power consumption between the two processor cores.

The company said Yonah notebooks will use up to 31 percent less power than current Pentium M notebooks. By 2008 Intel's goal is to reduce notebook power consumption to a point where machines can run for eight hours on a single battery charge.

A thing which Yonah won't feature is 64-bit, because it would mean a big difference in battery life.. The company says it will release a 64-bit Pentium M when the market 'requires' it. We aren't sure when Intel will release its 64-bit Yonahs but it might be by the launch of Longhorn.

While the current Pentium M has 140 million transistors the Yonah will have 151.6 million transistors. But it will be cheaper to produce because it is made on a 65nm process.

Yonah will be bundled with a chipset, code-named Calistoga, and a Wi-Fi module, code-named Golan. The Wi-Fi module will support 802.11a, 802.11b and 801.11g. Later versions will also feature support for MIMO (802.11n) and WiMAX will be added as an option by 2007.

A single-core Yonah is also planned, mainly for budget systems.

Sources: CNET, X-bit Labs