Intel Sonoma Chipset Upgrades Centrino

Today Intel officially released the Sonoma chipset, which is the next generation of its Centrino mobile platform. Now, don’t be confused if you don’t see Sonoma stickers on the 150 new laptops based on the technology that are set to be released this year (of which 80 launched today). Sonoma is the codename for the updated product, but it will still ship under the Centrino brand. Looking at the upgrade, it appears to be a winner. Sonoma includes a 533MHz front-side bus, the new Alviso chipset (which brings dual-channel DDR support, PCI Express, and 7.1 Dolby surround sound), as well as the Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG technology which provides built-in 802.11a/b/g support. The new chipset is up for some competition from AMD’s Turion 64 Mobile Processor.