Santa Rosa is the code-name of Intel’s coming Centrino platform, which is expected to launch during the first quarter of 2007. Santa Rosa will use Intel’s mobile Core 2 Duo processor which in turn is known as Merom. Santa Rosa will not only be launched as a mobile platform, but now SFF manufacturers has indicated that Intel will also launch Santa Rosa for the stationary market as SFF. Intel’s Core processor architecture and its power efficient design will be the key of the new slim systems and Santa Rosa seems to be the platform Intel will use to close the performance gap between the mobile and stationary market.
Intel is claimed to peek at the MoDT concept that AOpen started in 2004, Mobile on DeskTop is just what it sounds like, a stationary computer with mobile genes for low power consumption and a slim design. Together AOpen and Intel displayed an SFF system called AOpen MP945-VX during IDF in March. This system was AOpen’s reply to Apple Mac mini and used among others a Core Duo processor and was intended for the Media Center market. Especially the Media Center market seems to be one of Intel’s goals with its future MoDT venture and overall it seems like the PC as we know it will be reduced, physically.
International Data Corporation (IDC) says that Media Center and the digital home is what will carry the future need for PCs, while these are the system’s the market will demand, it will also demand smaller such. Intel seems to be well aware of this and we should be able to expect more of the chip giant’s mobile processors on dekstops here and there, and then not only inside laptops and notebooks.
