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Semiconductor History | Hammerstein Ballroom, 12 March 2003 — Centrino Sells the Laptop as a Platform
· 2003-3
Personal memoryBy kevin · · updated · Report an issue
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Semiconductor History | Hammerstein Ballroom, 12 March 2003 — Centrino Sells the Laptop as a Platform
kevin
3/12/2003
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The people in this photograph hold laptops from several manufacturers, but the signs behind them give every machine the same component identity: Intel Centrino 2.
That Taiwan event occurred in 2008, five years after Intel launched the original Centrino at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan on 12 March 2003. The photograph documents Centrino 2's later reach rather than the first launch.
Centrino named a three-part platform.
Intel applied the brand to a tested combination of the Pentium M processor, an Intel 855 chipset, and an Intel wireless-network component. Computer makers could use the parts separately, but the Centrino name belonged to the complete Intel bundle.
The product answered a weakness in Intel's desktop strategy.
Pentium 4 and its NetBurst architecture pursued high clock frequency, an approach that consumed too much power for thin notebooks. Intel's Haifa design team developed Pentium M around useful work per clock and aggressive power management, then the platform group joined it to Wi-Fi and validation across access points.
At the New York launch, demonstrations linked the ballroom to a medical practice, a university, and a wireless McDonald's on 57th Street. Intel was selling the ability to open a notebook away from a desk and still expect the processor, radio, software, and hotspot to cooperate.
The achievement was both technical and organizational.
Centrino helped make battery life and wireless connectivity primary laptop features, and its efficient processor lineage fed the Core architecture that replaced NetBurst. It showed Intel could change direction before the 2004 desktop cancellation made that need unavoidable.
The bundle also narrowed choice.
An otherwise capable notebook using a rival wireless card could not carry the Centrino mark, so Intel's consumer brand became leverage for selling several Intel components together. The same integration that simplified buying made qualification depend on one supplier's platform rules.
The Hammerstein Ballroom still operates inside the Manhattan Center at 311 West 34th Street. Its balconies once looked down on a processor company explaining that the future of a PC depended on much more than the processor.
Photo: Rico Shen, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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