Explaining Centrino

One of Intel's most successful marketing pitches has been "Centrino", a name well understood as denoting a notebook with solid, desirable features.

But what is it? Most people only have a general grasp of what exactly goes on inside a computer, and Intel doesn't have time to give the full story in a commercial. The common perception, even among general computer-store employees, is that 'Centrino' is a processor (it does not help that Intel calls it 'processor technology').

However, Centrino is a platform, a combination of different pieces of hardware (yes, including a processor) that are designed to work together. Specifically, Intel is teaming up a processor, chipset (what actually manages the functions of the computer), and wireless networking controller. The point of the exercise is that these particular parts have been designed to work together, and are chosen with an eye toward lower power consumption, waste heat, and good wireless networking capability.

The current version of Centrino (it is updated about once a year for more modern hardware) was internally referred to as 'Santa Rosa', and you may have seen some news articles that mentioned it when it was adopted last year.

This last update also put a couple of different versions into play, "Duo" and "Pro" (or "vPro"). Centrino Duo just denotes that the laptop uses a Core 2 Duo processor (which is part of the definition), while Centrino vPro means that it also supports Intel's vPro technology, which is aimed toward business clients (it includes support for current buzz-word "virtualization" and remote desktop).

In about six months we can look forward to "Montevina", Intel's next update of the platform, which will be labeled "Centrino 2" on laptops that have it.