IDF It's official: Intel's 'Montevina' incarnation of Centrino will indeed be branded Centrino 2, as expected.

Up to the release of Montevina, due this coming May, there have been four versions of Centrino. But apart from briefly adding the word 'Duo' to the brand, Intel hasn't to date offered any clear indication to consumers that marked a new version of the platform from its predecessors.

Intel's Centrino 5 2 logo

That hasn't played well with notebook vendors and suppliers who have had to fall back on the chip giant's own codenames - 'Santa Rosa refresh', for instance - to differentiate one Centrino generation from another. Clearly, that doesn't tell buyers anything, and laptop makers have been crying out for a new approach that does.

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Enter 'Centrino 2', using a simple version number in the tried and trusted way to show product A is generation X and product B is generation Y.

Montevina machines will go out under the Centrino 2 brand. Intel is planning to release some 15 45nm Core 2 Duo processors that tie into its 'Cantiga' chipset, the foundation of Montevina. Cantiga ups the platform's system bus speed to 1066MHz and adds support for DDR 3 memory. As before, Wi-Fi is part of the package, now augmented with WiMax as an optional extra.

Equally optional is the second generation of Intel's Flash cache Turbo Memory technology.