Intel plans to open the floodgates on a new generation of Pentium processors in the next few weeks, but its next chip for notebooks will not be among them.
The chipmaker said on Wednesday that it has pushed back the launch of Dothan, its next Pentium M notebook processor, in order to make changes to the chip"s circuitry. The Dothan chip had been expected to make its debut in mid-February. It is now scheduled to ship in the second quarter of 2004, Intel President Paul Otellini said on Wednesday during a conference call to discuss Intel"s fourth-quarter earnings. Validation tests turned up a glitch that would hamper the manufacturability of the chip, according to Otellini. Dothan is Intel"s first notebook chip to be manufactured on a 90-nanometer process.
Although Dothan"s performance was not affected by the glitch, a circuitry redesign was required, according to Otellini. That redesign caused Intel to miss its goal of beginning shipments in the past quarter, he said. Intel will offer the fix in a new version of the chip, which it calls a "stepping" internally. "We have redesigned the circuits and have already seen functional silicon resulting from the fix. In the interim we"ll meet all of our commitments with the existing version of the Pentium M. We expect no significant impact to (first-quarter) revenue or our 90-nanometer (manufacturing) ramp for the year."