Chipmaker Intel is to spend a whopping $300m to promote Centrino Pro, their enterprise-oriented notebook platform. With a launch that will "piggyback" on Microsoft's launch of Vista, Centrino Pro will see the incorporation of Intel's business-centric vPro security and management technologies into its upcoming 'Santa Rosa' Centrino Duo platform.

Active Management Technology 2.5, Virtualisation Technology and Trusted Execution Technology are all likely to be incorporated into Centrino Pro, and Intel is touting the platform as the way for large enterprises to manage fleets of notebooks in a better way.

Recognized as the Santa Rosa platform, Centrino Pro technology will be built around the 64-bit dual-core Merom core, said the makers citing the chip giant's latest product roadmap. In the second quarter of 2007, Intel will launch its new Core 2 Duo (Merom) CPU lineup, which includes the T7300, T7500 and T7700 models, featuring Socket P connector, 800MHz FSB and 4MB L2 cache, as well as the T7100 with 2MB of L2 cache, the makers indicated.
This comes at a time where the global notebook market is set to expand. Over the last several years, the worldwide notebook market has been maintained at approximately 25 per cent, and next year the market scale will likely top the 100 million mark, increasing from 80-85 million notebooks this year.