Conroe-L, the brains behind Apple’s iTV?

Back in May, we mentioned the emergence of Intel roadmaps featuring the mysterious Conroe-L, a single-core processor from Intel aimed at the very lowest end of the PC market. Even though Conroe-L is based on the Conroe/Merom microarchitecture that powers the Core 2 Duo line, the budget-oriented processor will have only one core, which will make it smaller and cheaper to make (due to higher yields) than its larger dual-core brethren.

Now DailyTech has more details on Conroe-L, including the tidbit that the stripped-down design will support only one of what Intel calls the “T’s”: EMT64. Conroe-L will also support the execute disable bit (XD bit in Intel parlance, and NX bit for AMD) for security purposes. Virtualization, hyperthreading, and Speedstep are all absent.

DT also reveals that Conroe-L will be sold under the venerable Pentium and Celeron brand names. The Pentium-branded parts, which will be labeled with the E1000 sequence, will all have an 800MHz FSB and 1MB of L2 cache. The speed ratings are as follows: E1020 at 1.40GHz, E1040 at 1.60GHz, and E1060 at 1.80GHz.

There’s no word on any details for the Celeron-branded parts, other than that they’ll all have numbers in the 400 sequence. All of the Conroe-L processors will use Socket T (LGA 775), which means that the Celeron 400 series may run on a 533MHz FSB. Note that the Merom-based Celeron-M 520, a budget mobile part with comparable specs (1.6GHz, 1MB L2, 533MHz FSB) that popped onto the radar earlier this week, will supposedly sell for $134. So the budget desktop-oriented, Conroe-L-based Celeron 400 series could be even cheaper.

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