If you've read every word we've written about Centrino and the technology behind it and are impressed, then you haven't seen anything yet. The architecture and technology behind the platform goes far beyond what we're able to print, but the main point to convey is that the Pentium-M is not a Pentium III and not a Pentium 4, it's something very new and very different.
The approach Intel undertook with the Pentium-M is one that would be difficult for their competition (mainly AMD) to duplicate. It requires dedicating an entire design team to a project that will be taking significant risks and will be relying on perfect execution on the manufacturing side of things to meet product cycles. The sort of commitment Intel made with the Banias project required an incredible amount of resources, and put those resources at very high risk of being lost should anything have gone wrong. Maybe it was the passion that was burning within the hearts of the Israel design team or the desire to show Intel corporate what the team was capable of, but Banias was the first and only chip in Intel's history that was no more than 8 days late.
