Woodcrest June 26th. XServe Too?

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif

TGDaily reports that Intel has announced a press conference on June 26th, presumably to officially launch its Xeon 5100 processor, aka "Woodcrest." The Xeon 5100 will be available in 6 versions according to the site, ranging from 1.6 to 3.0 GHz using 1066 and 1333 MHz Front Side Busses. All models will sport 4 MB of L2 cache.

An unverified MacRumors source had previously reported that their XServe shipment had been put on hold due to a back order of parts, and according to Apple the parts would not arrive until June 26th. This would seem to indicate that Apple plans on announcing its Intel-based XServe on or around June 26th. Of note, ThinkSecret has previously reported that the XServe was not due for release until July.

Exact specifications of the rumored Intel-based XServes are still unknown.

[iGary]

Bring em' on. Can't wait.

They are still gonna call them Xeon?

[TheMasin9]

i want a super fast xserve

[bigandy]

ooooh

[weitzner]

awesome. that will leave just one more PowerPC macintosh.

[j_maddison]

No mention of the Powermac at the moment then. Could a 1.6ghz Woodcrest be used in an imac? I know its unlikely, but just curious to know if it could

Jay

[shawnce]

Originally Posted by j_maddison

Could a 1.6ghz Woodcrest be used in an imac?

For what purpose? You thinking 2 x 1.6GHz Woodcrest in an iMac? If not then why Woodcrest?

Why put a server targeted chip in a low end desktop when it will gain you near zero increase in performance (actually at 1.6GHz it will lose you performance) and only raise bill of materials costs.

• Woodcrest = server targeted (large thermal/power operating range, higher price, uses expensive chipset)
• Conroe = desktop targeted (average thermal/power operating range, low/medium price, uses low cost chipset)
• Merom = laptop / small form factor trageted (low thermal/power operating range, low/medium price, uses low/medium cost chipset)

Conroe, Woodcrest and Merom have basically identical cores and hence very nearly identical performance when operating at the same clock rate, thermal envelope and similar FSBs. The main differences is the socket supported, on die cache sizes and of course supported thermal/power envelope (reflected in clock rates supported and power throttling points).

[shawnce]

Folks should review...

List of Intel Core microprocessors (used in current MacIntels)

List of Intel Core 2 microprocessors

List of Intel Xeon microprocessors (pointed at Woodcrest)

Also for good coverage on what Core 2 is...

Into the Core: Intel's next-generation microarchitecture

[j_maddison]

Originally Posted by shawnce

For what purpose? You thinking 2 x 1.6GHz Woodcrest in an iMac? If not then why Woodcrest?

Why put a server targeted chip in a low end desktop when it will gain you near zero increase in performance (actually at 1.6GHz it will lose you performance) and only raise bill of materials costs.

• Woodcrest = server targeted (large thermal/power operating range, higher price, uses expensive chipset)
• Conroe = desktop targeted (average thermal/power operating range, low/medium price, uses low cost chipset)
• Merom = laptop / small form factor trageted (low thermal/power operating range, low/medium price, uses low/medium cost chipset)

Conroe, Woodcrest and Merom have basically identical cores and hence very nearly identical performance when operating at the same clock rate, thermal envelope and similar FSBs. The main differences is the socket supported, on die cache sizes and of course supported thermal/power envelope (reflected in clock rates supported and power throttling points).

Thanks, thats pretty much the explanation I was looking for. I was wondering if there was a performance advantage to be had from using a Woodcrest chip at a lower clock rate over a higher clocked Conroe. I didn't know, so I asked the question. thanks

Jay

[Fabio_gsilva]

Originally Posted by j_maddison

No mention of the Powermac at the moment then. Could a 1.6ghz Woodcrest be used in an imac? I know its unlikely, but just curious to know if it could

Jay

Sorry, i didnt saw you are questioning this too...

[Core Trio]

Originally Posted by j_maddison

No mention of the Powermac at the moment then. Could a 1.6ghz Woodcrest be used in an imac? I know its unlikely, but just curious to know if it could

Jay

I wouldnt really be efficient, the power consumption is high, the cost is higher than Merom or Conroe, and im sure the heat output of a server class chip is far greater than that of the chip currently housed inside the "laptop-on-a-stand" that is the current iMac.

[Macnoviz]

Can these be combined like in the current quad powermac? I heard they couldn't, but didn't get that confirmed

[longofest]

Originally Posted by Macnoviz

Can these be combined like in the current quad powermac? I heard they couldn't, but didn't get that confirmed

Woodcrest can, Conroe cannot. That is why Woodcrest now looks more likely to be used in the Mac Pro.

[Apple Corps]

Originally Posted by Macnoviz

Can these be combined like in the current quad powermac? I heard they couldn't, but didn't get that confirmed

You are probably thinking about Conroe.

[adamfilip]

I think apple should also release Xserve desktop units
similar to the powermac

but taller to hold more storage

[boncellis]

What's the difference between a 1.6 Woodcrest and a 1.6 Conroe besides a dual processor configuration? If the lower-end PowerMac replacement has a dual core 1.6 Conroe or something similar, what's the purpose of the 1.6 Woodcrest? Would Apple put two dual core 1.6 Woodcrests in an enclosure and call it a low end Quad? Seems unlikely.

[it5five]

I don't think they will be putting the 1.6 (either conroe or woodcrest) in any of the Mac Pros.

But, to answer the question, there is no difference between a 1.6 conroe and a 1.6 woodcrest, except the dual configuration. There are just some people on here that want the more expensive/"better sounding" chip without regard to cost/any increase in performance.

[danielwsmithee]

With Woodcrest being available more then a month ahead of Conroe it could be a good idea for Apple to split the Professional line into a Pro and Pro-sumor line.

Pro - Full Tower more HD bays.
Quad 3.0 Ghz $2,999
Quad 2.6 Ghz $2,599

Pro-Sumor - Mini tower
Dual 2.6 Ghz $1999
Dual 2.0 Ghz $1499

The prices may be off a little bit. The top one could be more expensive but you all get my drift. Then they could leave the focus of WWDC on Leopard where it belongs. If they annonce a new high end Mac Pro at WWDC it could overshadow the OS announcments that could be really important to get into the press.

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by boncellis

What's the difference between a 1.6 Woodcrest and a 1.6 Conroe besides a dual processor configuration? If the lower-end PowerMac replacement has a dual core 1.6 Conroe or something similar, what's the purpose of the 1.6 Woodcrest? Would Apple put two dual core 1.6 Woodcrests in an enclosure and call it a low end Quad? Seems unlikely.

From my experiance in the past,the ONLY reason you ever for with multiple processors is because you already have the fastest processor you can get and need more speed. Make little sense to use two slower processors. But now days there is a reason: If you have two (or four) processors you can shut down one or more of them to save power

Still I don't see the point of two low-end Woodcrest chips in one box. I think they will release a quad core machine but with high-end 3Ghz chips.

I'm typing this on a 3.6Ghz dual Xeon Linux system. Linux is very Macintosh-like and gives a good previce of what the new Power macs might be like. I'd like to buy a mac like this system it is very fast and I'm also running two virual machines inside VMWare

[idea_hamster]

Now I don't follow the processor thing religiously, but I don't recall hearing that the first generation of any of the 64-bit processors would run at 3Ghz.

If it's true that Woodcrest is coming out both (i) ahead of schedule, and (ii) "over-powered," then I think we have really gotten our first dose of "this is what it's like to work with Intel."

Of course, just "ahead of schedule" is freakin' amazin'.

[boncellis]

Originally Posted by ChrisA

...Still I don't see the point of two low-end Woodcrest chips in one box. I think they will release a quad core machine but with high-end 3Ghz chips.

Exactly my point. I'm sure someone somewhere will find it useful, but if Woodcrest is more expensive than Conroe as predicted, well...I just don't get it.

Like you, I think Apple will release another Quad, but it will be high-end--not 1.6 or 1.8 GHz.

[DharvaBinky]

Originally Posted by boncellis

What's the difference between a 1.6 Woodcrest and a 1.6 Conroe besides a dual processor configuration?

Hyperthreading? If so, 2xWoodcrests would appear to OS X as 8 cores. Too bad it's a shared FSB, no matter how fast it is.

I had actually heard that Apple was going to depart from 100% stock Intel components for the xServe and/or Mac Pro and that this departure was going to be a custom chipset that used Apple's point to point interconnect to make the FSB a switched fabric, but appear as a standard shared bus to the CPUs...

Did I dream that? I don't recall waking up with crusty pants...

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by DharvaBinky

Too bad it's a shared FSB, no matter how fast it is.

The overall memory bandwidth depends on the speed of the bus times the probibility that the data is NOT is cache plus the speed of the cache times the probibility that the data item is in cache. If you can double the probibility of a cache hit then you have almost doubled the effective memory bandwidth. These new processors have huge caches and likely very high cache hit ratios. So you can't directly compare FSB speeds you need to multiply the FSB speed by the chance that the some data is on the other side of the bus.
Typically hit ratios are very high, on the order of 90%

Analysis id even harder because that while a cache miss does mean that one tread is "stalled" waiting for a cache line to be filled from RAM it may be that some other thread is not stalled and the processor can continue to do usfull work and so the over all prograss of work on the machine is not slowed. So sped depend on what you are doing that dy with your computer.

That said, of course faster is better.

[mattyrocks]

thank god for that, the sooner the better for me. i sure hope this is true

[MIDI_EVIL]

New PowerMac in August then?

Think this is a good indication?

Rich.