Intel Chip Delivery Moving Up?

[combatcolin]

With Intel pushing forward with chip updates, I expect Apple to update their Macs on a more frequent basis. No longer will Apple be at the mercy of slow PowerPC updates.

Although the move to Intel was driven by the "performance-per-watt" argument put forth by Jobs, my view is that Apple's goal was to Four fold:

1. "performance-per-watt"
2. More updates More frequently
3. Lower prices for chips which will bring down the cost of Macs (we've already seen this)
4. Leverage the Intel brand and integrate Intel technology into future Apple products

Strongly agree with 1 and 2, evidence we have seen already. (MBP clock speed suddenly increased)

3 i would like to agree on, but i think the best we can hope for is that established prices don't increase much. EG, £1400 for the entry level Powermac.

4 im not bothered by as long as THAT bloody sticker comes no-where close to my future Intel Powermac.

 

[MrCrowbar]

As many people around here show interest in upgrading their iMacs to Merom someday, here's how you'd have to do it:

Remove the front (watch out for the iSight cables). That's already tricky.

Remove the display to get to the guts:

Remove the CPU cooling block:

(back)

(front)

Pull out the Core Duo:

Then reassemble the whole thing. I didn't open my iMac, I took the pics from http://mactree.sannet.ne.jp/~kodawarisan/imac_intel/imac_intel01.html. Cooling shouldn't be a problem since Merom is cooler than Yonah. It may be troublesome if you go for a 3GHz Merom or anything but I guess the fans will just be on a bit more.

 

[weitzner]

Bring on the Mac Pro! So it seems like the entire line up could be transitioned before WWDC... which would mean that maybe they plan on mainly focusing on Leopard?

 

[BurtonCCC]

Even if Merom comes out in August, how long do you think it will be until we have a Merom MacBook Pro.

I'm in the same boat of waiting to buy a 17" MBP.

Daniel.

 

[nagromme]

I have been confused about the difference between the Yonah the MBP's are using and Merom. So, I did some reading at Wikipedia and this is the primary (human language) difference I found.

Yonah is a 65nm chip that is a decendent of Pentium M.
Merom is a 65nm chip that has been designed from the ground up.

Do I have it (highly simplified) right?

Pretty close. But Merom is still descended from Yonah, despite being a new design. (And note that Pentium M is NOT descended from the Pentium 4. Pentium M was the start of Intel's new direction.)

And the obvious difference with Merom vs. Yonah: Merom is 64-bit.

 

[boncellis]

...For the desktops is hard to say....I would hope Apple goes straight to Woodcrest for the next PM's as we can have a Quad with the configuration. Let the iMac use Conroe instead. Then Spring next year we can have Kentsfield.

This is a running debate around here. A few people agree with you, that Conroe will not be in the PowerMac replacement, but others think that the Pro desktop will have both Conroe and Woodcrest at different price intervals.

I suppose it's hard to change the thought process of "G4<G5" but there's nothing that says Apple can't use both processors in the same line. The iMac presents another question, is it using a mobile processor because of the low voltage properties or just because it beat the previous G5 configuration it had? I can see it happening either way--and either way it's going to be pretty dang cool.

 

[Play Ultimate]

Although the move to Intel was driven by the "performance-per-watt" argument put forth by Jobs, my view is that Apple's goal was to Four fold:

2. More updates More frequently

Otherwise known as More Sales.

A friend and I argued that one (only one of many) of the reasons that Microsoft caught on was the way hardware and software pushed each other in the marketplace. First, Intel would come out with a new chip & Dell et. al. would come out with a new computer. Microsoft would come out with new software that would require that lastest and greatest. Everybody upgrades, everybody makes money. Apple on the other had released things much slower. Thus the Microsoft/Intel environment was a more disposable one with more repeat business. Apple on the other hand enabled, even now, older hardware to run the latest software. Thus less disposability and fewer repeat sales.

 

[dongmin]

As many people around here show interest in upgrading their iMacs to Merom someday, here's how you'd have to do it:

You missed the small detail of the CPUs being soldered onto the mobo. Only the Minis are on a socket.

With Intel pushing forward with chip updates, I expect Apple to update their Macs on a more frequent basis.

It's already happening. Remember how Apple uppped the speed on the MBPs before they shipped them.

 

[MrCrowbar]

You missed the small detail of the CPUs being soldered onto the mobo. Only the Minis are on a socket.

w00t?
Really? damn...

 

[freeny]

How Dey Do Dat? I read that article that someone posted the link to last night before retiring this morning. And I thought to myself, how can anything run on a HALF WATT?

I believe this would only be in the sleep mode.

 

[DavidCar]

Do you really think that we'll have Intel PowerMac's / MacPro's in June?

I need to work more hours!!!

Rich.

Since all the computer companies have equal access to the same chips (I assume), then I expect Apple will want to be among the first to use the latest and greatest chips. I saw some speculation that HP would release a dual Woodcrest machine in June, so I expect Apple would want to do the same, if possible.

I also expect that when the dual Woodcrest machines are demoed, they will also be demoed with Clovertown chips just to show what the machines will be able to do with eight cores around Christmastime. Intel wants to speed up delivery of Clovertown for the same reasons it wants to speed up Woodcrest.

 

[Roller]

does anybody see what that means? new micro architecture every two years. that means totally new macs every two years with significant upgrades every 6-12 month. not like 5 years with the G4. that also means used macs will drop in price faster, machines may be outdated sooner. and on top of that new processors are actually available. on time. or even early. in quantity. o.k. I need to calm down. i'm hyperventilating.

but seriuosly, this will change the mac landscape and the time we keep our macs a lot.

It depends by what you mean by outdated: The Mac you buy today is no less useful to you just because a faster machine comes out tomorrow, although it certainly depreciates faster, as you say.

Apple never seemed to gain market share based on the fact that Macs tended to have longer useful lives than Windows PCs. With more frequent updates in the Intel era, though, they're betting that Mac users will want to buy new computers more often.

One thing I haven't seen discussed much lately is the possibility of running OS X on non-Apple Intel boxes. That would affect Mac sales, unless Apple implements online validation or licenses the OS, which isn't likely to happen.

 

[shelterpaw]

Imagine... a 45nm Intel core quad in the 2007 MBP's!!!

Quad is so old school. At least an 8-way mulitiprocessor.

 

[amberashby]

You missed the small detail of the CPUs being soldered onto the mobo. Only the Minis are on a socket.

Not according to arstechnica

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/1/15/2521

 

[MrCrowbar]

You missed the small detail of the CPUs being soldered onto the mobo. Only the Minis are on a socket.

Not according to arstechnica

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/1/15/2521

So it's socketed as I say, right?

 

[amberashby]

So it's socketed as I say, right?

According to that article.

 

[DavidCar]

Kentsfield
Kentsfield is two dual-core CPUs in a single housing, but is not capable of Dual processor or mult-processor configuration so it is limited to FOUR cores. It will drive down the price of a quad machine. Intel has only said first quarter 2007.

You can add another name to your list. The inquirer is claiming that a true four core Kentsfield in 45nm will be called Bloomsfield. No expected dates given, and no source for their information.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31323

 

[danielwsmithee]

You can add another name to your list. The inquirer is claiming that a true four core Kentsfield in 45nm will be called Bloomsfield. No expected dates given, and no source for their information.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31323

I got all of my information from an intel paper here:
intel decoder ring
It sound like Bloomsfield is going to be later then any of these processors since all of these will start with the 65 nm process and are split dual-core dies.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Woodcrest
Woodcrest is the designation for the chip that is capable of a Dual-processor configuration, but is not capable of running in a multi-processor configuration. So the limit is TWO cpu's for a total of FOUR cores.

I could swear I read somewhere that Woodcrest would support 4 cores eventually, not long after its release?

 

[adamfilip]

a Dual Dual core Woodcrest PowerMac would be great
if its fast enough, running photoshop in rosetta might still be faster then a dual 2.0 G5 now.

so that would be fine. for most users. and they will get a good speed bump once adobe released universal versions

 

[ksz]

In case any of you were curious about what you can expect performance-wise from the next generation, I submit Anand's preview:
http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2713

The performance looks to be stellar. ...

Exactly. The projected performance of Woodcrest looks to be stellar. Intel claims 80% improvement over a dual-core 2.8 GHz Xeon.

Conroe will perform 40% better than a Pentium D950 (3.4 GHz).

A new PowerfulMac with Woodcrest in July would be exciting.

 

[milo]

You missed the small detail of the CPUs being soldered onto the mobo. Only the Minis are on a socket.

Not true. Mini and iMac both are socketed, MBP is soldered. Someone swapped the CPU of an iMac way back in January.

In spring 2007 Kentsfield will be used in the lower end Mac Pro that only contain one socket (i.e. 4 cores). The higher end Mac Pro will use dual Clovertons (i.e. 8 cores ) then later towards the end of 2007 4 Tigertons (i.e. 16 cores ). Here is some info from a prvious thread I found useful.

Thanks for the list, this all gets pretty confusing. My follow up question to that is, I wonder what the socket compatibility will be between all those different chips.

Conroe->kentsfield->cloverton??

 

[nagromme]

a Dual Dual core Woodcrest PowerMac would be great
if its fast enough, running photoshop in rosetta might still be faster then a dual 2.0 G5 now.

so that would be fine. for most users. and they will get a good speed bump once adobe released universal versions

I don't know that quad cores will help much--you get diminishing returns. But Conroe should certainly run Rosetta faster than Yonah!

And that WILL be "good enough" for a lot of people, knowing they can be productive with the verison of PShop they already own, while enjoying the full speed for other apps... and then in less than a year, Photoshop CS 3 will blow Rosetta PShop out of the water.

I use PShop daily, but that's good enough for me.

It's not good enough if:

* You don't have other apps you want that ARE native.

* Your PShop files are big enough and complex enough that only a recent top-end machine (a G5, say) is tolerable.

* You replace your machine so quickly that the future doesn't matter as much as the now.

For those situations, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Apple keeps selling G5 models alongside the Conroe towers. And not just to use up supply--they could keep making them as long as there's demand.

 

[mutantteenager]

Never buying again.

The Inquirer reports on comments by Intel CEO Paul Otellini at the financial analyst's spring meeting.

According to the article, Intel is planning on delivering Woodcrest (server) is due in June, Conroe (desktop) in July, and Merom (mobile) in August. Apple is expected to take advantage of these new processors for upcoming designs.

Beyond these expected updates, Intel is aggressively working towards future architectures:



This year's processors will start at a 65-nm process and quickly move to 45-nm. All future processors are optimized for performance-per-watt -- one of the features that attracted Apple to Intel's processors.

Of additional interest, Intel also has over 1000 people working on next generation Handheld devices with consumer pricepoints. The goal will be an "always on" architecture consuming only 1/2 of a watt. Apple has no announced plans to again enter the handheld market, but rumors of an Apple tablet or handheld regularly recur.

With the fevour over what new processors are in the pipeline (ding-dong, moonbeam, and shangri-la), is anyone likely to buy any Apple computer, considering the next one is going to outperform the one you just bought by 5x, because it's core is in the gigawatt?

The Mac community is set to become just as boring as the Windows one.

Bring back those G4's which seem to only be upgraded every century, with only Mac OS X being upgraded to be the 'best ever' every 10 minutes, ah back in the day!

 

[daveL]

Anyone have any idea if the Merom-based 'books will have mobos and chipsets that are different than Yonah? I understand that Merom is a direct swap, but being the hardware layman that I am, I would like to know if a faster/64-bit/proc swappable board would be in the works too. Or do you think Apple would just plop the Meroms into Yonah boards for Rev. A Merom 'books?

I wish I was a fly on the wall at Apple labs now--watching them play with those soon-to-be-released Merom 'books!

Thanks for your replies,

B

The Yonah chipset (Napa) will be "refreshed" for Merom. It will have a more efficient memory interface. Then in early 2007, the Santa Rosa chipset, which optimized for Merom, will be introduced.

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2715&p=2