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Intel To Launch Quad-Core "Mobile" Processor In Q3 2008
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30" iMac? that would be quite the pricy unity... i can see it though... but i can see this being used in the much desired xMac easier...
We'll definitely see quad core in iMac and eventually laptops. It's not a question of "if", it's a question of "when". Consumers are doing things like video processing, music, etc that can use plenty of power. And the high end laptops and iMacs are really positioned as pro (or at least semi-pro) machines based on price and performance.
Well, they seem to be selling $2249 iMacs now. But I do agree that it would be nice to see them use desktop components and deliver quad core for much less.
Check this out, they could be offering this in an iMac right now if they were willing to use desktop components...or in a midtower:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115017
I think we will see this in an iMac way before a MacBook Pro.
Maybe, but most likely not at the price those chips will sell. The price of an iMac would be reaching that of a Mac Pro. Not many people would buy them. Which is why we haven't seen a quad-core iMac already. In reality, most people that own MBP's use them for more CPU intensive tasks than people that own iMacs. And for the most part, people that own MBP's will spend the extra money for the power/mobility combination. Hence why MBP owners spend around $2500+ when they could shell out $300 more and have a Mac Pro. The heat of a quad-core chip will be the major factor, but I'm sure Intel and Apple will figure something out.
Nope. The reason we haven't seen them is because Apple is using laptop chips, and intel hasn't shipped quad mobile chips yet.
Desktop Core 2 Quad start around $250 retail, so they wouldn't be that much more than what Apple is paying for dual core chips.
Depends how you look at things. On this board, people complain constantly that apple isn't improving their CPUs fast enough, even when they're using the best from intel.
While intel keeps improving the chips, more efficient, new designs, more cores, they still haven't increased clock speed much. Remember how long ago it was that Jobs promised 3 gigahertz, and we still just barely have it in a couple machines at $3600+.
I'm not complaining (or agreeing with them), just pointing out that many don't see things as rosy as you do.
This has always been true because the software engineers at Apple, Adodbe and Microsoft mostly know the limitation of their target customer's machines.
The next obvious jump in computing will be to 300 or 600 DPI monitors. This will require a 4X or 8x increase in compute power.
At some point I expect the "web cam" to be used as an input device. We have multi toutch pads now. But why use a pad when you have a camera? Why not just move your hand in the air? For that matter why can't the camera watch your eye movments?
How about voice?
What is the ideal input method, assume no technical limits? I think we'd have to go back to 1250 AD. How did Thomas Aquinus author his huge body of works? He spoke aloud to scribes who would follow him and write down what he said then go back and edit and organize and present their work for his review. He employed enough scibes so that some could be editing and organizing, some taking dictation while others wrote out final copy. Today we see laywers who emply law clerks to work under direction, same kind of thing. Some day computers with thousands or millions of CPU cores will take the place of scribes and clerks.
Someday someone will write "640 Killo-cores should be enough for any purpose"
There are many uses for a multi-core machines
i predict these will be in mbps in the second half of 2009. i guess i won't be buying a laptop before then
Doesn't the 24" Core 2 Extreme iMac use Intel's Conroe XE desktop processor? I thought it did. But I could be wrong.
I find it interesting that "... DigiTimes says Intel does not expect demand to really pick up until the second half of 2009." I thought the roadmap says the Nehalem Clarksfield processor was due Q2 2009 with a TDP of 45-55 Watts. Quad Core, eight threads, 8MB fully shared L3 cache, etc.
I was planning that my next iMac would be Nehalem based and would appear maybe 2H 2009.
I was planning that my next iMac would be Nehalem based and would appear maybe 2H 2009.
My MBP sometimes has a busy time, I would be happy with a quad core!!
See enclosed screengrab, this is during animation rendering, still waiting to see 200% of CPU, running here at
186.80% of CPU
Attachments
No, it uses T7800 rated at 35W, not to be confused with the extreme version X7800 rated at 44W. Apple has never placed an extreme processor in a notebook.
This will more likely be in the higher-end model of the Imac when it gets an update possibly at the end of the year.
This is on purpose. Power usage goes up very, very quickly with increased clock speed. Somehing like "double the clock and the power goes up by 4x". Power usage directly effects battery life and heat. Adding a second core doubles the speed with only a small increment in power usage. I can envision a procesoor with 1,000 cores but I can't envision one that has 1000X faster clock. Clocks have about topped out.
All technologies are like that, airplanes, cars and whatever, they race forward until they mature and reach a practical limit. In the end practical limits seem to be lower then technical limits while in the beginning it is technical limits that are more restrictive
I posted a thread about this in the iMac forum a week ago, and it got moved and merged with the thread in the MacBook Pro forum. Even though I explicitly said that I dont think that it will end up in the MBP, but rather the fall refresh of the iMac.
More than that. Saw a test of a Sager (Clevo) laptop with with a quad core desktop cpu, two 200GB 7200rpm hard drives in raid 0 and two 8800GTs in SLI and it ran for 50 minutes of gaming. I would imgaine a mobile part would get around 2 hours.
I do. That's the great thing about multiple choices and build to order. Everybody gets what they want. I'm going to send Apple a letter explaining how it works.