Intel Unveils Update to MacBook Air's Custom Processor

[reallynotnick]

I really want one of these for college next year, I think it would be SOOO much easier to carry around then a MB. I really don't care about having an optical drive on me at all times, hell I hardly use it besides to burn an occasional back up, rip a CD or install one of those old school programs that come discs

Of course like others I want a few additions, though this GPU update helps a lot. 2 USB ports, ideally USB 3.0 by next year, I would love a FW port right now but if USB 3.0 can get massively supported then that should be good. Also bigger storage, that's my biggest peeve about the computer is I love to have large amounts of data, yeah yeah get a MBP.

Can't wait to see the future of this bad boy!

 

[mac jones]

hmm, this actually presents a problem.

I own the Air and it overheats as the fan constantly jacks up to 6K rpm over nothing (mine is average)

Apple will want to have some kind of speed bump and not just a lateral upgrade to tweak the thermal characteristics.

So unless they can jack up the speed AND lower the TDP, a speed increase will not give joy to the present Air crowd who may want to watch Youtube reliably.

 

[Firefly2002]

No it wont. The Mac Pro has a 1600mhz FSB. Your looking at the RAM which is 800mhz in the Mac Pro. The RAM in the Macbook Air is 667mhz.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Apple clocked them up a few mhz. IE. 1.6 to 1.67. 1.8 to 1.87. Just as a marketing tactic.

Nah, they can't do that, they'd have to change the FSB frequency to hit increments like that.

 

[iMacmatician]

Wow. Same exact clocks. Zero speed increases, even with faster FSB. Woohoo?

I guess they'll run cooler being Penryn, but still.

The "1.8" GHz should be 1.87 GHz. And it's 3 W cooler, which is good for the MacBook Air.

Apple could have a special 2/2.13 GHz 20 W version for the MacBook Air.

anyway, is there a chance that these cpu's find their way into other macs as well? like a tablet or a 10 inch Asus EEE like machine? leopard would run just fine on a dual 1,4GHz notebook.

Likely, although they're probably too expensive for an Eee.

 

[thecartoonguy]

What is the purpose of the MBA? I was excited to see it unveiled but, that excitement soon dissipated. I have yet to see any update that would make it worth purchasing a MBA over another Mac. It still has a slow proc, no GPU power, lack of interfaces, small hard-drive, no ROM drive and high cost. What is the point of this thing? Surfing the web and watching movie trailers is not worth $1800.

I may be able to shed some light on this topic. As a software training, who is on the road four days a week, this computer is perfect to travel with. Sure there could be a few more ports, but for me it's a great choice.

 

[iMacmatician]

Not much difference. Time to provide the Air in 5 wonderful colors.

How about a raiiinnnbowww!

 

[digitalbiker]

hmm, this actually presents a problem.

I own the Air and it overheats as the fan constantly jacks up to 6K rpm over nothing (mine is average)

Apple will want to have some kind of speed bump and not just a lateral upgrade to tweak the thermal characteristics.

So unless they can jack up the speed AND lower the TDP, a speed increase will not give joy to the present Air crowd who may want to watch Youtube reliably.

I would expect Apple to fix this issue with gen. 2 MBA. Hopefully they'll improve cooing somehow when they add these new chipsets.

 

[mac jones]

I would expect Apple to fix this issue with gen. 2 MBA. Hopefully they'll improve cooing somehow when they add these new chipsets.

Yes, I imagine they will. I guess it's not just a matter of clocks and nm.

For example, they might decide to use a REAL heat sink instead of tinfoil.

 

[andreab35]

Wow... I'm very excited!

I wish there was a little more umph in speed... but that's ok.
The 4GB memory (optional) would be fantastic for me.

Can't wait to purchase mine.

I hope it runs Snow Leopard well when it comes out in the future.

 

[macwall]

i really want one to travel with

 

[alphaod]

I'd prefer the ULVs.

 

[chadder007]

I noticed this a couple of weeks ago. I've never seen anything like this before, every single Apple consumer product besides the iMac and iPhone are ALL due for an imminent update. I've never seen anything like this.

https://buyersguide.macrumors.com//

Yeah, this is unusual....the lag time for the Mini is insane.

 

[chadder007]

Also how about better access to the existing USB port on the AIR?? Some USB flash drives don't fit too well.....

 

[griz]

Those are the processors that are going in the new mac tablet (which is sounding better and better ).

I thought exactly the same thing. Picture a macbook air, sans keyboard with a 32 or 64GB SSD and 2GB of RAM. 13" touch screen.
Would that be more or less valuable than the MBA?
I want that configuration for under $1000. $899 for a 32GB/1.2Ghz version would be nice.

 

[Apple Ink]

How about a raiiinnnbowww!

iMacmatician.... I've always ever liked your ideas and opinions but this one is well..... not so good! Reminds me of 'Metal Poisoning Minimata' disease!

 

[AppliedMicro]

Problem is you really shouldn't max out a hard drive like that - you're going to run into performance issues and I'm talking about audio and video files.

I haven't noticed any "serious" performance issues by "maxing out" hard drives. Sure, startup times might be prolonged and it might get sluggish when the system would (but obviously cannot) do a lot of memory paging. And of course you notice slow data saving/copying. But really, even with only 2 or 3 GB availabe it never was got as bad as to render the computer unusable or prevent reliable audio/video playback. My experience is based on 2.5" HD however...

Apple will want to have some kind of speed bump and not just a lateral upgrade to tweak the thermal characteristics.

Maybe... but they also ("should", at least,) want to make this baby run longer on batteries and not exhibit core shutdowns.

So unless they can jack up the speed AND lower the TDP, a speed increase will not give joy to the present Air crowd who may want to watch Youtube reliably.

Therefore, they'd better be advised to go with the lower voltage processors up to 1.87 GHz. The present performance issues aren't a problem in terms of low clock speed - they are a thermal one. 1.87 GHz Dual-core ought to be good enough for watching Youtube quite comfortably - as long as the system reliably provides those 1.87 GHz, that is.

Picture a macbook air, sans keyboard with a 32 or 64GB SSD and 2GB of RAM. 13" touch screen.
Would that be more or less valuable than the MBA?
I want that configuration for under $1000. $899 for a 32GB/1.2Ghz version would be nice.

$500 or $300 dollars would be even nicer - and just as probable to happen

(For two reasons, mainly:
1. Virtual keyboards don't provide the same hassle-free speedy typing as "real" ones.
2. Apple doesn't exactly churn out new product lines every few months. This would rather cannibalize some MacBook Air and/or MacBook sales, without being a broadly appealing product in its own right
3. The price point seems a bit low)

 

[kntgsp]

Jumping from 65nm Meroms to Penryn based Meroms adds SSE4 set instructions, lower heat output clock for clock, more L2 cache and the result is better performance at the same clocks. And they have the same 17W TDP.

A 1.8Ghz Penryn is faster than a 1.8Ghz Conroe.

I don't see how this is so difficult to understand.

 

[Chundles]

Jumping from 65nm Meroms to Penryn based Meroms adds SSE4 set instructions, lower heat output clock for clock, more L2 cache and the result is better performance at the same clocks. And they have the same 17W TDP.

A 1.8Ghz Penryn is faster than a 1.8Ghz Conroe.

I don't see how this is so difficult to understand.

There's no such thing as a Penryn-based Merom. The Penryn processor replaced the Merom processor.

Merom was the first Core 2 Duo, Penryn is the die-shrink of the Core 2 Duo.

 

[AidenShaw]

Penryn is the die-shrink of the Core 2 Duo.

Penryn contains a number of performance enhancements to the Merom, so it's more than a simple shrink.

The basic architecture is the same, but cache is larger, power management has more options, SSE4 instructions, etc.

Penryn is a die-shrinked refinement of Merom.

 

[jackfrost123]

I am very, very unimpressed with intel's penryn. Let's face it the tdps are still sh it. Even so when apple's own p.a. semi has released products with vastly better tdp and raw processing specs (and of course certain things which are worse speced that intel) a year and a half or so ago. It's rather embarassing to present the mobile penryns as anything to write home about but it seems intel has invested so much money in marketing and buzz that even sh it products of theirs are portrayed under a positive light. When you get a new processor that has to be tweaked to the SAME ghz as the previous one just to get to a better tdp which should have been the aim of the update to begin with (what's the use of the die shrink anyway...), i.e. better tdp and better clock speed, we are really talking abou the bottom of the barrel staff here...so faster fsb and dd3 (potentialy) so what? As if nobody has seen this coming. With amd trambled so badly due to their own errors but first and foremost due to the media and bullish intel m$ tactics intel is back to their sh it product updates...huraaahhh!!!

 

[AidenShaw]

tick, tock

I am very, very unimpressed with intel's penryn. Let's face it the tdps are still <deleted>

D'oh - it's mainly a shrink.

Also, the TDP does not determine the battery life - it's just a worse case consumption that the thermal management of the system should handle. (And the stories of "core shutdowns" on the MBA show that Apple didn't do a good job there.)

The average power under typical usage is what determines the battery life. Penryn has a number of changes to reduce wasted power during idle and light load.

The news today is Nehalem. A new core design, a pretty good jump forward.

 

[jackfrost123]

D'oh - it's mainly a shrink.
The news today is Nehalem. A new core design, a pretty good jump forward.

So what if it's mainly a shrink, it's not me who's hyping it up as something special, they are...As for nehalem, it's not actually the news today, not in terms of mobile computing, not until next year at about this time, so forgive me if I can't get all warm inside about it. Actually the news TODAY in terms of desktop cpus are the phenoms that at the price they are going for, and I stress this, AT THE PRICE THEY ARE GOING FOR, they are much better than anything intel has right now.

 

[iMacmatician]

iMacmatician.... I've always ever liked your ideas and opinions but this one is well..... not so good! Reminds me of 'Metal Poisoning Minimata' disease!

Did you really think I was being serious? (Notice the at the end.)

As if nobody has seen this coming. With amd trambled so badly due to their own errors but first and foremost due to the media and bullish intel m$ tactics intel is back to their sh it product updates...huraaahhh!!!

Then why is Intel releasing Nehalem later this year?

I am very, very unimpressed with intel's penryn. Let's face it the tdps are still sh it.

I don't think Intel can hit very high clocks easily on 45 nm, and the initial Yorkfield / 35 W Penryn / 17 W Penryn shows that. As Dothan » Yonah shows, die shrinks can help with more cores. As for now, Intel is trying to raise clocks on their processors with minor core count increases.

Actually the news TODAY in terms of desktop cpus are the phenoms that at the price they are going for, and I stress this, AT THE PRICE THEY ARE GOING FOR, they are much better than anything intel has right now.

This is how AMD can win in performance. They already have the price advantage for those who don't need very powerful CPUs. They have a microarchitecture (K10) that is as scalable as Nehalem. 45 nm K10 cores are smaller than Nehalem cores. And there's also supposedly a version of Deneb (45 nm Phenom) coming with no L3 cache. This doesn't impact performance much but reduces die size considerably. The loss of a L3 cache is a bigger hit with Intel since their L1 and L2 caches are much smaller than AMD's.

All AMD has to do to counter Intel's Nehalem that cost millions of dollars (or so) is to add two more cores to Deneb to make Istanbul* (H2 2009). In fact, I'd be surprised if AMD doesn't decide to stick 2 Deneb CPUs together to make an 8-core chip in H1 2009. They could clock it at ≈2.5 GHz (low TDPs per quad-core) and release it as an FX part to beat Nehalem. Yields wouldn't be any worse than 1 Deneb (unlike Beckton, which prevents it from reaching the desktop space). So while Intel is apparently caught up in yield and TDP problems at >3 GHz, AMD can stay at low GHz ranges with many more cores. And then in H1 2010, 2 Istanbuls are stuck together to make 12-core Magny-Cours*, which will go up against 6-core Westmere.

Looks like GT200 vs. (2x) RV770, doesn't it?

* These are server chips, but I can't see why there can't be desktop versions of them.

 

[CWallace]

Actually the news TODAY in terms of desktop cpus are the phenoms that at the price they are going for, and I stress this, AT THE PRICE THEY ARE GOING FOR, they are much better than anything intel has right now.

Well the simple reason for that is the Phenom can't cut the mustard with the Core 2 at the top-end, so Intel is able to reduce the price on the Core 2's that the Phenom can match, hurting AMD's ASPs. And where AMD can't touch Intel - the upper end - Intel is free to charge up to $1000 and rake in the cash and more then making up the difference they are losing in the areas where they are busy bleeding AMD.

 

[Sanchez27]

Omg Omg !!! Check Out The Apple Uk Store. All Macbooks Are Saying 2 Business Days To Ship. Yesterday It Was 24 Hours - Release Due Now!!!