Intel's 2006 Processor Roadmap

[manu chao]

Uh ... that would be because Rosetta doesn't grok Altivec. In essence: any PPC app running under Rosetta is essentially running on an emulated G3 CPU, not a G4 or G5. Go back and re-read the announcements pertaining to Rosetta; you'll see that it won't do 64 bit apps, and it won't do Altivec. ==> G3.

So an Altivec-optimised app will be forced to use its non-vector code path when executing under emulation on an x86 CPU. Of course it'll be slow!

I know all that very well, my point was that the developers of apps heavily using Altivec would have to port all that Altivec code to SSE by January (which is highly unlikely, and even then SSE probably won't be as effective as Altivec, certainly not initially) OR a lot of apps will run mightily slow on these shiny new IntelBooks in January.

 

[tom2juji]

Yah I have. some of the first laptops with this chip show underwhelming benchmarks and underwhelming battery life. go to computers.com and search for Turion. Granted this is first gen but even first gen isn't all that impressive.


Oh and if you want a good overview of the Turion vs Pentium M check out this link: Efficient 64-Bit Mobile Computing : AMD’s Turion64 Processor

In Taiwan, some testes were done to compare the AMD processor against Pentium M already. Compare AMD 2Ghz and Intel 2Ghz, AMD is faster, but at the same time, consumes a little more power. They key here is AMD supports 64bit, but Pentium M does not. This might matter some people down the road.

 

[matthutch]

what i want to know is what will happen to the front side bus when they release the PowerMac's with Intel CPU's (whatever they maybe).

 

[bigandy]

dual core Pentium M in the Mac Mini then? sweeeeet! - but unlikely 🙁

 

[Platform]

This sounds awfully like the old 68k to PowerPC transition...hopefully, with the architecture of Mac OS X behind them instead of Mac OS 9 "Classic", they can get the entirety of Mac OS X running natively before the first Intel-powered Macs are released.

Anyway, I'm excited about this news...since it seems that Steve Jobs was right about Intel's plans.

Well he better be 😛

 

[inkswamp]

I find it so funny that before Apple said they were switching to Intel everone was like "Intel sucks!" and now that Apple is moving to Intel everyone is like "Intel Rocks" 🙄 🙂

Interesting. I'm part of that collective "everyone" you're citing and I don't recall ever saying that Intel sucks (and I have yet to claim they "rock" as well.) I do have a long history of being quite pleased with my PPC-based Macs and therefore seeing no immediate need to think about alternatives. I found Apple's performance comparisons to Intel interesting and thought those old Intel-bashing ads they ran were amusing (despite the fact that both were simply marketing exercises) but denouncing Intel myself? I never once did.

Bear in mind that the small, vocal minority that views the world in a falsely binary way and shouts ridiculous things like "Intel sucks" typically doesn't speak for "everyone." And as part of "everyone," I think I'm safe in speaking on behalf of them. 😀

 

[inkswamp]

In Taiwan, some testes were done to compare the AMD processor against Pentium M already.

I'm not even going there. 😱

 

[BGil]

In point of fact the P4 does suck....like a blackhole......badly.....I really mean it. There are only a few notable exceptions in Apple's recent history of good chips. the Pentium Pro and Mobile Pentium III (which the M is loosely based off of.) are pretty good chips. But by and large that's about it. Their celeries? suck.

Celerons are just old P4's and Pentium M's. The Celeron M is the Dothan from last year. It's the same chip that was kicking Powerbook as on Barefeats a year ago.

Their Mobile P4's? OK but IMG the battery life sucked and blew at the same time.

Northwood P4-M's ran at 35w and usually had pretty decent battery life. Go look at the reviews on Cnet and you'll find a couple IBM and Dell P4-M's with 5-8 hour batteries. It's a pretty damn good chip.

In fact, anything Pentium 4 Northwood is a great chip. Those chips ran pretty cool for a desktop chip and introduced hyperthreading to the world.

 

[BGil]

Two things.

1. Celeron is a product name. Yonah is a code-name for a core chip. The fact that Yonah will be used in some Celerons doesn't mean it won't be used elsewhere as well. In prior generations, it was well known that the Celeron and Pentium series used the same cores, with different amounts of on-board cache.
   
   In other words, a Yonah-based Mac does not necessarily mean Celeron.
   
2. Why should you care about the brand-name for the chip? If it's fast enough to do what you need, what else matters? If you really don't like the word Celeron, ignore it. It's not like you'll be able to see the printing on the chip anyway.

I think you guys are not looking at the facts. There's no way Apple puts a dual core Intel proc in a Mac Mini or iBook. Even putting one in a PB would be a stretch unless Apple's proves they can cool chips better than everyone else can (which they definitely have shown at all).

Here are the Intel and power roadmaps.

The cheapest dual core Yonah is going to hover around $230 all of next year and run at about 1.67 to 1.83 ghz. Those chips are expected to have TDP's of around 30w. So that's many times the price of the current G4's and about twice the heat output too.

Maybe the 17 inch will get a dual core yonah if they increase its thickness a bit but none of the other models can support those procs unless Apple is willing to drastically slash their margins. A $230 processor is too much for a Mini or 15 inch PB at today's pricings and 35w is way too hot.

My bet is that Apple puts single core 2ghz Celerons M's and Pentium M's (Dothan) in their iBooks, Mini, and Powerbooks at 12-15 inches. If they start buying those procs now they can get a huge discount on them because now one else wants them.

That will still be a huge step up from the current G4's while allowing Apple to maintain most of their current margins. $20 bucks says Apple will use a Celeron M (400mhz bus dothan proc) and just call it a Centrino with Pentium M (because it technically is a pentium M from last year).

Apple will probably find some way to use those low voltage Pentium M's in ibooks and mini's too.

Now that I think about it... the iMac is perfect for a dual core yonah because of it's size. In fact, you should be able to fit a dual core P4 in there with no problems. A dual core 3ghz or 3.2ghz P4 in an iMac would be great. The PowerMacs could get dual core G5's and the professionals who order them could stay on the PPC until the pro apps can be changed over completely. That makes perfect sense.

 

[SiliconAddict]

In Taiwan, some testes were done to compare the AMD processor against Pentium M already. Compare AMD 2Ghz and Intel 2Ghz, AMD is faster, but at the same time, consumes a little more power. They key here is AMD supports 64bit, but Pentium M does not. This might matter some people down the road.

Only if you understand what a 64-bit CPU does for you. I can tell you right now that by and large 64-bit is a buzz word. The only big deal is RAM. you aren't going to put 8GB of RAM on a laptop and the only thing the AMD excels at is floating point calculations. So there is a narrow band of benchmarks that AMD will blow away the PM at. Look at the link I posted before. The benchmarks will show that by and large the performance differences are in favor of the PM and still get better battery life.

 

[SiliconAddict]

Celerons are just old P4's and Pentium M's. The Celeron M is the Dothan from last year. It's the same chip that was kicking Powerbook as on Barefeats a year ago.



Northwood P4-M's ran at 35w and usually had pretty decent battery life. Go look at the reviews on Cnet and you'll find a couple IBM and Dell P4-M's with 5-8 hour batteries. It's a pretty damn good chip.

In fact, anything Pentium 4 Northwood is a great chip. Those chips ran pretty cool for a desktop chip and introduced hyperthreading to the world.

There is a reason they got good battery life. It’s because they had larger then normal batteries. I can tell you as someone who has a couple P4 dell laptops in the office for presentations that they ARE battery hogs. And as someone who is running hyperthreading as I speak its not that big of a deal. It was and is a way for Intel to try and squeeze performance out of a chip that wasn't going anywhere.

However I stand corrected on the Celeron M. I wasn't aware they moved the M's tech into the Celeron already. Nice.

 

[jdechko]

INTEL is known for promissing a lot and deliver less.

Don't forget that on PC field the INTEL is not the faster,cheaper,innovative...
It's AMD.

But we've already beaten the dead horse called AMD. Apple didnt go with AMD chips for a reason or several reasons. 1) Fabrication facilities: AMD has like 3 or 4 plants, Intel has a dozen or more. Apple has been burned by a shortage in chips many times in the recent past by IBM. They dont want to make that mistake again. 2)Regarding speed, its a back and forth thing anyway. This week, AMD may have the fastest chip. Next week, it might be Intel.

In either case, the (potential) competition between the chip makers will keep them honest. It will help to lower prices in the market place, and give us mac users the best possible machine from apple.

 

[stockscalper]

But we've already beaten the dead horse called AMD. Apple didnt go with AMD chips for a reason or several reasons. 1) Fabrication facilities: AMD has like 3 or 4 plants, Intel has a dozen or more. Apple has been burned by a shortage in chips many times in the recent past by IBM. They dont want to make that mistake again. 2)Regarding speed, its a back and forth thing anyway. This week, AMD may have the fastest chip. Next week, it might be Intel.

In either case, the (potential) competition between the chip makers will keep them honest. It will help to lower prices in the market place, and give us mac users the best possible machine from apple.

Sounds like typical Intel hype to me. How soon we forget that IBM showed Jobs an amazing roadmap too with all kinds of low power fast chips that were being tested. Funny that he then blows off IBM for not delivering. Intel has delivered less than 5% of the stuff it's puffed over the last decade. Jumping from one sinking ship to the Titanic isn't going to help Apple one bit with software developers. All that's going to happen is Apple is going to be forced into using the fat, hot, power sucking chips Intel has been offering the Wintel world and you're going to see your sleek, thin, elegant Powerbooks swell from an inch thick to a 2 1/2 inch 9 pound monster a la Dell. 😱

 

[SiliconAddict]

Sounds like typical Intel hype to me. How soon we forget that IBM showed Jobs an amazing roadmap too with all kinds of low power fast chips that were being tested.

OK I call troll at this point. Either that or someone is pulling "facts" out of the air. Show me the press release that says that "IBM showed Jobs an amazing roadmap" 🙄 God how many times does this have to be rehashed? Apple didn't do the x86 thing for kicks on a Sat night. They sure as hell didn't do it because they were looking for a new challenge. IBM didn't show them what they wanted to see. Its as simple as that. Jobs's ego may very well have played into this but I can assure you that is was a small part. This is prob costing Apple a small fortune to make this trans over to x86. This is something the shareholders and BOD aren't going to look fondly on if there isn't reason. As for Intel hype. The PM isn't hype. It blows they G4 out of the water and kicks it in the nuts before it hits the ground. IBM doesn't have jack for a mobile solution right now. If they did we would have seen shipping PowerBooks at WWDC. As it stands...nothing but vaporware products.

 

[manu chao]

Only if you understand what a 64-bit CPU does for you. I can tell you right now that by and large 64-bit is a buzz word. The only big deal is RAM. you aren't going to put 8GB of RAM on a laptop and the only thing the AMD excels at is floating point calculations. So there is a narrow band of benchmarks that AMD will blow away the PM at. Look at the link I posted before. The benchmarks will show that by and large the performance differences are in favor of the PM and still get better battery life.

I probably do not want to put 8GB of RAM in my laptop in the next two years (because of the cost, the slow speed of laptop hard disks which make it not reasonable to process huge files on a notebook anyway and because I probably will not need).

But, maybe 3 or 4 GB, and with the G4 laptops this is not possible (I already do run into problems with the 1 GB, the maximum on TiBooks, I have since one app of mine occasionally needs 800+ MB. I do not know how much it really needs, because it gets a maximum of 800 MB from the system, I only know it starts to swap out huge amounts, and all other apps swap out as well because they get starved for RAM, and my laptops slows down horribly, and if I do not want to wait half an hour, I have to force quit the app.)

 

[Bonte]

I know all that very well, my point was that the developers of apps heavily using Altivec would have to port all that Altivec code to SSE by January (which is highly unlikely, and even then SSE probably won't be as effective as Altivec, certainly not initially) OR a lot of apps will run mightily slow on these shiny new IntelBooks in January.

Is it possible sic payable for Apple to put in an extra Altivec unit? It certainly would solve a lot of initial problems.

 

[NicP]

Sounds like typical Intel hype to me. How soon we forget that IBM showed Jobs an amazing roadmap too with all kinds of low power fast chips that were being tested. Funny that he then blows off IBM for not delivering. Intel has delivered less than 5% of the stuff it's puffed over the last decade. Jumping from one sinking ship to the Titanic isn't going to help Apple one bit with software developers. All that's going to happen is Apple is going to be forced into using the fat, hot, power sucking chips Intel has been offering the Wintel world and you're going to see your sleek, thin, elegant Powerbooks swell from an inch thick to a 2 1/2 inch 9 pound monster a la Dell. 😱

Intel may have been nothing compared to AMD until it released the Pentium M, now i'd say its a close competition with intel just in front. Which means of course AMD must be a sinking ship too, with Intel AMD and IBM all sinking where will we get our CPUs from 😱

If i was Jobs I would have chosen Intel to, after all everyone knows them, the info about the Pentium M products "in the works" looks nice (might i add this info has been on the wikipedia site for ages) and from what ive read they are going to be able to meet demand.

 

[BGil]

Originally Posted by SiliconAddict
Only if you understand what a 64-bit CPU does for you. I can tell you right now that by and large 64-bit is a buzz word. The only big deal is RAM. you aren't going to put 8GB of RAM on a laptop and the only thing the AMD excels at is floating point calculations. So there is a narrow band of benchmarks that AMD will blow away the PM at. Look at the link I posted before. The benchmarks will show that by and large the performance differences are in favor of the PM and still get better battery life.

It's not that the A64 excels at floating point operations it's that the Pentium M is absolutely horrible at them.

 

[willyjsimmons]

Do you have any idea what you are even talking about? My Dell Optiplex doesn't even come with PS/2 ports and in fact the Vista logo program requirements say that the ports have to be gone to get certed. Ditto with serial. I haven't read anything about parallel ports but I'm guessing that will remain.

Yeah, because that Dell board wasn't made by Intel.

Intel does not provide all of the boards for HP/Dell/Gateway.

Their high volume machines use 'knock-off' intel boards.

They usually have non-intel video,LAN, sound or SATA controllers.

My point is that Intel won't make Apple a custom board.

Look at Intel's site, even their newest boards still have PS/2.

It isn't going to fall off the face of the earth overnight just becuase Apple says so.

Apple should provide switch users the option of retaining as many of their old peripherals as possible, just to make them think they're saving themselves some money.

And yes, I know there are mini form factor boards available.

I even said so in my pervious post.

 

[GilGrissom]

Intel may have been nothing compared to AMD until it released the Pentium M, now i'd say its a close competition with intel just in front. Which means of course AMD must be a sinking ship too, with Intel AMD and IBM all sinking where will we get our CPUs from 😱

I agree about the Pentium M, from what I've seen in practical use its a pretty good chip. For years I had a P4 2.6GHz in my Wintel laptop, now that was big, bulky, heavy, hot and power hungrey! (Used it as a radiator in my room!) But my girlfriend has a Centrino laptop, personally I love it. I've had experience with loads of centrino and Pentium M processors, I personally like them.

All that's going to happen is Apple is going to be forced into using the fat, hot, power sucking chips Intel has been offering the Wintel world and you're going to see your sleek, thin, elegant Powerbooks swell from an inch thick to a 2 1/2 inch 9 pound monster a la Dell.

I disagree. I saw in PC World today, of all places(!), a tiny ultra small Toshiba laptop. It had a 7.5" screen and was about 1.5cm thick, if that! In it was a Pentium M 1.25GHz processor, with at least 1Mb cache, which I thought for the size was pretty dam good, (as well as 30Gb HD, but thats not the point!) Bearing in mind this is an ultra compact laptop so isn't going to have the same performance as usual laptops/notebooks, but the spec on paper and the size of it are very impressive. If that can go up to 1.25GHz in that small space, think what a slightly thicker PB could get, or even newer Intel chips.

 

[ibook30]

I have never followed the progress of intel's hardware releases: Can anyone speak to their reliability? Do they (historically) do what they say they will do?

 

[willyjsimmons]

Well, sort of

I have never followed the progress of intel's hardware releases: Can anyone speak to their reliability? Do they (historically) do what they say they will do?

Intel will release a CPU/chipset, but supply issues make them hard to order.

At current, you can purchase Pentium D/Celeron D CPUs.

I've priced a P4 EE (different from just the P EE), at more than a grand.

And it was backordered (not that I was actually going to order one).

Damn I can't type today.

 

[digitalbiker]

They must have!

OK I call troll at this point. Either that or someone is pulling "facts" out of the air. Show me the press release that says that "IBM showed Jobs an amazing roadmap" 🙄 God how many times does this have to be rehashed? Apple didn't do the x86 thing for kicks on a Sat night. They sure as hell didn't do it because they were looking for a new challenge. IBM didn't show them what they wanted to see. Its as simple as that. Jobs's ego may very well have played into this but I can assure you that is was a small part. This is prob costing Apple a small fortune to make this trans over to x86. This is something the shareholders and BOD aren't going to look fondly on if there isn't reason. As for Intel hype. The PM isn't hype. It blows they G4 out of the water and kicks it in the nuts before it hits the ground. IBM doesn't have jack for a mobile solution right now. If they did we would have seen shipping PowerBooks at WWDC. As it stands...nothing but vaporware products.

There are plenty of press releases of Jobs promising 3Ghz G5 PM years ago. In fact, I remember how many people on this forum were finaly puffed up enough to brag about Apple's superior performance and how IBM was going to destroy intel. After all the PPC RISC architecture is a vastly superior design compared the the x86 legacy CISC crap strewn together. I am 100% positive that Jobs was indeed shown a very impressive IBM roadmap otherwise he would have never made such bold claims.

As far as your description of the superiority of the Pentium-M over the G4, You are overstating reality. The G4 is only slightly slower than the Pentium-M in tests which rely heavily on FSB or GPU related tasks. However the G4 beats the Pentium-M in tasks which rely heavily on Alti-vec such as Photoshop filtering, and DVD encoding.

I believe that the PB is in desperate need of an upgrade with newer technology. But the Pentium-M is not that great. My personal experience with the applications I use put the 1.67 G4 right on par with the Pentium-M 2.1 ghz. My business partner has a Dell with this chip using Windows XP SP2. Guess what? HE is envious of my PB. Setting side by side I can encode DVD's much faster, and I can perform Photoshop tasks faster.

SO how can you say

The PM isn't hype. It blows they G4 out of the water and kicks it in the nuts before it hits the ground.

This just doesn't apply in my case.

 

[oskar]

When i see a rev b Macintel PB running all of the specialized audio software that i use natively, effectively, faster than ever and cheaper, yes. Until then i am upgrading the ram on my current PB in an attempt to give it a few more years of vitality.

The switch is going to be great initially for the average mac user; the person who surfs the net, listens to itunes, writes emails, etc. The people that are going to suffer are the professional level user's that require fast cpu speeds that are a necessity for their fields, not to mention all of the specialized software that may, or may not be ported to x86 in a timely matter (without bugs!)

I remember how long it took some of my audio software to make the switch from OS 9 to OS X. If a major OS upgrade took almost a year, then how long will the upgrade to a major chipset take?

That's too early! You should wait for a Rev. D MacIntel! Now those are gonna be awesome.
C'mon, obviously only people that have a current revision PowerBook can wait before buying a new x86 PowerBook. There's lots of users with money burning holes in their pockets just waiting for what they think is a worthwhile upgrade.

 

[SiliconAddict]

I think you guys are not looking at the facts. There's no way Apple puts a dual core Intel proc in a Mac Mini or iBook. Even putting one in a PB would be a stretch unless Apple's proves they can cool chips better than everyone else can (which they definitely have shown at all).

Here are the Intel and power roadmaps.

The cheapest dual core Yonah is going to hover around $230 all of next year and run at about 1.67 to 1.83 ghz. Those chips are expected to have TDP's of around 30w. So that's many times the price of the current G4's and about twice the heat output too.

Ummm there is a reason why Apple's mobile solutions are so cheap. Their hardware is crap at this point. Remember the 17" PowerBook originally came in around $3200. Expect prices to climb back into the price range to take into account new up to date hardware. Also I want to know if those prices are in bulk purchases or are per unit. If these are per unit expect the price of bulk purchases to be MUCH cheaper. And its a good bet that Apple is getting as sweet of a deal as Dell on this migration so in all likelyhood they are probably getting, as Steve would say, an insanly great deal.
And your numbers are off.....

Intel's 65nm dual-core Pentium M successor, codenamed 'Yonah', will ship at 1.67, 1.84, 2.0 and 2.17GHz when it debuts early next year, the latest company roadmaps to be made public reveal.

The four dual-core incarnations will be accompanied by just one 2MB L2 single-core version of the part, as Intel had already announced, clocked at 1.67GHz.

So there will be a 2.17Ghz chip in the first quarter of '06 not 1.83. Might want to go back and read the source of your link which is.....The Register