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Quad-Core Nehalem Apple Notebooks Possible in Q3 2009?

Apple would be wise to skip the entire Nehalem generation of chips (except in desktop towers) and wait for Westmere which will implement the same technology with a smaller feature size: 32nm versus 45nm. The new chips will draw significantly less power at the same clock which will allow clock speeds to return to the values we've gotten used to.

Westmere will also bring hardware accelerated encryption so, for example, entire hard drives could be encrypted and decrypted on the fly without the user noticing.
 
seb-opp said:
Didn't think Apple ever used Intel's brand names except the processors. Otherwise the macbooks would be advertised as being Intel Centrino
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Nope. To qualify as "Centrino", you have to use Intel processor, chipset, and WiFi card. The nVidia chipset and Atheros WiFi card rule out using "Centrino".

And Nehalem (pronounced somewhere between "nuh-HAY-lum" and "neh-HAY-lum",) is named after the Nehalem river on the Oregon Coast. (Which also has Nehalem Bay, the city of Nehalem, and Nehalem Bay State Park, where I'm going to be spending Memorial Day...) Processors are nearly always named after rivers; most of them in Oregon or Washington.
 
Bregalad said:
Apple would be wise to skip the entire Nehalem generation of chips (except in desktop towers) and wait for Westmere which will implement the same technology with a smaller feature size: 32nm versus 45nm. The new chips will draw significantly less power at the same clock which will allow clock speeds to return to the values we've gotten used to.
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We may be waiting until mid-2010 or later. Even then Westmere CPUs aren't expected to have significant clock speed differences compared to Nehalem CPUs.
 
iMacmatician said:
We may be waiting until mid-2010 or later. Even then Westmere CPUs aren't expected to have significant clock speed differences compared to Nehalem CPUs.
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Are there benchmarks comparing Calpella and Montevina? I realize that the clockspeed is slower, but are the chips comparable? For example, is a 2.0 GHz Nehalem comparable to a 2.0 GHz C2D or a 2.6 GHz C2D?
 
Wasn't the MacBook Pro just speed-bumped; so the Buyer's Guide should be slightly incorrect?
 
While I find it too hard to keep up these days with all these processor names and all...

...I'm so very happy this isn't another thread about the b-a-f iPhone. :)

Sorry for interrupting, please continue. :D
 
Don't quad cores run hotter than C2D's?

If so, I'd wait until at least a Rev B came out. I don't think quad cores have been proven in laptops yet.
 
zw-gator said:
Don't quad cores run hotter than C2D's?

If so, I'd wait until at least a Rev B came out. I don't think quad cores have been proven in laptops yet.
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65W Core 2 Quads exist for LGA775 and 35W mobile Core 2 Quads for Socket P.

You're going to pay more money for cooler processors though.
 
So.... buy now? Probably low likelihood of an update at WWDC (at least less so than the MacBook Al?)
 
iomatic said:
So.... buy now? Probably low likelihood of an update at WWDC (at least less so than the MacBook Al?)
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Apple is going to push Grand Central and OpenCL, hopefully. This gives them the chance to push a quad core notebook as something "new".

Eidorian said:
My guess is that more Macs will go quad core when Snow Leopard launches and Apple will extol unto us unworthy masses the glory of more than two cores.

Then again it'll feel like 2007 again for me and old friend the Q6600.
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Are there any applications which use the 4 cores more effectively than Dual Core? In the PC world games run just as fast on the dual cores because programmers haven't worked out how to use all those cores yet.

I imagine there must be some applications that benefit, but not many that the general consumer would use.
 
windywoo said:
Are there any applications which use the 4 cores more effectively than Dual Core? In the PC world games run just as fast on the dual cores because programmers haven't worked out how to use all those cores yet.

I imagine there must be some applications that benefit, but not many that the general consumer would use.
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Nearly every video encoding application scales to 4 cores now. Audio under OS X is usually two if you use Core Audio.

Games are hit and miss.
 
windywoo said:
Are there any applications which use the 4 cores more effectively than Dual Core? In the PC world games run just as fast on the dual cores because programmers haven't worked out how to use all those cores yet.

I imagine there must be some applications that benefit, but not many that the general consumer would use.
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I don't think quad-core as a BTO for the MacBook Pro (and high-end iMacs) would be a problem.
 
Windows 7 has "Grand Central" as well (even XP will have it)

windywoo said:
In the PC world games run just as fast on the dual cores because programmers haven't worked out how to use all those cores yet.

I imagine there must be some applications that benefit, but not many that the general consumer would use.
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"Grand Central" isn't magic pixie dust - it's just a set of APIs that make it easier for programmers to use extra cores. It won't speed up current programs, but it will make it easier for future releases of programs to better use the available cores.

Windows is rolling out features similar to "Grand Central", although it has the technically descriptive name of the "Concurrency Runtime" (ConcRT - or "concert") instead of a cute Apple marketing name like "Grand Central".

Both ConcRT and Grand Central will help "programmers work out how to use those cores" by providing frameworks to handle the common details needed to manage parallel tasks.

But, you'll need to wait for your programs and games to be rewritten to use those frameworks.

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/The-Concurrency-Runtime-Fine-Grained-Parallelism-for-C/

One big difference, though, is that "ConcRT" is part of the Microsoft development environment - so parallel apps using the new framework will work on Windows XP and Vista. With Windows, newly speeded up apps will work on any multi-core system using XP or later. With Apple, you'll need to fork out $129 for OSX 10.6 to see the speedup.
 
So where do the MacBook Pros stand now due to the update?

Sometime near the next 6-8 month mark, there will be USB3, ExpressCard 2.0, Nvidia replacements for the 9400M and the 9600M GT etc. Seeing as we haven't seen these (and Nvidia royally screwed currently with their graphics chips and manufacture) - will the current new MacBook (Pros) be only on the market for a short time before replacements? Intel seems pretty schtum about things.
Is the February 2010 MacBook Pro going to be a much bigger improvement than the current improvement? Would Apple wait that long to get improved CPUs in their MacBook range?
 
t0mat0 said:
So where do the MacBook Pros stand now due to the update?

Sometime near the next 6-8 month mark, there will be USB3, ExpressCard 2.0, Nvidia replacements for the 9400M and the 9600M GT etc. Seeing as we haven't seen these (and Nvidia royally screwed currently with their graphics chips and manufacture) - will the current new MacBook (Pros) be only on the market for a short time before replacements? Intel seems pretty schtum about things.
Is the February 2010 MacBook Pro going to be a much bigger improvement than the current improvement? Would Apple wait that long to get improved CPUs in their MacBook range?
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I personally expect an update in early 2010 with Arrandale. I don't think there will be an update before then because there is likely to only be Clarksfield before then, and since Clarksfield is more expensive than the majority of CPUs used in the MacBook Pro, I don't see Apple updating half the line to Nehalem and leaving the other half with Penryn (or using significantly more expensive CPUs).

In regard to update significance, I see the Arrandale update as being more significant than the third Penryn update (this one) in the areas of CPU and GPU, while less significant in the areas of RAM, HDD, and pricing/structure.
 
iMacmatician said:
I personally expect an update in early 2010 with Arrandale. I don't think there will be an update before then because there is likely to only be Clarksfield before then, and since Clarksfield is more expensive than the majority of CPUs used in the MacBook Pro, I don't see Apple updating half the line to Nehalem and leaving the other half with Penryn (or using significantly more expensive CPUs).

In regard to update significance, I see the Arrandale update as being more significant than the third Penryn update (this one) in the areas of CPU and GPU, while less significant in the areas of RAM, HDD, and pricing/structure.
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Thinking the same here. RAM and HD is never going to be a big issue, as they're pretty much small bumps - and they're the bits users can add/upgrade anyway.

Seems the ExpressCard/USB/GPUs/CPU all seem to be having rough update dates around or before Feb 2009, 8 months after this release. Seems the Nehalem/better GPU pairing will give a much bigger bump than this update.

So what's the most recent news on Arrandale? Where do most people go to find ruminations, rumors and speculation on timings, road maps, estimated dates of sale to Apple etc?
 
t0mat0 said:
So what's the most recent news on Arrandale? Where do most people go to find ruminations, rumors and speculation on timings, road maps, estimated dates of sale to Apple etc?
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The latest big news was the Intel presentation a few months ago, and there have been some info since.

I use a number of sites to get most of my info.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Nehalem_(microarchitecture)
http://www.theinquirer.net/
http://www.fudzilla.com/
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...map+site:pc.watch.impress.co.jp&aq=f&oq=&aqi= (PC Watch updates their roadmap every now and then)
http://global.hkepc.com/ (since it's in Chinese, I use Google search or click links on pages with interesting info)
http://www.google.com/ (gets other websites)
 
Eidorian said:
Waiting for Arrandale is ridiculous.
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With the Nvidia Intel court case, might Apple just skip the quad cores, and just go to Arrandale in the next cycle 8 months later in Feb 09? Seems to make sense now. Means they sidestep the Nvidia Intel problem potentially.
 
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