“Intel dual-core notebook processors, (codenamed Yonah), will be priced similarly to the current prices for the 700-series Pentium M processors, according to sources in the Taiwan notebook industry,” Charles Chou and Jessie Shen report for DigiTimes. “Details of the dual-core notebook processors were revealed at IDF (Intel Developer Forum) in San Francisco in September 2004 and the processors will be launched in the first quarter of 2006.
Chou and Shen report, “The X-series Yonah processors will be part of Intel’s Napa dual-core notebook platform, which is also expected to hit the market in the first quarter of next year, and will represent Intel’s transition from 90nm technology to 65nm. In addition, the Napa notebook architecture will be the basis for Intel’s digital home products. In addition, Yonah-series processors will be adopted by Apple Computer, which agreed to use Intel microprocessors for its Macintosh computers starting in 2006.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: In a chart accompanying the DigiTimes article, Q1 2006 prices run from US$241 for the Intel “Yonah” X20 dual core processor running at 1.66GHz with a 667MHz frontside bus to US$637 for the Intel “Yonah” X50 dual core running at 2.16GHz witha 667MHz frontside bus.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Analysts think ‘Yonah’ Pentium M may power Apple’s first Intel-based Mac – June 08, 2005
Stick it to the first posters!
Now Powerbook will be as powerful as it is elegant.
Dual core chips in Powerbooks is going to be awesome. While I would have loved a G5, we all realize that was not likely to happen due to the heat issues. I hope Apple’s first products with Intel focus on portables, where there is much more performance to gain.
On another note, does anyone know if this processor change will affect hard drive formatting for Mac? I really hate the incompatibilty between HFS+ and NTFS, why can’t they figure it out?
The X50 sounds pretty sweat to me. Let us all hope that Intel can actually produce. It seems to me that every time any chip manufacturer changes processes (i.e. 90nm to 65nm) things tend to get a bit spotty.
The nice thing is that it will affect everybody this time, not just Apple.
“On another note, does anyone know if this processor change will affect hard drive formatting for Mac? I really hate the incompatibilty between HFS+ and NTFS, why can’t they figure it out?”
I don’t think you want a Unix-based OS on an NTFS filesystem. I think Apple could add read/write support for external disks, but they wouldn’t make it the native filesystem. (OSX currently does read NTFS partitions)
I wondered about the hard drive formatting as well. In my mind, I’m guessing it will still be HFS+. The technology behind Spotlight is based on extensions of the HFS+ file system, I believe. Unfortunately, I don’t see the incompatibilities being automatically removed just because of the switch. A Macintosh is still going to be a Macintosh.
Since it’s Apple’s naming scheme, not IBM (with 970 chip), should we expect the Pentium M to be the G6? Since it’s not a “PowerPC” chip, can we still expect the naming of “PowerMac” and “PowerBook”? Pretty boring questions, I know, but it’s still morning.
Also, let’s hope Apple can avoid the “BIOS” as we currently know it, and develop some kind of flavor of Open Firmware. I doubt it, but then again, it’s Apple.
Those little puppies aren’t exactly cheap are they.
I have a question……..
the G5 chipsets have 1 ghz , 1.25 ghz frontside bus…. what is the complete significance of having a faster frontside bus.. these chips have 667 mhz frontside bus… some out today for windows based computers have up to 800mhz frontside bus…
i was under the impression the higher your frontside bus was, the smoother it would seem to go?
Comments?
A little education here so we don’t all look like fools.
NTFS is a Windows based file system
HFS+ is a Mac based file system
An Intel and Power PC processor is a central processing unit (CPU) that interprets and carries out the instructions contained in the software regardless of platform.
The processor doesn’t determine what file system gets used. It is the OS’s job to create this.
It just so happens that Mac OS X knows how to communicate with an Intel processor to do the same functions and procedures as on a PPC processor.
I hope this clears up the confusion.
As awesome as I think this processor is going to be, can you imagine the support hardware that goes with it? Well… *may* come with it?
– fast IO bus
– fast video card
– fast memory
As awesome as I think this processor is going to be, can you imagine the support hardware that goes with it? Well… *may* come with it?
– fast IO bus
– fast video card
– fast memory
As awesome as I think this processor is going to be, can you imagine the support hardware that goes with it? Well… *may* come with it?
– fast IO bus
– fast video card
– fast memory
Is Intel truly cheaper?
(I mean, IF G5s had a laptop chip.)
Well Macintosh16tx, the PowerBook has a 166MHz FSB. Any improvement there will be welcome. The iMac G5 has 667MHz IIRC. I’d be surprised to see Apple put a $600 chip in a laptop. That’ll just about kill the profit margins.
Actually DimpleMonkey, you look like a fool. The switch to Intel processors will include a change in the disk format. Please research your facts before looking like a fool.
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/CoreFoundation/Conceptual/CFMemoryMgmt/Concepts/ByteOrdering.html
However, still what are the advantages of having a fast Frontside bus?
the frontside bus is basically the door to the processor. yeah once stuff gets there it can be proccessed really fast and sent out, but how fast can it get in and out?
like using a nascar pit crew to change your tires on a ford fiesta. the tires will get changed fast…
Oh, sweet merciful Christ. Can we please stop another stupid rumor from getting started before it begins? HFS is not going away. The low-level partition map format will necessarily change because Apple is changing the way the Mac boots, but unless you write programs like DiskWarrior that directly access the partition table, this does not affect you. If you aren’t a developer at all, you will never notice.
i don’t know about the name of the new power mac, but except for the portable the powerbooks have always been powebooks.
Thanks for the link to the Apple Development site. So if Mac moves to little-endian structure, will that affect the actual type of formatting, or just the compatibility?
I would love to be able to write to NTFS (for external drives that are more reliable than FAT32 and more compatible than HFS+ for other users). Right now Windoze can’t read OR write HFS, will this change?
Actually DifferentHDFormat, it is you who is talking out your a**.
The G4 and earlier PPC cpu’s are the same endian as the Intel platform. On the other hand the G5 is opposite. It is OSX that handles the swapping for compatibility. If you check out a few things, VPC v 6 and earlier was ok on the G4 because the endian nature was the same. However it could not run on the G5 because the software was the opposite endian. On the other hand VPC v 7 which does run on the G5 and G4 is endian neutral. That is it allows the endian handling to be dealt with by OSX so G4 and G5 differences are irrelevant.
I doubt that the file system will change on future Apples just because of a cpu change. On the other hand I am sure that the file system required by OSX for its boot volume will not be readable at all by Windows because that would open up major risks for Windows virii being able to damage OSX on a dual boot machine.
Don’t be so hard on DimpleMonkey. A lot of people are confused about what this all means, and they just aren’t thinking through their questions.
So, to the back of the “short bus” for IBM as Intel takes the driver’s seat!
Why in the world would you want anything to do with NTFS? It’s not going to be in Longhorn. It’s not compatible with many Unix features, like individual file permissions, and it wouldn’t support embedded metadata necessary for Spotlight. The assumption that HFS+ would go away because of the shift to Intel CPUs is based on Apple using x86 architecture, which is a bad assumption in itself. Why try to be compatible with a proprietary file system like NTFS, especially when it’s likely to be going away eventually?
See: http://aplawrence.com/Bofcusm/2059.html
What’s for sure is that -for the moment anyway- stantheman and co have buggered off! They must now see the writing on the wall – and it says: WINDOWS FREE WORLD AHEAD!
And Wikipedia will say: “Windows was the MS OS adopted by 90% of computer users in the late 20th and early 21st centuries before it succumbed to viruses and other problems due to its ill thought out and poor programming”.
Go Apple! Go Intel!
Good call fenman.
I would doubt Apple is going to move from HFS+, there isn’t any advantage to do that right now, unless you consider Windows compatability an advantage….