“For the first time in five years, Intel Corp. will make a major change in the plumbing of its chips by switching to a new design that promises better performance and lower power consumption than today’s Pentium 4,” Matthew Fordahl reports for The Associated Press. “The world’s largest chip maker will announce the architecture this month at a conference in San Francisco, spokesman Bill Calder said Thursday. Chips based on the new architecture are expected to debut in the second half of 2006.”
“Intel new architecture is expected to be based in part on Intel’s Pentium M, which was developed to deliver performance and power savings in notebook computers. It also has roots in the Pentium III processor that Intel launched in 1999… Like the top of the line Pentium 4, the next-generation processors also are expected to have multiple computing engines on a single chip, security features and manageability functions,” Fordahl reports. Full article here.
Don Clark reports for The Wall Street Journal, “Intel Corp. said it plans to announce an entirely new chip architecture, the latest response to pressures that are forcing changes in computer design… The company said the new technology will be described by Paul Otellini, Intel’s chief executive… Mr. Otellini is expected to discuss a technology foundation designed from scratch to improve energy efficiency and make it easier to add more than two processors. ‘A big emphasis is going to be performance per watt,’ said Bill Calder, an Intel spokesman. ‘That is a very big deal.'”
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Report: Mac OS X for Intel hacked to run on non-apple x86 PCs – August 11, 2005
DRM chip in Intel-based developer Macs prevents Mac OS X from running on non-Apple PCs – August 05, 2005
Arizona wins $3 billion Intel plant – July 27, 2005
Apple joins Intel at Carnegie Mellon – July 26, 2005
Intel to renovate desktop processor line in 2006 with transition from 90 nm to 65 nm – July 15, 2005
Apple to use Intel microprocessors beginning in 2006, all Macs to be Intel-based by end of 2007 – June 06, 2005
Ah-ha!…. Another clue to the future great Apple products!
Isn’t this pretty much exactly what Steve said during his explanation of the switch?
Later half of 2006 you say. Hmmm. What could that mean…?
Just in time for Mac intels me thinks
Sure you can!!!
I want the first powermac to have 4-6 cores in it. That will SUCH a kick ass machine and will kill the Dual G5’s
Should make for some awesome notebooks.
Save your pennies for the new MacTels!
Apple had relied on IBM’s plans too, hadn’t they? What Intel must do now is to actually have these things available on time and as promised. If Apple finds itself at the end of 2006 waiting for Intel to deliver what it is promising, we will be back in the same situation that IBM put us in. An “unexpected” delay on Intel’s part will not go over well with any of us, most especially not with Mr. J.
I agree with Hg Wells. Sounds to me that Apple will be in the same boat waiting for the next best thing from the CPU supplier.
If Apple wait for those new processors before they ship the new Mactel machines, it could be 2007 before we see those machines.
I want Apple to use current processors and get the switch over with ASAP and then use the new processor WHEN they become available in volume.
This is certainly Job’s Achilles heel – he always wants to use the latest processor and it has bit him in the ass twice now (remember the G4 and G5 mess)
I would certainly consider upgrading to a P4 or Pentium M in the next year rather than wait a further 6 months to 12 months for something new.
If Intel can’t do it, who can?
AMD?
That’s all that’s left.
Well this shines a little light on the reason Steve Jobs wanted to switch.
Ah, the magic roadmap.
The Intel roadmap should really help the xserver market..I would think that when its running intel chips and they are much more powerful these will be some kick ass servers
It’s a good bet that Apple engineers already have the latest prototypes of the soon-to-be-released chips and are at work refining the design of the necessary support architecture. Apple would have begun development on the Intel-based Mac long before Steve Jobs made his keynote at WWDC 2005.
Public announcements are among the last things most companies do before the release of a product. Steve had an embarrassing lesson with his announcement of a 3GHz machine based upon the lip-service of IBM management, and it’s not likely that he will want to repeat that experience.
By the time Intel releases it’s new chip, Apple will have made several prototype machines. At that time it will be necessary to make the “tweeks” necessary to the hardware and software. Based on this information, and barring any unforseen catastrophic glitches, it looks like an Intel-based Mac should be announced at MacWorld 2006.
As a Mac User since OS 7 …. I must look at the proposed “Intel-switch” with a cautious eye … Not much has been mentioned .. in these threads .. about the “Trusted Computing” aspect of the Intel chips .. and what it will mean to us Mac Heads ..
This guy raises some interesting points to ponder… and, if he’s correct … wouldnt it be prudent to hold off on the “Big Switch” until after some of these issues are resolved ? …. Especially since it is assumed that the PPC machines will, indeed support Leopard .. (and maybe whatever is beyond) .. ??
Are there any tech-saavy posters out there who could enlighten us ?
Here’s to hoping the new architechture takes adavantage of OS X’s architecture, and doesn’t care about MS’s legacy code. How sweet it would be if OS X was naturally faster than Vista on the latest and greatest chip designs.
mac dood, I highly suggest you read John Gruber’s reply to the article you cited. You can find it at http://daringfireball.net/ under the header “Trusted”. This should shed some light on some of your questions or, at the very least, give you another point of view.
The bottom line is that IF the trusted computer chips are included with the Intel Macs that actually ship, there is no reason to believe that Apple would use them to do anything nefarious. In my mind, Apple’s history with respect to it’s customer’s privacy is more important that the possible inclusion of this technology.
G Spank, I’ve heard a lot of talk about this from various parts of the net, and I hope it happens that way. That would be amazing. A lot of what I’ve read suggests that the reason Intel courted Apple so vigorously was because they saw Apple as a chance to really show what they could do, as opposed to MS whose need for legacy code was basically pulling the reigns back on Intel’s innovation. This should be interesting.
That, ndelc, would be the ultimate coup against MS. I get all excited just thinking about it.
Thanx for the heads up on that article, ndelc … It does ease some of my concerns … but not all..
I am still left with several “what if” scenerios… like ..
What if .. Trusted Computing could be “hacked” into activation by some nefarious third party ? …. Wouldnt it open the floodgates to a whole host of Swiss Cheese – like insecurities and make us as vunerable as the Windoze lemmings we love to poke fun of ?
I’ll admit … I know little of such things… which is why I am asking questions now..
” . . . the reason Intel courted Apple so vigorously was because they saw Apple as a chance to really show what they could do . . . “
I’ve said this since the day of the announcement. Intel was not hurting for Apple’s share of the market. They want out from under Microsoft’s thumb. People only know the Intel brand by how it relates to Windows. Intel wants to show that it can be innovative and possibly even sexy.
“What if .. Trusted Computing could be “hacked” into activation by some nefarious third party ? …. Wouldnt it open the floodgates to a whole host of Swiss Cheese – like insecurities and make us as vunerable as the Windoze lemmings we love to poke fun of?”
I’m certainly no expert in any of this, but I would think that in order for something like what you’ve suggested to happen, the hacker (or cracker as is more accurate) would first need to get into OS X, and no one has been able to do that yet. Neither the TC technology, nor the switch to Intel should change how secure OS X is.
I was just telling a guy last night at Best Buy that the new Macs wouldn’t have the current Intel x886 chips even though the developer models are P4s.
This is when the other shoe drops. Backward compatibility will be compromised with this new chip and Microsoft will either have to adapt, or be road-kill.
Don’t underestimate Intel. Mac-heads have dispised Intel for the poorly-designed, but oldly fast processors they produce. More of us need to consider that Intel was designing chips to run Windows. If Intel did not have to design around Windows I bet we would see some great things.
The same can be said of AMD, except AMD has nowhere near the R/D budget and does not make Intel’s famous highly-tuned compilers. For IBM, the Mac was a pet-project.
Sure Intel will get to stand near the glamour of his Steveness, but I think there are a lot of Very Smart People at Intel that would just love to break out of x86.
It might not happen with the abouve announced generation of processors, but after Apple wins the desktop wars, there will be much x86 fodder on the wayside.