“Almost 90 percent of all the Centrino-branded laptops sold in Q4 will be based on the latest version of Intel’s mobile platform, ‘Santa Rosa’, the chip giant believes,” Tony Smith reports for The Register.
“Santa Rosa debuts next month, though while some laptop manufacturers will announce models at that time, the big push will come two months later, Intel’s mobility chief, Mooly Eden, said today,” Smith reports.
Smith reports, “The upshot will be that the new version will make up more than half of the Centrino laptops that ship in Q3, up from about 30 per cent in Q2. That figure, Eden predicted, will exceed 90 per cent in the fourth quarter.”
“The platform will also see the inclusion of a NAND Flash module – aka Intel Turbo Memory – to cache data between the hard drive and memory. Intel said it not only halves application load times but reduces the wake-up-from-sleep time by a similar percentage,” Smith reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
Related MacDailyNews article:
Intel’s product roadmap reveals some clues to future Apple’ products – March 08, 2007
I’m glad I’ve put off the purchase of a new MacBook (or Pro). Waiting for Leopard isn’t so bad after all.
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cool. so when do the new Macbooks get announced?
Yes, that’s in my new Mac laptop as well.
With MacOS X booting extremely quickly and waking up instantly anyway, at least the flash cache is primarily a Windows crutch to compensate for the system’s software shortcomings.
Much more important would be a higher RAM ceiling (up from 3GB now). I haven’t checked if Santa Rosa actually addresses that, but it would certainly be due by now.
I’d love to know the percentage of people who say ‘I’m glad I waited for __________ so I can buy ___________ when it comes out, who actually DO buy the thing when it comes out.
Or are they just perprtuatlly waiting for the next thing?
The wait for the Core 2 MacBook Pro definitely was an excellent choice.
This is a huge jump forward in notebook technology compared to the incremental advances we’ve seen in the past. This will change the status quo in mobile computing.
@ Moo,
I am waiting for Santa Rosa to buy a new notebook, then I’ll wait for the next revisions, until I actually have enough cash in my wallet to make the purchase.
ping
I agree with you. I got mine in December. That wait was worth it. The wait for Leopard is not. Get it when you need it.
“Huge jump”? I don’t think so. A modest bit of progress for Windows laptops, but so far I don’t see anything extraordinarily interesting for a MacBook.
@ Moo – not me, I just can’t afford a new one – but it sounds better to say, ‘I’m glad I waited’ I can’t imagine I’m the only one…
ping said, “Much more important would be a higher RAM ceiling (up from 3GB now). I haven’t checked if Santa Rosa actually addresses that, but it would certainly be due by now.”
Yes, Santa Rosa eliminates the kludgy waste of memory — using 3G only, even though you have 4G installed — in the current Intel architecture. Santa Rosa is full 64 bit capable.
Santa Rosa is obviously pacing Apple’s introduction of all but its Xeon based Mac Pro and Xserve Macs. If Apple were to introduce new Macs without Santa Rosa so close to the latter’s appearance, Mac users would revolt – so great are the advantages of that technology. Apple is too smart to make that mistake.
The only question is timing. It usually takes months after production start up to enable computer manufacturers to get sufficient quantities to ship the product.
Also, Santa Rosa grows the best plums, too !
Oh dear, where is AMD..?
@LG and M P S
Surely if any company has these in their hands by now, Apple has?
I wonder if Apple is waiting for this chip to upgrade their MacMinis ?
Thus far I’ve just assumed that Apple has held off bumping up the MacMini because they’re waiting for me to purchase. Then, as has happened 3 times in the past, the very DAY after I buy, they’ll bump up the computer I’ve just bought. I’ve been SURE that that’s what they’ve been waiting for … me to buy. But … now … I’ve gotta wonder if it’s this new chip their waiting for.
But, then … perhaps it IS me?? <VBG>
…aka Intel Turbo Memory – to cache data between the hard drive and memory. Intel said it not only halves application load times but reduces the wake-up-from-sleep time by a similar percentage…
While I’m all for increased performance, this really won’t help the computer be faster overall.
You see the cache can only hold so much and the computer really doesn’t have a idea what the user (or even the OS/apps) will request of it next, so it’s back to the slow hard drive. Which the more it’s filled past 50%, the slower it gets and thus slows your computers performance, cache or no cache.
Hard drives I/O performance has not kept up with the demand in content or the new performance of these mulitcore processors.
Lots of Mac Pro users are RAID 0 a pair of 150GB 10,000 RPM Raptors and cloning their OS from a regular drive to the RAID 0 to boot/use apps from. Then using a large drive for files to keep the boot RAID slim and fast.
Everyone else who uses these multicore processors without a RAID 0 for a boot drive is really getting robbed in the performance department.
Also another thing is if you look at the CPU tests between a Quad and a Octo, the Octo only comes out 50% faster than a Quad. Now it should be twice as fast right? Why? Because CPU performance is increasing so fast with mulitcores that it’s providing everything a customer needs and software can’t make use of it. So why upgrade?
So what Intel is doing is hobbling the true performance of multi-cores and making slight changes in cache to give the appearance of improvment. What Apple is doing is not using NAND memory in their computers to reduce the hard drive bottleneck.
In either case we the customers are getting screwed.
RevNeal,
Go ahead and buy one, then when it’s updated switch it out for the new revision. You’ll have up to two weeks to do it. I’d ask first if that policy is still in effect, just to be sure.
And for a followup to WiseGuy, bearfeats.com is indicating that octo is at best no faster, and in some cases slower, than quatro for 3D games. Gamers better wait awhile before springing for theoretical power that for the moment can’t be used for gaming.
In either case we the customers are getting screwed.
Nonsense. Most Mac users won’t see any significant advantage for either a RAID 0 array or the flash cache.
Current CPU technology is yet again ahead of the available memory bandwidth as it has often been in the past. For most people with dual core machines that’s still not a problem; It is primarily an issue for the much more esoteric quad- or octo-core ones. Their users obviously would benefit from additional memory performance to a larger degree, but that’s a special issue.
By far most users will see a massive performance difference by simply plugging in as much RAM as they really need and thus generally eliminating virtual memory swapping. No other performance gain comes even close to that.
Get Memory Monitor or Menu Meters to assess swapping activity on your machine. If there is a lot of it, get more RAM.
So they should have them out in force for the 4th quarter. So in other words, look for the new MacBook Pro in August and the new MacBook in September.
And I say new Macbook Pro will be out in May and Macbooks in June. According to Intel 30% of notebooks sold in Q2 (which ends on June 30) and I would be surprised if Apple wasn’t among the first ones to implement them. There is something special going on between Intel and Apple. Only Apple got the new 3 Ghz chips for their new Octo.
Mark my words.
I usually wait about two good revisions then purchase just as the next one comes out. I have the latest PowerBook and so far there have been two processor revisions… Core Duo and Core 2 Duo. Santa Rosa is my key and as soon as it comes out I’m snatchin it up and I’ll be happy until something greater comes out in about 1-2 years.
While the SR CPU processer is nice – lets see if Apple can finally get a semi-decent GPU component into the revised Macbooks (not pro). The GMA X3000 or an ATI-1400 option would rock!