“For the second time in as many years, Mac maker Apple Inc. is awaiting the official nod from chip supplier Intel Corp. before announcing a brawny update to its Mac Pro workstations aimed at media professionals,” Kasper Jade reports for AppleInsider.
“The new systems will represent the first architectural overhaul to the Mac Pro family since Apple introduced the Intel-based Power Mac successor at its August 2006 Worldwide Developers Conference. They’ll also be amongst the first machines from any PC manufacturer to employ chips from Intel’s upcoming Penryn family of 45-nanometer (nm) microprocessors — specifically the upcoming Hi-k Xeons, which will be available in dual- and quad-core variants for workstations with front-side bus speeds of either 1333MHz or 1600MHz,” Jade reports.
“Confirming reports filed by the Inquirer earlier this month, people familiar with the matter say the new Mac Pro line lineup will top out with an 8-core configuration that employs two top-of-the-line quad-core ‘Harpertown’ chips. The top-bin Xeons, which offer the faster 1600MHz bus and 12MB of L2 cache, will start trickling in around mid-November at speeds of up to 3.2GHz,” Jade reports.
“Speaking at Intel’s Beijing developer forum earlier this year, Intel senior VP Pat Gelsinger said Harpertown Xeons will offer an approximate 45 percent speed increase for bandwidth-intensive applications compared to the Clovertown Xeon chips available in today’s Mac Pros,” Jade reports.
More in the full article here.
