On 22 Jun 2005, at 04:06, Dylan McDermond wrote:
The best bet is the future Pentium M derivatives
Current rumoring suggests Pentium M for mobile and small form factor
machines (read Mac mini, Powerbook, iBook) and Pentium D Dual Core
CPUs where the G5 is currently (iMac and PowerMac). If they can tune
OS X and their Pro Apps to get the most out of the Pentium D it'll be
a good computer. The reason the higher-end machines will not be out
next year is because the Pentium D has only just been unveiled and
Apple and Intel still need time to co-develop the new architecture to
hone it to the sorts of levels that the PowerMac G5 is at. Anyone who
thinks Apple will mod stock PC boards to work as Macs doesn't know
Apple. They will want boards done to their own spec. They quite
possibly will use some other Intel components, the laptops for
example will likely have built-in Centrino mobile technology for
wireless rather than AE (that means Apple laptops will finally have
WiFi built-in as standard, as current Intel based PC laptops tend
to). They may also use part or all of the Intel motherboard chipset.
The boards however will be custom layouts. One thing I also think
Apple may well do is either solder down the CPUs, or alternatively
use a non-PC standard socket pattern for the CPU. That said however
they have, for all their protestations, not been totally adverse to
CPU upgrades in the past. You never know we may in the future be able
to upgrade the CPUs on our Macs with off-the-shelf stock from an PC
vendor. How cool is that!
Dell already have a Pentium D PC out but *that* operating system
isn't in the slightest optimised for EM64T *OR* Dual Core so it's
pretty much a waste of money in the Windows world, at least for now.
Re: the reference that was originally quoted, that reference refers
completely to Intel's Itanium IA64 architecture, which is a dead
duck. Intel have developed EM64T which is easy to support alongside
AMD's AMD64 line, and so I believe the IA64 line will be phased out
within 18 months in favour of a line of high-end EM64T chips, maybe
with inbuilt IA64 legacy translation. Either way Apple are not using
IA64. I am not even totally sure IA64 is x86 compatible.
Also I'd like to point out to those that were muttering about Intel
making PowerPC CPUs that IBM own all the patents to PowerPC and POWER
technology. Apple can't just walk up to Intel and ask to make PPCs -
the designs are not Apple's to hand out. It simply would not be
possible. IBM and Intel might co-operate (begrudgingly) in the low-
end Server market but they are both producing chips and thus are
rivals in CPU terms. It'd be like Apple giving Microsoft the keys to
OS X... Either way that rumor is dead as the line is confirmed to be
x86.
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