Intel Names Upcoming Chips

Phooey42 writes "USA Today is reporting that Intel has finally announced names for their new set of desktop and notebook processor lines, previously dubbed Conroe and Merom. The new chips for both the desktop and laptop lines will be dubbed "Core 2 Duo", whereas their new "premium processor" for high end desktop users will be called the "Core 2 Extreme". Knowing Intel, who would have ever thought that the successor to the Core Duo would be the Core 2 Duo!?"

Nice to see Intel stepping it up a bit.

[Kranfer]

I am very happy to see Intel stepping it up in the Processor market again. Hopefully it will provide a nice environment for more competition between AMD and Intel again so another leap forward can be made in the computing world. Also, I hope they come up with a new jingle for this processor... I hate hte Pentium one. Hehe. Evil inside.

Re:Nice to see Intel stepping it up a bit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I think the jingle was one of the most brilliant things Intel had done. I interviewed the guy who came up with that branding strategy; and he said he was inspired by the AT&T long distance beep that pay-phones made - claiming that this sound gave users confidence that their phone connection was going to be a good one. He was so inspired that a brief tone could inspire confidence in people, he made this a major part of Intel's branding campaigns, and it (along with the rest of his marketing strategies) seems to have worked well - selling millions of inferior chips than their competitors at a higher price.

Intel PowerMacs/Xserves possible in June (Xeon)

[MojoStan]

So, we can expect the intel version of the G5 desktops out in July or latest August 2006, since that is when the next Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) takes place.

Another replier mentioned Woodcrest (Xeon), which I agree is more likely than Conroe (but not a sure thing). In case you didn't know, Woodcrest is scheduled to be introduced in June [arstechnica.com] (Conroe in July, Merom in August).

Even though Pentiums and Xeons have shared the same core since P6 (Pentium 2), Intel has reserved some workstation/server features (like multiple processors) for the Xeon platform (AMD does the same for Athlon/Opteron).

So if Apple still wants dual-processor options for the PowerMac's successor, then they will very likely use Woodcrest (Xeon). However, the emergence of dual-core and the availability of Intel "Extreme" CPUs might mean Apple does not need more than one processor anymore for their "pro" desktops. Also, Intel offers "low end" workstation platforms that use Pentium CPUs with worstation chipsets (ECC memory, worstation graphics cards, PCI-X, PCIe x4/x8). Example: E7230 chipset [intel.com].

My revised predictions: iMac will use Core 2 Duo. PowerMac (Mac Pro?) will use Core 2 Extreme (no more dual-processor) with a workstation chipset (ECC, workstation graphics cards, PCIe x4 and x8 slots). Xserve will use dual-processor Xeon (Woodcrest). I'm hoping Apple will offer another non-pro desktop (besides iMac and Mac mini) that uses Core 2 Duo.