Intel Launching 'Merom' Notebook Processor 201
Hans Pecheston writes "Merom, Intel's notebook processor, will be joining in the festivities at their upcoming launch event. This chip will continue to use the Core 2 Duo brand and should display additional improvements in performance and power consumption over the current chips. Intel has already begun to ship Merom processors to its PC customers and systems with Merom should begin to appear around the end of August."
And in the first week of August... (Score:3, Funny)
They will be announced in a new line-up of MacBook Pros.
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:1)
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
The Macbook and Mini will keep Yonahs, Macbook Pro will get Meroms, the iMac will have a Conroe and the MacPro wi
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
If you think DigiTimes is a reliable reference, here's an article about Yonah's rumored quick phase-out:
From that article:
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:3, Informative)
That's not true at all. Here goes:
MacBook Pro 15-inch Glossy Widescreen Display
1024MB 667 DDR2 - 2 SO-DIMM
Backlit Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English
SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
2.0GHz Intel Core Duo
AirPort Extreme Card & Bluetooth
80GB Serial ATA drive @ 5400 rpm
Price: $2099.99
AppleCare Protection Plan for MacBook Pro/PowerBook (w/or w/o Display) - Auto-enroll
Pr
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2, Informative)
It also bears mentioning that I tried to make them as equivalent as possible in this scenario. I could have easily stuck another $200 worth of upgrades into the machine (XP Pro, bigger HDD, more RAM), and then used a $750 off of $2000 to get to the same price. In that case the Dell would be a clearly superior (from a hardware standpoint) machine.
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:4, Informative)
Dell Latitude D820 with following upgrades:
2Ghz Core Duo
1GB RAM
256MB Intel Quadro NVS
80GB HD
DVD+/-RW
Bluetooth
Total price: $1823
MacBook Pro with 1GB of RAM costs $2099. So it's about $270 more expensive. For that money you get all-aluminium construction (as opposed to plastic), backlit-keyboard, OS X, A LOT nicer overall design (everyone lusts after MacBooks Pro's/PowerBooks, no-one lusts after a Dell), slot-loading optical drive. MBP also has optical audio in and out and FireWire, I don't know about the Dell.
I honestly don't think that the Apple is THAT expensive.
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2, Informative)
The reason Latitudes cost more is for two reasons--business-class support (which Apple DOES NOT provide for their Macbooks, and it's ridiculous to claim that they do) and modular interoperability. Latitudes are the only officially supported "upgradeable" notebooks from Dell: the D-line uses all of the same interfaces for their optical drives. Until the Dx20s, there was very little functional difference between Inspirons and Latitudes. But all Latitudes come with standard 3 year warranties, a business-class
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
Sure, if something goes wrong with the original setup, but how do they help you when the access app your company has been using since '98 crashes? or your server goes down?
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
I don't think Macs are the best deal on the planet, but but Apple isn't gunning for the absolute minimal cost for a given set of hardware features market. They've got a pretty sweet niche hollowed out for themselves. They aren't trying to be everything to every computer purchaser.
It's curious how angry people get about corporations releasing
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
On a MacBook Pro's single button, you can right click and perform a scrollwheel-like operation. Two-fingers and click = right click, two fingers and drag = scrollwheel. Works in Windows via Parallels too, though I haven't tried BootCamp so don't know.
Cheers, Ian
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:3, Informative)
BZZT! Thank you for playing.
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:3, Insightful)
The MacBook *Pro* is not for home users, it's a *Pro* laptop. Gig-E, Firewire, DVI, weight, etc, all matter in that environment. Basically you should redo the entire comparison with a more appropriate base model. For example, an E1505 with stock GMA950 IGP vs the MacBook Amateur. Or the MacBook Pro vs an actual pro-level Dell.
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
Sigh, why do you even bother? This has been done to death. No a pro laptop from Apple with a dozen features you neglect to match up will not be the same price as the cheapest piece of junk you can get from Dell. I think we all know that. Now go get the full specs for the Macbook and try to build it at a reputable computer company (you know not Dell, the one consumer reports rates has having the worst reliability and customer service in the industry). Apple consistently ranks at the top of that list, usually
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
I have a Dell 600m that I've owned for two years...blah blah
Anecdotal evidence is mostly worthless. If you want anecdotes, my 7 year old mac tower is still my PVR and we had a RMA rate of 18% a year on the hundreds of Dell towers I bought at a previous job.
Dell is in line with the rest of the market.
Not really. Consumer reports buys laptops every year, anonymously, without any donations and tests them. They also perform random surveys. They may not be 100% the best methodology ever, but they are the
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
Not true on both counts. Unlike you, who decided to reference a study and then not provide a material link to it, I actually did your work for you and found the latest Consumer Reports statistics here and here. And you'll note in both studies that Dell is either at the top, or neck-and-neck, with all of the other major players in the PC arena., with regards to their technical support.
I can't link to the consumer reports numbers, since they are a pay service. You linked to an article that quotes them, whi
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
This is what I said...
Your original assertion was that "...the pricing difference between the MB and MBP and comparably eqipped PC laptops aren't really so far off" is "not true at all." Thus, you claimed the pricing difference between a Macbook pro and was very far off. You then provided two machine listing with abbreviated feature sets as "proof." Except, because you did not take into account the quality of the components used in the machines or the quality of the engineering in integrating them or eve
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
Ok, in that case, I read a series of article in Scientific American that had a lot of studies about your mother's number of genital warts.
Whatever turns you on...
You linked references to the data including numbers yourself. If you don't believe you, well I guess I don't care.
I should have said "value" instead of price.
Value is subjective. Price is not. Thus in a comparison we have to consider the latter, not the former.
You have a fundamental lack of understanding of the difference between qualita
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
I believe me when it comes to 2006, which shows that, contrary to your assertion, Dell is not at the bottom of the PC market for tech support.
The ratings, especially for laptops, show it well behind Sony and Lenovo and even further behind Apple. They do nothing to support your position that Apple machines and Dell machines are of comparable quality.
Is Dell exceptional in its low customer satisfaction? No, it's just right in line with everyone else.
Except Apple and Sony and Lenovo and other manufactu
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
No link is provided to the system you claim exists. Thus, I'm not bothering to read any more of your evasions. I'm not wasting my time rereading the same crap again.
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
Price after coupon: $1,236.20
If we're bringing discounts into this, Amazon has perpetual $150 rebates on MBPs, so you can get the 2.0GHz base model for $1850. Also, there's no reason to pay Apple $100 for a 512MB upgrade when you can get a 1GB stick from third parties for the same amount. Finally, like any extended warranty AppleCare isn't a good buy unless you know that your usage patterns are unusually likely to lead to failur
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
Re:And in the first week of August... (Score:2)
Inquirer (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=2
The unlimited RAM option looks like an interesting feature
terrible article... (Score:2)
It looks like I'm done with the Register. It's hard to believe at one time they actually had real info on their site.
Re:Inquirer (Score:2)
From Anandtech:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2795 [anandtech.com] Intel's Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back
http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=280 0 [anandtech.com] Conroe vs. AM2: Me
Wait until Thursday for the details! (Score:2, Informative)
So no actual details, so don't bother reading the article. This is not worth an article!
Re:Wait until Thursday for the details! (Score:2)
Meromonics (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Meromonics (Score:2)
Every time I hear "Celeron" I think celery, thats about as boring as it can get!
Re:Meromonics (Score:3, Interesting)
That's exactly what everyone I know calls them.
Even adding the ubiquitous 'X' to form 'XCeleron' would have been better
Re:Meromonics (Score:2)
I predict that in 20 years, all products will simply be called 'X'. There will be a lucrative business in replacing the 'X' key on keyboards. Then, all English words will be replaced by the trendy 'X'. X, x x x x x, x x x x x x x-x x. X!
Re:Meromonics (Score:2)
Re:Meromonics (Score:5, Funny)
Merom = Israeli (Score:2)
Re:Merom = Israeli (Score:2)
Re:Meromonics (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Meromonics (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Meromonics (Score:2, Informative)
Meron is the mountain. Merom (with an M or mem) just means "Upper" as in Upper Galilee (Merom HaGalil). Very nice area in any case (though best to wait until our Lebanese friends have got bored with their fireworks display).
Banias is a freshwater spring/ glade on the Golan Heights and site of an old greek temple . Well worth a hike in summer, though best to time it with a ceasefire.
Yonah is the Hebrew version of Jonah (in Greek which was the first transliteration from the vernacular
Re:Meromonics (Score:2)
Use on an ITX board? (Score:2)
Re:Use on an ITX board? (Score:3, Informative)
What about retail Merom CPU? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What about retail Merom CPU? (Score:2)
Re:What about retail Merom CPU? (Score:2)
Dell doesn't solder CPUs (Score:2)
Re:What about retail Merom CPU? (Score:2)
Re:What about retail Merom CPU? (Score:2)
Why this is Apple-relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
In the Intel world, Intel announces a chip family and that day the big Wintel vendors are already showing off their prototypes of "about-to-ship computers using it. Apple can't be as close to the vest as they traditionally have been regarding their plans anymore - for instance, it's a no-brainer that they'll speedbump their systems anytime Intel ships speedbumped versions of the same chip. Also, the announcement of a Mac Pro is now seen as inevitable at WWDC, since the chips to power it are officially on the market. Unlike years past, the speculation is focused this year on the little details - Xeon or Core 2 Duo? Completely redesigned case or minor refresh? The fact of the machine itself is more of a done deal.
Because this is the first WWDC in the post-Intel era, it'll be interesting to see what the buying trend is - for instance, I have one client who is holding off the two weeks until WWDC before buying either a G5 tower or Xserve - based on the system configs in play, that's about $40k in deferred revenue (on the other hand, another one just bought a G5 Quad). Part of the reason that Apple used to be so tight-lipped about announcements was to avoid these deferred purchases, so it'll be interesting to see what happens now.
Re:Why this is Apple-relevant (Score:2)
Re:Why this is Apple-relevant (Score:2)
Re:Why this is Apple-relevant (Score:2)
Re:Why this is Apple-relevant (Score:4, Informative)
Well, that's wrong somehow... I think you either meant to say "Apple was the largest G3/G4/G5 system maker" or "Apple was the largest user of the PPC in desktop computers". The largest PPC system maker would be hard to pin down, but my bet would be either one of the car or printer manufacturers. PPC is all about embedded systems, Apple's use of them was just convinient fallout.
Obviously IBM/Motorola only bothered to announce the G3/G4/G5 chips when Apple was ready to introduce a new model using them, because those are names for variations on existing PPC chip designs that were designed and produced on contract with Apple explicitly for their use. While they do refer to unique chips, they were all fairly minor variations (mostly just increased specs) on chips that the relevant maker had already created. The G5 is just a variation on IBM's established POWER4 line, for example. Apple chips have always been evolutionary, not revolutionary (even back in the 680x0 days).
The only thing that's changed here is that you happen to be reading the press in which Intel chip announcements are published, while I'm betting that you never heard about all the developments in PPC chips over the past 20 years or so, except for the ones published by Apple.
There's a big list of some of the stuff that uses PPC over here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerpc#Implementati
Re:Why this is Apple-relevant (Score:3, Informative)
This is false. Apple's use of PPC was/is small compared to their use in embedded systems.
Re:Why this is Apple-relevant (Score:2)
Re:Why this is Apple-relevant (Score:3, Interesting)
There have been multiple interviews with IBM about their decision to drop Apple as a customer. The main one was with the main PPC exec responsible for dealing with Apple. Although IBM appears to have taken the high road and let Jobs spin things in public. I don't think IBM really cares about the less than 4 percent of their chip business that Apple represented.
There was another informal interview with one of the mid-level IBM PPC guy wh
Re:Why this is Apple-relevant (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides that, since you generally don't pay a huge speed penalty in running apps through Rosetta (depends on the app, of course), if you need a newer Mac,
Waiting for the dust to settle (Score:2, Interesting)
That and the name sucks. At least when you say T6600 or whatever you can get a sense of what it is [provided you know the model numbering which also changes too much]. Core 2 Duo
Also it's getting harder and harder to find official optimization guides/pipeline descriptions out of Intel. Or maybe I'm not loo
Core Duo vs. Core 2 Duo (Score:4, Funny)
The key differences of the new architecture [Core 2 Duo] from the "ideologically closest" Intel Core Duo (Yonah) are as follows:
* Improved instruction decoder extended to 4 decoders of x86 macroops (vs. 3 of Intel Pentium M / Core Duo)
* 128-bit SIMD instruction performance of 1 instruction per clock in each execution unit (twice as faster as Yonah)
* Improved memory operation and hardware prefetch mechanisms
* L2 cache is dynamically shared by both cores depending on load (as seen in Intel Core Duo)
* Further improved energy saving
* A new SIMD instruction set SSE4.
Re:Core Duo vs. Core 2 Duo (Score:2)
"L2 cache dynamically shared" is known as a "LRU scheme" over a fast front side bus [hint: both cores talk to the same cache
Tom
Re:Core Duo vs. Core 2 Duo (Score:2)
I was under the impression that the cache used a hybrid LRU/LFU scheme, but I could be wrong. As to the cores bumping into each other, a single core can bump into itself if it runs out of cache space. Sharing the cache doesn't mean that there is less, it means that it can be more efficiently used. If bo
Re:Core Duo vs. Core 2 Duo (Score:2)
They're going to "bump into each other" when both cores try to access cache that is attached to the same bus.
Also, while for a single process a shared cache sounds all nice and fancy, for many HPC tasks it's not such a hot idea. This alone will make
Re:Core Duo vs. Core 2 Duo (Score:2)
Hey /. - update the Intel logo. (Score:2)
Intel did.
http://www.intel.com/homepage/nav/pix/logo.gif [intel.com]
Merom has 64bit support (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Merom has 64bit support (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the same philosophy as ZFS; no one is ever likely to need a 128-bit filesystem. Without resorting to quantum storage, you would need a hard drive the size of a planet if you encoded one bit per atom. If you used electron states for storing data then you coul
Re:Merom has 64bit support (Score:2)
Re:Merom has 64bit support (Score:2)
Re:Merom has 64bit support (Score:2)
Re:Merom has 64bit support (Score:2)
Re:64 bits for large file handling (Score:2)
Re:64 bits for large file handling (Score:2)
Of course, the seek time of your hard disk is still going to be the bottleneck.
I wonder.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I wonder.. (Score:2)
Re:I wonder.. (Score:2, Interesting)
This is so cool.. (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, I get it! (Score:2)
May I be the first to predict the following road map:
and finally, after dozens of missed deadlines, project renamings, and changes in leadership, the long-awaited revolutionary:
Re:iMac (Score:2)
Re:iMac (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:iMac (Score:3, Informative)
Re:iMac (Score:2)
Re:iMac (Score:4, Informative)
From last week's quarterly conference call:
"Apple sold 529,000 desktops during the quarter and 798,000 notebooks."
Re:iMac, market share, and iPodiots (Score:2)
Actually, Macs have been innovation leaders pretty much since they were released up through today. They drove widespread adoption of everything from CD-ROMs to USB to wireless networking. It's true they traditionally do not offer as much bang for the buck in terms of processor or polygon-count rendering, and tended to suffer on benchmarks that time those spe
Re:marketing foobar (Score:2)
If I told you I got a 3800+ in my box, what cpu is that? Unless you work around AMD gear a lot you wouldn't know it's a AMDx2, etc...
But yeah if I told you it's a AMDx2 2.4Ghz 4800+ processor you'd have a decent idea what it is. You can do this with intel too... e.g..
"Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13Ghz" gives a decent idea that it's a dual-core 2.13Ghz 2nd generation Core processor. Of course Dell and the like will say things like "Intel Core 2
Re:marketing foobar (Score:2)
Re:marketing foobar (Score:2)
The problem I have with their names other than too many references to numbers [2 Duo?] is that Core and Core 2 are not related products. Core is a Pentium M, Core 2 is more like a K8 than a PM.
Tom
Re:marketing foobar (Score:2)
Step 2. ???
Step 3. AMD Laptop.
Your best bet is to try pinging Acer, Asus and Fujitsu. Failing that HP.
Tom
Re:marketing foobar (Score:2)
But other than that, it's my humble opinion that the 'Core' naming is utterly dumb. As if they were the first/only processors with cores in them. Which leads to the inevitable Core 2, and so on. I can imagine some marketing guy overhearing a bunch of engineers discussing 'processor cores' and getting the brilliant idea. They'll probably have to change it after Core !!! and Core 4 for som
Re:Power Consumption (Score:2)