Merom, a notebook processor and the third leg of Intel’s Core architecture triumvirate, will also get a thorough airing at a launch party planned at the chipmaker’s headquarters this Thursday. Merom will represent additional improvements in performance and power consumption. Like Conroe, it also will use the Core 2 Duo brand, with model numbers in the 5000 and 7000 range that will indicate performance.
when will intel launch their 4P woodcrest xeon?
Anyone has a clue?
A 4S version of Woodcrest isn’t even on the roadmap for this year, so I guess it will be next year. AMD will have a pretty big lead in the (small) 4S market until then.
Merom is an awesome processor. I can’t wait to get my hands on one. Intel’s Performance Per Watt strrategy really is paying off.
I wonder if this CPU will end up in Apple’s future Mac Minis and iMacs?
I’m sure it would also be a great CPU for media Centres and silent PCs. Hopefully there will be some desktop motherboards that support it, like there are for the Core Duo.
It’s very nice to see such a focus on power consumption after the hot running Intel CPUs of previous years. It’ll definitely be a challenge for AMD to match this.
IMHO, Apple will upgrade all their product lines during WWDS.
Here is my humble prediction:
– MacBook Pro will get upgrades to Merom CPUs
– MacBook will get upgrades to better Yonah CPUs
– Mac Mini will get updgrades to better Yonah CPUs
– iMac will get upgrades to Conroe CPUs
– Mac Pro (PowerMac) will be updated with Conroe CPUs
– XServe will be updates to Xeon CPUs
But I guess Steve Jobs will find a way to foil my predictions…
If/when Apple upgrades to Merom, will that help solve the heat issues with the current generation of Apple notebooks?
No, Merom will produce about as much heat as Yonah, but it will have better performance.
Merom doesn’t appear to be the problem with the current Apple notebooks. It seems to be more a matter of very conservative fan settings and some shoddy QA.
Is this the first Core CPU that has 64 bit capabilities?
Merom, Conroe and Woodcrest are all built on the “Core” microarchitecture which is the basis for the “Core 2” chips (both “Solo” and “Duo”). The “Core” architecture supports 64-bit, specifically the x86-64 ISA developed by AMD (and later adopted by Intel under the name “EM64T”).
Woodcrest has already been released: it’s the new Xeon chip Intel is advertising everywhere (e.g. a full page in the Economist with a quote from Anandtech.com of all people). Conroe is coming out on Thursday, and Merom will appear in August.
Incidentally the original “Core Solo” and “Core Duo” chips did not use the “Core” architecture, they used a tweaked version of the architecture behind the “Pentium M” chip.
Personally I think they rushed out the Core brand name before the Core architecture was ready to build on the hype growing around the latter. It has, however, made comments like this very, very confusing 😉
Edited 2006-07-24 14:57
Great news! I cant wait for Dell to upgrade that XPS M2010 monster of theirs with a better graphics card and these Merom processors! That machine will fly if the Conroe numbers are anything to go by! Intel has just upped the ante by a dramatic amount. I have not seen such ass whooping in a while and it is rather refreshing to see the big cpu companies try to battle it out like ATI and Nvidia have been of late.
I am still skeptical about 64 bit numbers for Intel processors. AMD are proven in this area. I guess it is time to be a bit patient and let the hardware review sites setup this review as well. I have a copy of XP Pro 64 bit but no machine to install it on!
All the best to AMD to get their mobile and desktop cpus taped out and everything. These are quite excitign times indeed! As much as I am a fan of the underdog, when it comes to purchasing technology, I dont like making compromises. So if I were to buy a new computer, I would go with Intel right now.