World of Apple

Bloomberg has recently revealed that Apple has been steadily increasing its ownership interest in UK company Imagination Technologies, tripling its ownership interest from the end of 2008 to 9.5% at present. Imagination Technologies is a graphics manufacturer of products that are used in smartphone, including the iPhone (and the Palm Pre). Intel is also a significant investor at over 16%. Amid speculation that either company might be planning a takeover, Imagination and Intel has both denied that there is any such intention. Apple, of course, has been silent. As some analysts have noted, this may be simply an investment for both companies which is typical business practice.

Toms Hardware writes that Apple will transition both the MacBook and MacBook Pro to Intel’s new Westmere platform later this year.

It is highly probable that Apple will base new MacBook and MacBook Por units on 32nm Arrandale Core i7’s. With 2 cores and able to process 4 threads, the new MacBook models will be able to save even more power, thanks to the smaller fabrication process as well as optimized processor features.

Intel is expected to ship the Arrandale Core i7’s in Q4 of 2009. It’s like that Apple would do a minor refresh before that time.

The Register is reporting that Intel has confirmed when its “Nehalem” Xeon EP processors will begin shipping.

The report which comes after a press briefing from Intel earlier this week states that Intel’s vice president and director of operations said that the new Nehalem EP chips are “currently in production, and we expect to have a system introduction later this quarter. So it is imminent.”

Despite The Register not referring to Apple’s Mac Pro tower which hasn’t seen an update in over a year, Mac Rumors is speculating that the new processors will be destined for the Mac Pro.

Intel has today officially unveiled its brand new Core 2 Quad line of processors.

Intel states that the processors are aimed at “sleek and cool” desktops with the new components weighing in at 2.33GHz, 2.66GHz and 2.83GHz and all consuming just 65W of energy. This is in comparison to 95W of pasts models at the same clock speeds. In bulk quantities, they should each cost $245, $320 and $369 respectively.

AppleInsider suggests with very little evidence that the chips could be destined for new iMacs which were originally expected at Macworld 2009. In mid-December it was revealed via text strings in Apple’s own Operating System that the iMac would at least gain the new NVIDIA chipsets present in Apple’s new notebooks.

With all the fuss around the adoption of the new NVIDIA chipsets it has been overlooked that Apple has adopted some aspects of Intel’s Montevina platform in the new MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks.

The key advantage of Montevina is the increased front-side bus speed which is now 1066MHz as well as the inclusion of the latest 45nm Penryn processors.

The MacBook Air also benefited from technology improvements, Intel has confirmed that the MacBook Air now uses a standard 45nm Penryn processor.

But new Intel processors did make a debut in the refresh of the MacBook Air. Instead of the Small-Form-Factor (SFF) 65-nanometer Merom chips, Apple has gone with with the more advanced 45-nanometer Penryn SSF processor. Penryn chips typically boast either 3MB or 6MB of cache memory versus the 2MB or 4MB that the older mobile procesors offer. (Cache memory speeds performance.)

The MacBook Air has previously been criticised for overheating issues which caused the Air to slow itself down.

Without any fanfare or press release, Intel has revealed its new Core 2 Duo “S” which is an improved version of the processor currently found in the MacBook Air. This new product is reported to be 60% smaller and more energy efficient than its predecessor by 3 watts.

(via Electronista)

Fortune reports on the growing relationship between Apple and Intel since the announcement three years ago that Apple would ditch IBM PowerPC processors for Intel’s offerings.

Last year Apple asked Intel to supply a small, thin processor for use in a very thin notebook.

“That was the first time they actually worked together on a custom project,” says Tim Bajarin, president of the Creative Strategies consulting firm. “Before that, everything was pretty much off the shelf. As a result, the relationship grew even further.”

Initially Intel said they couldn’t help but remembered that they had shelved a project a few years before.

Years earlier, researchers had dreamed up a similar chip in a tiny package, but the idea had been put on the back burner after PC makers gave it a ho-hum reception. The concept just had to be dusted off. “We had that small chip package pretty much sitting on the shelf,” Rattner recalls. Within a year, Intel had updated it to meet Apple’s needs and delivered it in volume.

Apple used the processor in the MacBook Air announced at Macworld 2008, Intel’s chief technology officer Justin Rattner says that Intel is working with Apple on more projects that are “equally aggressive”.

Intel confirmed yesterday that it will delay shipments of its upcoming Montevina chipset by as much as two months, with a formal launch in late-August. The delay could push the update to the MacBook notebooks to much later in the year.

“There were two minor issues we found during final testing – one with our integrated graphic chipsets, which we have found a workaround for but need to re-screen our parts, and second around our wireless Wi-Fi chip, which was a paperwork and certification mistake we made,” said Bill Kircos, a spokesman for Intel.

“Both of these led us to establishing a launch date for our mobile processors and discrete chipsets of the week of July 14th, and taking a couple of weeks to get the right readiness and volume for the rest of our components,” Kircos added. “We’re looking at early August for that.”

As a result of the delays Apple is unlikely to begin volume shipments of Montevina based notebooks until much later in the back-to-school buying season.

According to previous reports both the MacBook and MacBook Pro are expected to receive updated looks, the MacBook adopting an aluminium enclosure and the MacBook Pro taking some design hints from the MacBook Air.

DigiTimes reports that Intel is set to launch its mobile quad-core processor by the third-quarter of the year.

The Core 2 Extreme QX9300 will carry a $1038 price per 1000 units.

The 45-nanometer design will sport a core frequency of 2.53GHz, support for up to a 1066MHz front-side bus, and include 12MB of Level 2 cache. But with demand for high-end notebook systems reportedly below average, “Intel expects the quad-core notebook CPUs will not become standard in the performance/mainstream notebook market until the second half of 2009.”

The hefty power usage and price of the chip makes it seem an unlikely candidate for Apple notebooks.

Intel will next quarter introduce several new high-speed solid state drives (SSDs) including a new 160GB; double the capacity of the current drive used in the MacBook Air.

The new drives are expected to be 2.5-inch drives as well as 1.8-inch, the latter being compatible with the MacBook Air.

Intel’s NAND chief Troy Winslow also told News.com that the new Intel drives will boast transfer rates far superior to any existing offers.

With new competition, drive speeds will jump. Currently, the fastest SSDs from companies like Samsung approach 100MB/second for reading data. “What I can tell you is ours is much better than that,” Winslow said. Hard drives typically read data at about half this speed

The chief also added that the entire product line will include SATAII interfaces, delivering up to 3Gbps.

Finally the price of SSDs is expected to drop considerably over the next few years. It costs upwards of $1000 to use an SSD in a notebook these days but by 2010 this price could be reduced to just $200.

“Price declines are historically 40 percent per year,” said Winslow. “And in 2009, a 50 percent reduction, then again in 2010.

Finally Winslow highlighted the increasing role SSDs are playing in the server market due to the ability to accelerate performance more than sixfold when compared to even the highest performing traditional hard drives.

Winslow said that Intel recently did a video-on-demand demonstration where it streamed 4,000 videos simultaneously. Just to do the streaming (not to store the video), it took 62 15,000 RPM (very high-performance) hard drives, he said. “We were able to replace those 62 hard drives with 10 SATA (SSD) technology drives,” he said.