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.

AppleInsider reports that Apple is awaiting the official word from Intel that it can ship an update to its beefy Mac Pro workstation.

The new Mac Pro will feature Intel’s currently unreleased processor known as Penryn, it will represent the first upgrade to the Mac Pro since its inception in August 2006. The update will also push the Mac Pro to the forefront of computing as the Penryn-family of processors is based on Intel’s 45nm manufacturing process.

AppleInsider believes that the new Mac Pro will top out with an 8-Core model using two 3.2GHz “Harpertown” processors. The new Quad-core processors feature a 1600Mhz front-side bus as well as 12MB of L2 cache.

The rumour site believes that the lower-end Mac Pro models could recieve the dual-core Penryn processor know as “Wolfdale”.

It has been revealed by Intel that the 3GHz Xeon processor used in the brand new 8-Core Mac Pro is an unannounced model.

Bill Kircos commented for Intel; “We are indeed shipping a 3.0GHz Xeon version [and] expect to see faster gigahertz speeds for our high-end Extreme PCs very soon, too. For now, the product is in limited production and Apple has chosen to adopt it. We will introduce another 3.0GHz Xeon SKU later on as well.”

The processor is currently exclusive to Apple.

Today Intel revealed many details concerning it’s two Xeon processors families which will feature quad-cores. One of the processor families will be aimed at the desktop market and the other at the server market.

Clovertown – Xeon 5000 Series

Clovertown which is aimed for the server market is set to be released later this year and the line-up looks as follows:

• X5355 | 2.66GHz | 1.33GHz FSB | 8MB L2 Cache | $1172
• E5345 | 2.33GHz | 1.33GHz FSB | 8MB L2 Cache | $851
• E5320 | 1.86GHz | 1.06GHz FSB | 8MB L2 Cache | $690
• E5310 | 1.60GHz | 1.06GHz FSB | 8MB L2 Cache | $455

All prices for batches of 1000 units

Kentsfield – Xeon 3000 Series

According to Intel roadmaps the launch of Clovertown will be preceded by Kentsfield the desktop market equivalent.

The family consists of four processors one of which was recently announced as the Core 2 Quadro.

• QX6700 | 2.66GHz | 1.06GHz FSB | 2×4MB L2 Cache
• Q6600 | 2.4GHz | 1.06GHz FSB | 2×4MB L2 Cache |
• X3220 | 2.4GHz | 1.06GHz FSB | 8MB L2 Cache | $851
• X3210 | 2.13GHz | 1.06GHz | 8MB L2 Cache | $690

All prices for batches of 1000 units

Kentsfield appears to be set for release in Early 2007.

[Update - 26/9/2006 19.30 BST] Intel has made some last minute changes to it’s roadmap, processors that were set to be called Core 2 Quadro have been renamed to the Core 2 Quad.

Intel has internally announced it’s Quad-Core processor. The internal details claim that the chip will come in two iterations, the first of which will arrive in November of this year. Both iterations of processors will be for Socket 775 and feature a 1.06GHz FSB.

The processor which is internally dubbed “Kentsfield” and will be commonly known as the Core 2 Quadro Q6600 will debut with a clock speed of 2.4GHz.

It should be noted that the server version of Kentsfield is called Clovertown and should also ship early next year.

Intel today officially announced the release of its next Xeon processor, Tusla.

Tulsa is the next generation on from Woodcrest which is used in Apple’s current Mac Pro systems. Tulsa is also known as the Xeon 7100 series and is Dual-Core much like Woodcrest.

Tulsa boasts lower power consumption at 95 watt options that can reduce associated energy costs. Intel says the Dual-Core Intel Xeon 7100 processor series offers up to twice (2x) the performance and nearly three times (3x) better performance per watt over previous Intel Xeon MP processors–in part because of its large 16MB Level-3 cache.

It is unknown whether Apple has any plans for the high-end Xeon processor.

Intel has officially announced earlier this week that it is shipping its Conroe and Merom processors.

According to some reports Intel quietly pushed some first shipments of its Core 2 Duo Desktop chip (Conroe) last month, ahead of the official July 27 release date.

“The mobile PC version of the Intel Core 2 Duo processor is also shipping now, one month ahead of schedule,” Intel wrote in a set of presentation slides.

On Tuesday Intel announced its Q2 2006 earnings, during the report CEO Paul Otellini revealed that Intel have moved forward the schedule for Quad-Core processors to Q4 of 2006 instead of Q1 2007.

The first two processors are dubbed Kentsfield and Clovertown which are effectively twin-die Core 2 Duo’s. Kentsfield is aimed for the Desktop market, such as the upcoming Mac Pro and Clovertown is aimed at the server market, such as the yet to be released Intel based Xserve.

VoIP Coming to Mac OS X 10.5?

AppleInsider is reporting that developers are feverishly working on the inclusion of internet phone calls to Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”.

Sources familiar with recent builds say that VoIP dialling is a new feature of iChat 4.0.

It is unknown whether Apple will capitalise on this growing market or whether they’ll partner with an existing solutions provider such as Skype or Google Talk.

Intel Launches 2.33GHz Core Duo

Today Intel quietly began shipping a moderately upgraded version of its Core Duo processor.

The Core Duo T2700 is priced at $637 and tops the previous high end chip, the 2.16GHz Core Duo T2600.

The current 15 and 17-inch MacBook Pro notebooks use the previous high end Core Duo processor, sources have contacted World of Apple with information about a discrete boost in MacBook Pro top speeds with no price change.

Intel has also quietly begun shipping the Ultra Low Voltage Core Duo this week.

As rumoured by World of Apple, Intel has officially unveiled its high-end server and workstation processor.

The new chips will deliver 135-percent performance increase with up to 40-percent decreases in power consumption, the new “Woodcrest” processors are the first to take advantage of Core micro-architecture, a design said to include technologies to improve performance.

Intel will initially ship the Xeon 5100 series at speeds of up to 3.0GHz, the company said, which will pack a faster 1333MHz front side bus and 4 megabytes of shared L2 cache.

“Simply put, the Core microarchitecture is a technical marvel that is driving a new era of power efficiency without compromising on what can only be described as eye-popping dual-core 64-bit performance,” said Pat Gelsinger.

The top-of-the-line 3.0GHz Xeon 5100 will ship with a thermal design point (TDP) of 80 watts with all others models rated at 65W. In the third quarter, Intel plans an even lower voltage version at 2.33 GHz with a TDP of just 40 watts.

Intel says it plans to unveil a 3.2GHz version of Woodcrest later this year.