World of Apple

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.

The Inquirer reports citing sources in Tokyo that Apple has “pre-booked” all the top end Penryn processors for this year, leaving only “minimum quantities” for other manufacturers. The processors are widely expected to be used in Apple’s next-generation of Mac Pro workstations.

Penryn processors code-named ‘Harpertown’ are the successor to the processor currently used in the Mac Pro, the chips are based on Intel’s 45nm manufacturing die and feature a massive 1600MHz front side bus.

The rumour is reminiscent of one earlier this year in which Intel stated that it was supplying Apple will exclusive allotments of ‘Clovertown’ the Penryn predecessor. The 3GHz Quad-Core processors were featured in the Mac Pro several months ahead of other manufacturers.

Penryn is slated for release on November 11th of this year, but Apple will most likely have access prior to this release.

Intel is set to hold a press release on June 26 to announce the Xeon 5100 processor.

“Forget what you thought you knew about hybrid technology. Intel now delivers the best of both worlds: high performance and energy efficiency without compromise,” reads an invitation sent out to the press and industry analysts.

Although its not confirmed that Intel will introduce the Woodcrest processor but TG Daily believes that the new chip will be released on June 26.

Details of the upcoming processor have also reached light of day, Woodcrest Core will come in six variations ranging from 1.6GHZ to 3GHz, all will include 4MB of L2 cache.

Prices are expected to range from $209 for the entry level Xeon 5110 (1.6GHZ) all the way up to $841 for the high end Xeon 5160 (3GHz).