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Intel Launching 'Merom' Notebook Processor
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."
They will be announced in a new line-up of MacBook Pros.
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Interesting notes in Inquirer.
3 055
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=2
The unlimited RAM option looks like an interesting feature
Thursday... Intel plans to announce details about the branding strategy and systems that will appear with Merom processors
So no actual details, so don't bother reading the article. This is not worth an article!
I guess the 'Moron' processor name was already taken
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I've been holding of on buying one of them shiny nice new iMacs until they get a new processor. I very much doubt they will upgrade the macBookPro (as some suggest) befor they update the iMac, that remains their flagship product.
I keep my fingers crossed for a core duo 2 iMac announcment on WWDC (eventhough I know it's unlikely).
Regards,
J.
Any chance of anyone making an ITX board to use one? It seems it would be well suited for that task too.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
My laptop came with a Core Duo (Yonah) T2300. The CPU is a little weak at times, so I'd like to upgrade to Merom when available. (The requisite BIOS update has been available for a few months now.) Does anyone know when I'll be able to buy one from a reseller such as Newegg?
Traditionally, Intel chip announcements are "no-big-deal", but this is the first one of any significance in the Apple Era since the original iMac/MacBook Pro announcement in January. Traditionally, IBM and Motorola/Freescale only announced a G3/G4/G5 processor whenever Apple was ready to introduce a new model using it - since Apple was the largest PPC system maker, they had some clout in that area.
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.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I do want to try out this "AMD killer" architecture but I'll wait for the dust to settle. Probably wait for Dec/Jan before getting a kit to use in my benchmarks.
... how's that different from Core Duo?
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 looking in the right places. What do they have to hide?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Intel did.
http://www.intel.com/homepage/nav/pix/logo.gif
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
While I doubt anyone's going to have enough ram in a laptop to need 64bit pointers anytime soon, the extra general purpose registers will be nice.
Core 2 Duo ... how's that different from Core Duo?
from gur3d.com
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.
Please subtract $49.99 from the Apple price. I had a carrying case in my cart and did not notice it.
Considering their R&D center for this processor is in Haifa, is this what the Hizbollah are REALLY after? (Or rather - Can it be that the true culprit behind the latest clashing in the middle east is, actually, AMD?) One has to wonder..
AMD Nomenclature is a bit simpler if you include the full title.
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 Duo!" or "Core Duo" or whatever...
The devil is in the details. The trick is to check model numbers against the descriptions on the providers website. So if they say it's and Intel E6300, you should go to the Intel website and look up what E6300 means.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Merom is named after Meron, a town in Israel, where Intel designs and builds some of its mobile processors, such as the Core Duo and (I believe) Pentium M. Other mobile processor codenames include Dothan and Yonah, which are also Israeli. Intel has been active in Israel for a very long time, it was the location of their first overseas fab and they recently invested something like $5 billion in the country. Interestingly enough, Meron is in the Upper Galillee, and currently being shelled by Hezbollah. Two people were killed there on July, 14th by rockets.
I just ordered a Core Duo about 10 minutes ago, sweet! Glad to know its obsolete before it even hits my doorstep :)
..."meecrob" which, according to Cartman, "is way grosser than 'shit', dude."
Yes. After all, it's so difficult from the naming convention to tell that the Solo has one core, and the Duo has two cores. Yes, the naming convention is pretty confusing. With a name like Turion, it's so obvious that it has only one core. (OK, so I'm ignoring the Core 2 Duo name...that one *is* pretty f'ed).
--Be human.
There is an obvious advantage of using a 64 bits system... large files handling. In my case it's the panoramic image stitching that fells free when ran on a 64 bits system.
Home of Faramir Paint Shop Pro scripts
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:
Since power consumption is one of the biggest turn-offs for me on a laptop, specifically that most last 4 hours at full speed, and when I'm off grid it's usually for more than 24 or 48 hours, much too long even for a big bag of kind of expensive batteries, is there a power saving solution that's better than bringing a bunch of batteries for a laptop, a hi-density battery or an extremely low power usage laptop? One solution is a 12vdc - 120vac inverter on an engine...does anyone have a little gas, propane, or other powered engine that could power a laptop, and is small enough to carry around, either inside the laptop or in a bag with one? Or are laptops mostly for desktop/travel on-grid use, and plugged in, in which case it would make sense to eliminate the power efficiency of laptops and simply use them as portable desktops...
AFAIK the tenative name for dual-core Turions is TurionX2 (but don't quote me on that...). I think Turion vs. TurionX2 is pretty easy to distinguish. Just like AMD64 and AMDX2 are easy to tell apart.
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
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I've got a friend who's run Gb ethernet in his house - CAT 5e or 6 (I don't remember) and the Gb switch to match. True, he's not the norm but he does have it. He was running wireless and didn't think it was fast enough. The main reason he sited was because of the file server he has; he's using the network drive mounted locally for development.
Oh, and he has Verizon's fiber to the house so his downstream speed is about 15Mb/sec. Not gigabit, but still fast.
There's your Gb ethernet home user. :)
"There is no spoon." - Neo
"Spoooon!" - The Tick
I stopped reading it 1/3rd the way down becuase of the level of technical bullshit, plus the huge amount of unwarranted editoralizing.
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.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Wikipedia agrees with you
I'd like to have a Turion 64 X2 laptop, but I don't know where to buy one where I live :-(
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Step 1. Overcome Intel Monopoly
Step 2. ???
Step 3. AMD Laptop.
Your best bet is to try pinging Acer, Asus and Fujitsu. Failing that HP.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I already looked at Acer.nl (serves BeNeLux... it's the "Lux" part where I live and it's a bitch to get new tech here) I'll check out the others. It's not for today anyway. My father in law wants a new company website, and I'm writing it for him. Thing is that I have no VAT number and we agreed that he'd simply buy me a laptop for the effort. He'll just have to cough up for the Turion X2 that I can find ;-)
As for "Overcome Intel Monopoly": I have 4 Intel machines left: the server at my parents (P-III 800Mhz/768Meg), my old laptop (P-III 600Mhz Mobile/512Meg), my dads laptop (P-III 733MHz/256Meg) and my wifes computer (P-IV 2.6HT/2Gig RAM). I have 3 AMD64 machines (two 2800+, and one 3400+), 1 Athlon XP 2800+ machine and 1 Athlon MP 2400+ (two CPUs of course). Considering that the Intel machines are all well over 3 years old, and my AMD machines are much newer (only the MP is over 3 years old), I'm pretty much switched to AMD completely. Of course, if Intel keeps on kicking AMDs butt, I might make the switch back ;-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I have a Intel Core Solo Mac Mini. I know I can change my 1.5GHz core solo processor for a Core Duo Yonah, like 2.16GHz. And there are some sites over the internet telling they could change their 1.66 Core Duo Mac Mini processor for a Core 2 Duo Meron. My question is: Will I be able to change my core solo 1.5 GHz for one of these Core 2 Duo Meron?
"Apple sold 529,000 desktops during the quarter and 798,000 notebooks."
I wonder if Apple will ever bring another really innovative computer to market? It hasn't done so since the Apple II and the orignal Mac lines of PCs. Apple's customer base seems to be the technically challenged artsy-fartsy crowd and people wanting to look hip. There is a reason Apple has never been the market leader with PCs, even back in the Apple II days when it had some chance of doing so. IBM was smart. It went with a non-proprietary, open standard, so everyone was encouraged to not only grab a slice of the pie, but to make the pie larger.
Apple is well advised to stick to selling MP3 players to iPodiots...the losers who will buy crap if it has an Apple logo on it.
"You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens." -- Angelina Jolie
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 something else ;)
I also don't see what the fuss is about dual cores anyway -- we've had multiproc machines for ages, and the possibilities/challenges of using them are unchanged now that we're putting multiple processors on the same chip (Except for cache and memory access issues, though, but it's a minor detail IMHO). Of course, if multicores are the only way of getting multiproc machines mainstream, that's great, but let's not pretend multicores are somehow revolutionary.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
And Merom works in Yonah Dells.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I wonder if Apple will ever bring another really innovative computer to market? It hasn't done so since the Apple II and the orignal Mac lines of PCs.
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 specific items. But in terms of innovation, it's hard to argue that any other platform has brought as much to the table as the Mac has over the years, from the original Mac to the Mac ][ to the various software innovations in the 90's, and through to the iMacs, they've always provided a lot of utility and forward-thinking for the money. I'm kind of of the opinion that Linux is only "free" if your time is worthless, and a Windows install is reasonable to start out with (as long as you don't want to do any of the things in the software packages the Mac ships with) but tends to get "bit rot" awfully fast. The Macs tend to stay clean and usable throughout their life. Obviously if you can't afford them that's certainly unfortunate, but you can't really argue Apple isn't innovative.
And my iPod works great, too.
You've obviously got some strange emotional feelings against what is, after all, just a company with some good products.
E pluribus unum
bzzzzzt! Wrongo bongo! It may have happened that way in a fractal zone far, far away, but it sure as heck did not happen like that on this third rock from the sun. If you wish to get it right, better check your history books baby! But if you were just bashing Apple, then carry on!
:-)
Hmmm. I think the success of the original Compaq luggable IBM clone pretty much proves my point.
IBM's standards for the PC were open enough that clone makers eventually drove IBM out of the PC hardware market. The Compaq machine I am thinking of was about the size of a small suitcase or sewing machine case and weighed in at about 28 lbs unless you added things like a whopping big 5MB removable cartridge drive and a full-length memory expansion card to bump up the memory to a full 640K of memory (1MB of RAM was maximum, but the last 384KB was useful only as RAMdrive or for some quirky system utilities). My early Compaq luggable went through many upgrades, but they were usually very straightforward as far as hardware went, because Compaq quickly got a reputation for making PC clones that were more IBM compatible than IBM PCs.
BTW, I can't really bash Apple for taking advantage of fools who buy anything the company sells because they want to feel hip or superior, despite the fact that Apple's main claim to fame is selling tech gear that even drooling idiots (and the artsy-fartsy crowd) think they can figure out.
The sad thing is that the Motorola 68000 series chips that the Mac platform was based on were technically superior to the Intel line of chips that IBM chose to base its PC platform on. The 8088 that was in the original PCs is actually a crippled version of the 8086, but IBM chose the former chip because there was a lot of COTS technology that would work with the 8088's one byte wide data path and the price of the initial base systems was in the $3+K range for any useful configuration -- a 16-bit data path would have greatly improved performance but made the machines way to expensive. If IBM had chosen the Motorola architecture, I suspect microcomputer technology would be at least two or three years more advanced than it actually is. But you really don't want me to get started on the advantages of elegant, orthogonal instruction sets.
I suspect Apple's success with the iPod will not last for even a decade. Macs had some unique redeeming features and functionality over PCs for many years and there are still some industries (publishing for example) where they are still competitive because they run industry specific software between than other platforms will. Those niche markets have almost all dried up, however. There is absolutely nothing special about the iPod as far as technology goes, and while it is cute from a design perspective, it isn't really much better than the less expensive non-proprietary MP3 players that are flooding the market. Apple's penchant for propriety gear is one of the main reasons the Mac never became a major threat to the Wintel side of the business. Once more people rub the noses of iPodiots in the fact that they are paying too much for mundane technology, I suspect that Microsoft, SANdisk, Toshiba, and many others will cause the Apple iPod to fade into relative obscurity along with the Macintosh computer. Reality yhas a way of setting in...
"You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens." -- Angelina Jolie
Above, I say: "All of the things that can be qualitatively measured have been accounted for." It should read: "All of the things that can be quantitatively measured have been accounted for."