Merom in MacBook and MacBook Pros in September?

Kevin C. Tofel writes "If you want to see where the computer industry is going, you often have to watch the computer component manufacturers, and that's just what DigiTimes did. AsusTek and Quanta both produce Apple notebooks and sources appear to have just revealed that September is the month for 64-bit Merom CPUs in the MacBook and MacBook Pro line."

Comments

What is the deal with 64 bit?

[abscissa]

I must be particularly dense. I have had an AMD 64 bit desktop computer for 2 years now and I have yet to take advantage of the 64 bit features. 64-bit Windows wants fancy new drivers (none of which exist, of course) and even MS software (E.g. producer) doesn't work on it.

So I got a Macbook pro in ... June? Will I miss out big time on 64 bit computing?

Re:What is the deal with 64 bit?

[richdun]

Maybe. OS X 10.4 (Tiger) was the first version of OS X to support 64-bit, and some apps use it, but the Intel switch happened too soon for many to start using it (since the first Intel processors were only 32-bit, leaving the iMac G5 and PowerMac G5 the only 64-bit capable Macs before the Mac Pro). Leopard (OS X 10.5) will definitely use more 64-bit stuff, as the new Cocoa/Carbon libraries will be in 64-bit with native 64 and 32-bit support. At a minimum, I'd expect Apple to convert a lot of the pro and iLife apps to 64-bit, as they tend to use their own technologies pretty quickly (for obvious reasons).

So for Windows, 64-bit may not be a big deal, but for OS X, there should be more support very soon.

Re:What is the deal with 64 bit?

[necro81]

You make a valid point that 64-bit computing isn't very useful if the software can't take advantage of it. Sure, you can get larger memory addressing, but there aren't that many machines where 32-bit's 2GB limit has come into play.

The difference here is that Apple has been producing 64-bit software for a while. After all, the G5 processor is 64-bit, and that's been in Apple's line since summer '03. Leopard, when it comes out next year, will supposedly do a particularly good job of allowing 32- and 64-bit applications to coexist and execute at the best levels possible. I recall hearing that Apple has been reworking it's software suites to take better advantage fo 64-bit computing (rather than just recompiling to work as 32-bit applications on a 64-bit machine). So, whereas your AMD machine has barely begun to take advantage of 64-bit capabilities, the Merom-based Apple's will do so from day one.

I don't think you'll 'miss out,' because the improvement may not be apparent for some time.

Re:What is the deal with 64 bit?

[Moofie]

Right, because nobody's ever been bitten in the ass by that kind of thinking before.

Re:What is the deal with 64 bit?

[PayPaI]

When Vista comes out?

Re:What is the deal with 64 bit?

[alcmaeon]

Is your shift key broken or are you trying to write some bizzare kind of modern poetry?

Re:What is the deal with 64 bit?

[Overly Critical Guy]

OS X Leopard will be fully 64-bit, and unlike Windows Vista, will seamlessly support 32-bit device drivers and applications, so going full 64-bit will be as simple as buying a 64-bit Mac.

That said, your implication is correct that 64-bit really isn't as big a deal as it was hyped to be by the likes of AMD (who teamed with CryTek to put out that awful 64-bit version of Far Cry with the higher-resolution textures to trick gamers into thinking having a 64-bit address space had something to do with that and not their GPU). XCode 2.4 supports four-architecture Universal Binaries anyway, so you'll have 32-bit/64-bit PPC/Intel applications. You shouldn't worry about missing out on anything

Besides, getting a Core 2 Duo system now would be silly when you can wait until first quarter of 2007 when Intel's Santa Rosa chipset comes out, replacing the Napa chipset used by the Core Duo. It'll have an 800Mhz bus speed upgrade that will really let the Core 2 take advantage of its power as well as ship with a new WLAN 802.11n chipset.

I have an Intel iMac and an Intel MacBook, but I'm quite happy and waiting for next year's Macs before even thinking of heading to eBay. There's always something better around the corner, especially with Apple.

Re:What is the deal with 64 bit?

[eturro]

Sure, you can get larger memory addressing, but there aren't that many machines where 32-bit's 2GB limit has come into play.

2^32 bits = 4GB, not 2GB.

Re:What is the deal with 64 bit?

[LWATCDR]

There is a big difference between 64 bit on the X86 and 64-bit on the PPC.
To start off with the X86 architecture really does suck. It is register starved and the instruction set is miserable. It is a pig but because Intel and AMD have such a huge potential market they have thrown enough time , talent, and money to make it a very fast and cheap pig.
The PPC didn't gain a whole lot from going to 64 bit. If a program didn't need to do 64 bit math or a 64 bit address space then it would run as fast of faster as a 32 program. BTW this is a good thing. It means that the PPC was broken to start with and didn't force programs to use 64 bit pointers if they didn't need to.
When AMD created the Athlon 64 it fixed one of the X86s worst problems. AMD doubled the number of registers. Even if a program doesn't do 64 bit math or doesn't need more than four gigabytes of memory that will run 30% to 60% faster when compiled for 64 bit than 32 bit.

Digitimes is not a good predictor.

[hlimethe3rd]

Digitimes is not a good site for this kind of thing. Historically, they've been very poor with these kinds of predictions. I'm not going to find any examples right now, but searching the archives of macrumors.com or some similar site will turn out many.

TRFA

[Anonymous Coward]

The Real Fabulous Article, instead of the submitters lame-ass ad page.

Re:yay!

[IDontAgreeWithYou]

...I'm officially declaring Spring 2007 "but a new labtop" season.

Not to be a grammar nazi or a spelling nazi or both, but only on /. could a statement such as this be "interesting"

Re:dust + settle

[Overly Critical Guy]

Core Duo is a great chip. If you're kicking yourself over getting an Intel Mac, don't. This year's Core 2 Duo Macs would be made obsolete next year anyway, when Intel's Santa Rosa platform is released. See here. The summary is that Santa Rosa has a faster FSB, DirectX 10-level graphics, 802.11n, and more, and is designed for the Core 2. The Core 2s being released this year are just an "initial version" put out there to meet the holiday buying cycle, which is why they're socket-compatible with the Core 1. The real Core 2 platform is coming next year.

Quote from the press release:

The next generation of Intel Centrino mobile technology, codenamed Santa Rosa and detailed for the first time in Maloney's keynote, is designed to give users better overall performance and graphics, improved wireless connectivity and improved security and manageability. Santa Rosa is expected to include a more powerful mobile microprocessor, an improved graphics chipset, codenamed Crestline, an IEEE* 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter, codenamed Kedron, as well as Intel-optimized advanced management and security solutions. The platform will also include Intel's NAND flash-based platform accelerator, codenamed Robson, which enables much more rapid boot-up time and power savings. Santa Rosa, available in the first half of 2007, will use Intel's next-generation dual-core mobile microprocessor based on Intel's Core(TM) microarchitecture, codenamed Merom, Intel's new foundation for delivering even greater energy-efficient performance. An initial version of Merom will also be available for the current Intel Centrino Duo platform to align with the 2006 holiday buying cycle and will be socket or pin-compatible with the current version of Intel® Core(TM) Duo processors.

Re:dust + settle

[Anonymous Coward]

Core Duo is a great chip. If you're kicking yourself over getting an Intel Mac, don't. This year's Core 2 Duo Macs would be made obsolete next year anyway,

This is such complete bullshit. At least when I was buying a PowerPC based Mac I could know that there would be 4-5 years between PowerPC generations, but now with this Intel crap my computer is obsolete the minute it rolls off the assembly line. Bring back the PowerPC!!!