Intel actively shipping both Merom and Conroe
In the wake of a gloomy earnings forecast, Intel Corp. this week said it has commenced shipments of both Conroe and Merom, its new Core 2 Duo dual-core microprocessors for desktop and notebook systems.
During its earnings report on Wednesday, the world's largest chip maker said it quietly pushed the first shipments of its Core 2 Duo desktop processor out the door last quarter, ahead of its formal launch on July 27.
"The mobile PC version of the Intel Core 2 Duo processor is also shipping now, one month ahead of schedule," the company wrote in a set of presentation slides.
Indeed, a report from overseas this week had suggested that Intel would advance the releases of Merom to coincide with Conroe in late July. Intel has scheduled the official launch for both chips for next Thursday.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company has been taking a financial bruising at hands of rival AMD, which has in turn spurred a price war between the two companies.
Intel on Wednesday said its second quarter profits decreased nearly 57 percent to $885 million amid stiff competition and a shift in consumer demand towards cheaper products. What's worse, the company gave little indication that conditions would improve during the second half of the year.
AMD, which also released quarterly results this week, said net profits rose sharply to $88.8 million, or 18 cents per share, compared to $11.3 million, or 3 cents during the year-ago quarter. But the chip maker's upbeat earnings were similarly clouded by fears that its price war with Intel would soon worsen.
For its part in the battle, Intel appears poised on delivering its latest chip designs to customers at an unprecedented pace. In addition to the early shipments of Conroe and Merom, the company this week also announced that it has bumped the release of its first quad-core desktop and server chips up to the fourth quarter of this year.
Intel hopes the new lines of dual- and quad-core chips will help stem market share gains by AMD and aid its bleeding shares, which have lost about a third of their value in the last 12 months.
Apple Computer, which recently switched its Mac line to Intel chips, is likely to adopt Conroe and Merom Core 2 Duo processors in future revisions of its desktop and notebook computers.
Apple's MacBook Pro notebooks currently employ Intel's Yonah Core Duo processors. Since Merom was designed to be backwards compatible with Yonah platforms, Apple's first move could come in the form of an abrupt boost to its professional laptop line.
During its earnings report on Wednesday, the world's largest chip maker said it quietly pushed the first shipments of its Core 2 Duo desktop processor out the door last quarter, ahead of its formal launch on July 27.
"The mobile PC version of the Intel Core 2 Duo processor is also shipping now, one month ahead of schedule," the company wrote in a set of presentation slides.
Indeed, a report from overseas this week had suggested that Intel would advance the releases of Merom to coincide with Conroe in late July. Intel has scheduled the official launch for both chips for next Thursday.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company has been taking a financial bruising at hands of rival AMD, which has in turn spurred a price war between the two companies.
Intel on Wednesday said its second quarter profits decreased nearly 57 percent to $885 million amid stiff competition and a shift in consumer demand towards cheaper products. What's worse, the company gave little indication that conditions would improve during the second half of the year.
AMD, which also released quarterly results this week, said net profits rose sharply to $88.8 million, or 18 cents per share, compared to $11.3 million, or 3 cents during the year-ago quarter. But the chip maker's upbeat earnings were similarly clouded by fears that its price war with Intel would soon worsen.
For its part in the battle, Intel appears poised on delivering its latest chip designs to customers at an unprecedented pace. In addition to the early shipments of Conroe and Merom, the company this week also announced that it has bumped the release of its first quad-core desktop and server chips up to the fourth quarter of this year.
Intel hopes the new lines of dual- and quad-core chips will help stem market share gains by AMD and aid its bleeding shares, which have lost about a third of their value in the last 12 months.
Apple Computer, which recently switched its Mac line to Intel chips, is likely to adopt Conroe and Merom Core 2 Duo processors in future revisions of its desktop and notebook computers.
Apple's MacBook Pro notebooks currently employ Intel's Yonah Core Duo processors. Since Merom was designed to be backwards compatible with Yonah platforms, Apple's first move could come in the form of an abrupt boost to its professional laptop line.
Comments
Originally posted by AppleInsider
Since Merom was designed to be backwards compatible with Yonah platforms, Apple's first move could come in the form of an abrupt boost to its professional laptop line.
[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
Mmmm mmm mmm! You said it!
As for Intel's shares ... gotta love it when the market sees the transition from shitty Netburst to supreme Core as a negative. That'll be the price war I suppose. But there will be a tidy sum for Intel to make in the next year or two, fighting back up to total dominance again. A mighty surge Apple is wise to ride.
Originally posted by fuyutsuki
Mmmm mmm mmm! You said it!
As for Intel's shares ... gotta love it when the market sees the transition from shitty Netburst to supreme Core as a negative. That'll be the price war I suppose. But there will be a tidy sum for Intel to make in the next year or two, fighting back up to total dominance again. A mighty surge Apple is wise to ride.
Steve: "Oh, and one more thing... for the last five years, just in case things didn't work out between Apple and Intel, we developed a version of OSX that runs on AMD chips"...
And in a related story---
"AMD seen close to $5.5 billion chip deal
Source says Applied Micro Devices could announce deal with #2 Canadian chipmaker as early as Monday."
http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/21/tech...reut/index.htm
Do you think they will just push Yonah down to the Mini and eMac? This would make sense.
Originally posted by furious_
Do you think they will just push Yonah down to the Mini
All minis have Yonah.
and eMac?
The eMac is dead. As for the iMac for education, I don't think they'll leave Yonah in there.
Just what I've been waiting for. 64 bit and virtualization on-board in dual core form factors. Yes indeeeeed.
Now all we need is VMWare to complete their port to OSX/Intel (to give Parallels some competition) and it will be all good in the hood.
Having machines with more ram and virtualization will be a real boon to anyone who does software development. The more capacity for RAM the better, as one will be able to use Virtualization to get rid of additional boxes for testing, as well as test across multiple OS platforms and configurations in seconds.
Now we need the GPU manufacturers to get on board and support virtualization of the Video Card, to have full driver support across VM instances.
I'm glad I have not bought an Intel OSX box yet. These are going to be sweet!
Originally posted by furious_
Something that scares me about apple is . . . they do not have a budget line to rid themselves of excess stock, of Yonah chips if they wanted to use Merom, and Conroe. Dell has the dimension 1000 series and small business line.
Do you think they will just push Yonah down to the Mini and eMac? This would make sense.
I think Apple stops ordering the slower chips, then lets them run out while switching to a faster processor in its products. Dell also operates in very much a just in time basis keeping no more than a week or two's worth of processors on hand.
Originally posted by MacCentric
I think Apple stops ordering the slower chips, then lets them run out while switching to a faster processor in its products. Dell also operates in very much a just in time basis keeping no more than a week or two's worth of processors on hand.
Yeah, the Mini is widely expected to stay Yonah for a bit and the Edu-iMac may well suffer the same fate since Merom and Yonah are perfectly compatible. No problems really for Apple here. Though if they use Yonah to differentiate the MacBook from the sure fire cert Merom MacBook Pro, then a few of us will be pissed off.
Oh, I just read this "reliable source" on the dive in Intel shares:
Originally posted by Steve Jobs
The whole Wintel ecosystem is getting blowed up. Dell had to warn the Street this morning. Intel is getting hammered. And everyone knows this is Microsoft's fault for screwing the pooch on Vista. Apparently Michael Smell himself called Billy Boy last night and chewed his ass but good. And you know what? You think this is bad? Q3 and Q4 are gonna look like downtown Beirut compared to this. These morons have nothing to sell.
http://secretdiaryofstevejobs.blogsp...called-me.html
The funny thing is I quite agree with this mock commentary!
Originally posted by fuyutsuki
Yeah, the Mini is widely expected to stay Yonah for a bit and the Edu-iMac may well suffer the same fate since Merom and Yonah are perfectly compatible. No problems really for Apple here. Though if they use Yonah to differentiate the MacBook from the sure fire cert Merom MacBook Pro, then a few of us will be pissed off.
The funny thing is I quite agree with this mock commentary!
I haven't seen any benchmarks, but is Merom supposed to run cooler than Yonah? If so I definitely think they'd switch the Macbooks as well as the pros to Merom to deal with some of the heat issues.
On another note, I'm really hoping that WWDC will have an update of both the Mac Pro and the Macbook Pro - given that it's a PRO event!
-Kerrum
Originally posted by pak150
I haven't seen any benchmarks, but is Merom supposed to run cooler than Yonah? If so I definitely think they'd switch the Macbooks as well as the pros to Merom to deal with some of the heat issues.
On another note, I'm really hoping that WWDC will have an update of both the Mac Pro and the Macbook Pro - given that it's a PRO event!
Indeed. I hear Merom is lower watts and higher performance all wrapped up in one - not to mention 64 bit - so I hope to see it in as many Macs as possible. Intel themselves expect it to be the dominant laptop processor for 2007 and early adopters as soon as next week!
Conroe will make sense in the iMac, and anything else Apple want to move that doesn't need Woodcrest punch or Merom cool. New models? Well ... we'll see.
Originally posted by Chucker
As for the iMac for education, I don't think they'll leave Yonah in there.
I hope they keep yonah in the mini, edu iMac and Macbook and drop the prices. The core duo is a fine chip for these entry level machines.
But now little Yonah has surpassed itself powering the iMac, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini and MacBook ... I'm turned around on the subject. This is the best move since OS X. This is the way to true competition to the Windows platform. Or at least, this is the way to some fantastic new Macs ... often sooner than we expect them!
I liked the G4 and loved the G5. They were great chips in their day, a real step up from the AMD's I'd been using before. But the time has come for something better, something 64 bit and every piece the step forward from the mighty G5 which prove impossible to use in a notebook. Something which we'll be using in enhanced forms for the length of this CPU generation, which goes by the name of:
Alright, they can keep the sticker off my machine! But it's looking one hell of a chip. 3GHz Woodcrest Mac Pro on August 7th and more to come, bring it on!
(Disclaimer: I am not employed or affiliated to Intel, but yeah if they'd like to buy me a Merom MacBook, well I'm not going to argue with them!)
Originally posted by Chucker
All minis have Yonah.
The eMac is dead. As for the iMac for education, I don't think they'll leave Yonah in there.
ok i will clarify it for you what i ment: faster Yonah's in the mini's and eMac(iMac for education)
Originally posted by planetWC
I'm glad I have not bought an Intel OSX box yet. These are going to be sweet!
Believe me, the current ones are very sweet. And next year's will be even sweeter. That's the great thing about buying chips from suppliers who can keep up with the technology curve.
Originally posted by SpamSandwich
And in a related story---
"AMD seen close to $5.5 billion chip deal
Source says Applied Micro Devices could announce deal with #2 Canadian chipmaker as early as Monday."
http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/21/tech...reut/index.htm
AMD + ATI
Oh yeah. I heard about that story a while ago. Either it's off or they're taking their time to tie the knot.
Ars sum up why it could be a great move for AMD and ATI, who each face problems from the current strength of their rivals Intel and nVidia:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/amd-ati.ars
If they do merge, it will have implications for Apple. We could end up on Intel and nVidia graphics alone for instance. Although a good deal for AMD and ATI, who both have assets the other needs, it could ultimately spell more lock-in for the industry. Instead of a choice between AMD and Intel processors and a separate choice of graphics, we could end up with two rival architectures essentially locked out from Intel+ATI and AMD+nVidia options. It depends on how Machiavellian Intel and AMD are prepared to be! Expect it to be big news if the deal happens.
Originally posted by fuyutsuki
Indeed. I hear Merom is lower watts and higher performance all wrapped up in one -
You heard somewhat wrong. Merom will do more for less power, but merom has a few more watts on the max power rating, something like 34W vs. Yonah's 31W. The data sheets aren't up yet, but I don't expect the idle power consumption to go down, though maybe average power might go down if the load doesn't just peak out like some OS X networking software waiting for a server response, the most notable example is iTunes, when it updates podcasts.
Originally posted by JeffDM
You heard somewhat wrong. Merom will do more for less power, but merom has a few more watts on the max power rating, something like 34W vs. Yonah's 31W. The data sheets aren't up yet, but I don't expect the idle power consumption to go down, though maybe average powor might go down.
Yeah, the specifics are few and far between at the moment. More watts here, less watts there, guess we'll know for sure on release day. It's certainly not substantially hotter than Yonah, while it will be a faster performer and of course 64 bit at last.
Anticipating the in depth reviews...
Originally posted by JeffDM
You heard somewhat wrong. Merom will do more for less power, but merom has a few more watts on the max power rating, something like 34W vs. Yonah's 31W. The data sheets aren't up yet, but I don't expect the idle power consumption to go down, though maybe average power might go down if the load doesn't just peak out like some OS X networking software waiting for a server response, the most notable example is iTunes, when it updates podcasts.
Wikipedia lists Merom as 35W and Yonah as 31W.