New Intel Chips Point To Exciting New Apple Laptop Era
by Charles W. Moore
I don’t know about you, but the torrent of announcements about Intel’s next generation of CPU chips for portable computers is making me a whole lot more excited about the next generation of Apple PowerBooks and iBooks that will be launched next year.
Any lingering doubts I might have had about whether the switch to Intel from Power PC is a good idea are quickly withering away. Frankly, there is no way that Freescale and IBM were going to come anywhere near matching the concentrated engineering effort Intel is devoting to development of new chips that are both powerful, and more importantly in the case of portable computers -- feature low power consumption and heat generating characteristics.
For example, macsimumnews.com’s Dennis Sellers reported last week that IDT (Integrated Device Technology has introduced new notebook clock devices that purportedly reduce power consumption by up to half that of previous generation products.
“The new low-power PC clock devices support Intel Centrino mobile technology-based laptops, which are built upon the Intel ‘Napa’ platform and will also support Intel’s next-generation computing architecture. Since Macs are moving to Intel chips, it seems likely that future Apple laptops will utilize the IDT technology. And power consumption in portables has been one of the company’s biggest concerns.”
You can read Dennis’s full report here.
CNET News.com’s Michael Kanellos reported that Intel’s road maps for 2006 and 2007 at its Intel Developer Forum last week revolved around reducing power consumption. For instance, “Merom, a notebook chip coming in the second half of 2006, will consume a maximum of 5 watts of power, while an ultra-low-voltage version of the chip coming at the end of that year will consume 0.5 watt. Current Pentium M chips for notebooks consume a maximum of about 22 watts, while ultra-low-voltage Pentium Ms on the market today consume 5.5 watts...... Yonah, a new notebook chip, will appear in the first part of 2006, before Merom.”
For the full report visit here.
You can find more technical discussion of Merom here:
http://www.laptoplogic.com/news/08/24/2005/447/0/
Current versions of the G4 7447 chips used in Apple laptops consume about 14-20 watts.
Speaking of Yonah, IDG News Service’s Tom Krazit reports that “Intel Corp.’s dual-core mobile processor for the first quarter of 2006, is every bit as revolutionary as the single-core Pentium M processor that changed the way Intel designed its chips, company executives said Tuesday at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF).
“Yonah is not just two Pentium M cores slapped together on the same silicon die, said Ronny Korner, head of presilicon validation for mobile platforms at Intel. The separate cores are based on the Pentium M, but they work very closely together to save power and improve performance by sharing data and monitoring the workload on each core....
“Yonah will consume as much power as its single-core predecessor as a result of this and other power-saving features built into the chip..... despite the fact that Yonah contains two processor cores and millions of additional transistors.....”
For the full report visit here:
http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/08/24/yonah/index.php
And on another front, The Register’s Tony Smith reports that Intel in a co-development alliance with Matsushita’s Panasonic is working on an 8-12-hour laptop battery.
Information Week notes that the collaboration would leverage Intel’s low- power consumption technology for notebook PCs with Matsushita’s lithium-ion battery technology, and that Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. has already developed a notebook PC for the Japanese market offering seven to 12 hours of battery life. For the full report visit here.
http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=170100061
I hasten to add that it’s not that I think the engineers at Freescale and IBM are incapable of designing Power PC chips that could compete performance-wise with entails new models, but with Apple representing just three percent and two percent of the two Power PC makers’ sales respectively, the motivation and business rationale just wasn’t there to do it. Intel’s laptop chip development costs can be amortized over vast numbers of sales to PC laptop makers. With PowerPC, Apple was the only mass market customer for desktop and laptop computer CPU chips.
Now, coincidentally or not, Apple is poised to benefit from Intel’s revolution in laptop processors. These developments were of course in the works before Apple came on board, and indeed were probably one of the strongest factors in convincing Apple to go Intel, but the timing could hardly have been more appropriate.
Indeed, these latest announcements are inspiring me to rethink my own upgrade road map. Prior to the Apple-Intel announcement, I was already ruminating on what I would do about replacing my two and a half year old G3 iBook as my number one production machine. I figured I would have to go with one more new PowerPC ‘Book to tide me through the transition era, and I may still stick with that plan, but I’m beginning to have second or third thoughts.
Even if Apple had stuck with PowerPC, old Freescale (Motorola) PPC 7447 G4 chips used in current iBooks and PowerBooks are getting pretty long in the tooth. I usually upgrade my system every two and a half to three years, and if I bought a new ‘Book in December (for tax reasons), that would put me into 2008 for my next system upgrade after that. I imagine that by 2008, a 7447 G4 is going to seem positively prehistoric, and will have long since being left behind by a lot of exciting new software developments. (And yes, I’m aware that Apple announced last week that they have secured supply of PowerPC processors from Freescale through December, 2008, but that is presumably a hedge against unforeseen circumstances and/or to ensure availablity of chips for warranty service).
Consequently, I’m beginning to think that one last kick at PowerPC old school might not be the wisest strategy for me. The counter-argument is of course that from a software perspective, and sticking with PowerPC for a another year or two will be less traumatic, especially for someone like myself who still has a toe or two immersed in OS 9 Classic waters, so to speak. So there’s no clear slam dunk answer to this conundrum.
Meanwhile, as I continue to ponder the options, OS 10.4 Tiger is running great on both the iBook and my G4 upgraded Pismo PowerBook. The only compatibility roadblock that I’ve encountered so far is that there are some cool graphics editing applications out that I’d like to try, but which require Core Image support, and the old, non-programmable graphics processing units in the iBook and Pismo with their 16 MB and 8 MB of non-upgradable video RAM respectively just don’t have the hardware power to run them. That’s not a super big deal in practical terms, but it does portend a dynamic that will broaden considerably once the Intel beasties are released.
Plan B, then, would be to soldier on with my two current ‘Books, perhaps until this time next year provided the hardware remains reliable, and there’s no indication that it won’t. I would like to wait a few months at least after the first Intel ‘Books are launched to see if any major difficulties crop up. I have a strong philosophical resistance to buying version 1.0 of anything major.
A potential via media would be to buy a more powerful G4 ‘Book used as a transitional machine — something with a graphics processor that fully supports Core Image and with a clock speed of more than 1 GHz. I’m quite smitten with the 12-inch PowerBook, and 1GHz examples are selling used recently for under $850, although the 1.33 GHz model would be my preferred pick. However, with the 1.33 GHz ‘Book selling new for $999 with 512 MB of RAM, a Core Image supporting Radeon 9550 GPO, and most of the PowerBook-style bells and whistles, it is really a more sensible option than a used PowerBook in many respects, so we’re back to square one.
Timing system upgrades is always a roll of the dice to some degree, but current circumstances have made the game a lot more challenging (and potentially rewarding).