Lastof wrote:
It's got the "Core Duo" right now, which, despite Intels clever trick with branding, isn't actually a chip with it's new Core archetecture. For that we'll have to wait for Merom, as some others said. It's scedualed for August I believe, and, Apple will certainly be one of the first out the door with it, probabaly be upgrading the MBP's stats, because, well, if they don't keep their products cutting edge, the number of reasons for the average consumer to buy them drops sharply, and they are still at the stage that intel will do anything to keep them happy to ensure that they don't decide that switching to intel was a bad idea, and decide to switch to AMD.
There, said my bit. But definatly wait for Merom.
Errr... "Core Duo" is a new core architecture (codename Yonah) and is a 2nd generation "Pentium M" (1st generation was Banias followed with die-shrink Dothan).
Yonah was ahead as it was a strictly 32bit CPU, where as the "Core" desktop and server replacements would have require 64bit-ness. Those will come by the way of Conroe (desktop), WoodCrest (Xeon's for workstations and DP servers).
The laptop versions of the 64bit CPUs is Merom, however it's general design (14 stage pipeline, shared L2, etc) is the same as Yonah. There is also a Xeon based on Yonah, called Sossaman, which is marketed as Xeon LV... which does have VT, but is only 32bit.
As for "Intel needing to keep Apple happy"... please step away from the Reality Distortion Field™. Apple is small fry in the commodity PC world and the real reason they chose over AMD is that Intel are able to build extremely good
chipset platforms for their CPUs, something that AMD still has little concept of. Apple were able to officially announce Core Duo based products a few weeks earlier than the rest, though actual time to market was more or less the same.
