Intel talks up next-generation chips

Intel expects its forthcoming Conroe and Merom chips to deliver a performance advantage of at least 20 percent over chips from AMD that are slated to be released at the same time.Merom and Conroe are expected to launch for notebooks and desktops, respectively, in the second half of this year.

The awkwardly titled Next-Generation Micro-Architecture is yet to receive a catchy name like Netburst, the Pentium 4 architecture it is replacing. Intel has already disclosed a few details about NGMA. It uses 14 pipeline stages instead of the 31 used by Intel's Pentium 4 processors. Information is processed through a processor's pipeline. The more stages in the pipeline, the less work each individual stage performs, requiring the chip to run very fast and therefore very hot. Intel has moved away from that design strategy in favour of smaller pipelines that do more work per stage, and can therefore run at slower clock speeds.

The microarchitecture also allows the processor to issue four instructions per clock, rather than three, as on Intel's current chips. It uses advanced branch prediction technology borrowed from the Pentium 4 designs. And chips built on that microarchitecture will also share the unified cache introduced with the Core Duo processor.Chips built with NGMA will use 4MB of cache memory.Unifying the caches on a dual-core processor improves performance by expanding the amount of cache each core can make use of, which will produce a huge improvement on single-threaded applications that only use a single core, he said.The combination of all those architectural changes will allow Intel to outperform AMD's planned offerings for the second half of 2006 without having to resort to adopting AMD's integrated memory controller design.

Intel has been hesitant to embrace the integrated memory controller since the failure of its last attempt to use such a design. Integrating the memory controller allows that vital gateway between the CPU and the memory to run at the speed of the processor, whisking data into the processor at high speed. But it also forces the processor to be designed specifically for a certain type of memory, which doomed Intel's Timna processor when its integrated memory controller was designed for Rambus' short-lived RDRAM standard.Instead, Intel will count on its microarchitectural improvements and a faster front-side bus to deliver the 20 percent improvement in performance over AMD's chips, based on standard benchmarks.

AMD is not planning any major architectural changes to its processors this year, but it does plan to introduce support for DDR2 memory. That memory standard can reach faster speeds than the current DDR memory used by AMD's chips, which will improve the performance of AMD-based systems.

Apple launches first Intel Macs

Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs on Tuesday served up the first Intel-based Macs, introducing a new high-end laptop and a revamped iMac.

The new machines both include Intel's Duo dual-core chip. The iMac will come in the same sizes and sell for the same prices as the current models, but the Intel chips make it two to three times faster, Jobs said. A new laptop computer, called the MacBook Pro, will be available in February, he said.In addition to the crop of new Macs, Jobs announced a new version of the iLife suite that adds a tool " iWeb" designed to make it easy to create Web sites with video, audio and blogs, and new features meant to simplify the sharing of photos over the Web and the creation of podcasts.

Jobs said Apple would transition to an all-Intel line-up of Macintosh computers by the end of 2006.The release of the new Macs comes just seven months after Jobs shocked the computer world with an announcement that Apple would move to Intel Chips, after years of using the PowerPC hardware made by IBM and Motorola.Jobs said last June that Apple would have computers ready to ship by June of this year. Beating that mark by almost half a year will help ease a transition some feared would result in several quarters of diminished sales.

Once released in February, the MacBook Pro line of laptops will include a £1,429 model running at 1.67GHz and featuring a 15-inch screen. That version will also come with an 80GB hard drive and a new infrared sensor to use with the Apple Remote control device. A second version will feature an 1.83GHz processor and a 100GB hard drive and cost £1,779."The MacBook Pro is the fastest Mac notebook ever, obviously," Jobs said.The company's consumer applications, including iLife, will run natively on the new Intel processors starting immediately, as well as on the Power PC chip. Professional audio, video and photo applications will be updated in March, and customers will be able to buy a "crossgrade," or new version of the existing software.

Most other applications will run smoothly by using the translation software called Rosetta, which will come with every new Intel-based Mac, he said. Microsoft's Office will be one of those applications.Microsoft Mac Business Unit General Manager Roz Ho joined Jobs onstage to say that the software powerhouse is moving ahead to create an Intel-based version of Office. She announced a deal between Apple and Microsoft under which Microsoft will continue creating new versions of Office for Mac for a minimum of five years.

The "commitment should leave no doubt in your mind that we're here to stay, and we're in it for the long term," Ho said.The quick release of the Intel-based products has left some developers, who expected a few more months before release, scrambling to transfer their own applications over to an Intel-compatible version. Code written specifically for that hardware will typically run faster than software written for the PowerPC chips, but using the Rosetta translation software.

Some of the largest developers have already done considerable work, and are nearly ready to release product.Developers are starting to release Intel-based versions of their products too, but they hadn't been warned of the change in the release schedule, Jobs said.

Leaving no doubt that Apple would launch a marketing blitz around the Intel-based machines, Jobs showed off a new advertisement introducing the products. Reminiscent of the "1984" commercial that touted the first Macintosh computer, it painted the new line of products as a liberation for the Intel chip itself.For years, the Intel chip has been "trapped inside PCs — dull little boxes, dutifully performing dull little tasks", the ad says. "Starting today, the Intel chip will be set free, and get to live life inside a Mac."