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Intel Santa Rosa chips destined for MacBooks

It's inevitable. Now that Apple's hitched it's wagon to the Intel star, the processor road map is pretty much set in stone.
Written by Jason D. O'Grady, Contributor
Intel Centrino Pro
It's inevitable. Now that Apple's hitched it's wagon to the Intel star, the processor road map is pretty much set in stone. The switch to Intel was exciting news for Apple portable users because they're known for their powerful mobile chips. In fact, it was the lack of fast and cool mobile PowerPC chips that forced Apple's hand. 

Yesterday Intel announced their new "Santa Rosa" Centrino notebook platform, the successor the zippy Core 2 Duo processors found in Apple's current portable iron. The new chips promise a host of upgrades that will get mobile technologists blood pumping, including improved graphics, better wireless (with support for the draft version of 802.11n wireless networking), better battery life and a Turbo Memory feature that supplements the standard hard drive with NAND flash for faster booting.

Hybrid Hard Drives (HHDs), with both conventional spinning platter and NAND flash memory, are available now and are supported by Microsoft's Vista. I'm betting that HHD and SSD support are two of Mac OS 10.5's "top secret" features. This combined with the new Santa Rosa chips will make the third-generation MacBooks the fastest booting machines on the planet. A feature that Apple will market very heavily.

The following chips seem to be earmarked to land in the 3G MacBook Pro:

  • T7700, 2.40GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 800MHz Front Side Bus   
  • T7500, 2.20GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 800MHz Front Side Bus   
  • T7300, 2.00GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 800MHz Front Side Bus   
  • T7100, 1.83GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 800MHz Front Side Bus

The Santa Rosa chips are also known inside Intel as the Mobile 965 chipset but they'll be marketed as the Intel Centrino Pro, which will land in the MacBook Pro and the Intel Centrino Duo which is destined for the MacBook. 

Another interesting facet of the new Centrino Pro chips is pointed out by IDG's Ben Ames:

In an appeal to corporate buyers, Intel also launched a business version of Santa Rosa called Centrino Pro, which borrows many of the automated security and IT management features from Intel's vPro business desktop platform. That will allow corporate system administrators to repair and protect employees' notebooks remotely, inspecting faulty PCs or adding software patches over wireless links.

Could "automated security and IT management features" be another Leopard trick up Steve's sleeve? 

When the new chips will arrive is up for debate. Rumors point to June's WWDC as a possibility for the new Santa Rosa MacBook Pro (with LED backlighting), presumably with the MacBook to follow some time after that. Core 2 Duos hit PC notebooks began shipping in July/August 2006, but Apple's MacBook Pros only got them in late October. I just hope that we don't have to wait nearly three months for Centrino Pro.

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