MacRumors Predicting New Mac Pros Maybe April...

[michael zaletel]

http://www.macrumors.com/2009/02/02/imac-to-come-in-both-dual-core-and-quad-core-configs/

Several MacRumors forum members have been closely tracking all the possible Mac Pro news in lengthy discussion thread in our forums. Forum member Tallest Skil has even organized an extensive (though speculative) summary post of what might be expected in the next Mac Pro.

Readers waiting for the new Mac Pro, however, received a useful tidbit of news last week from Fuzilla.com. According to their report, Intel is expected to finally start selling Nehalem-based Xeon processors on March 29th, 2009. (Though some retailers are already showing them in stock).

These Nehalem Xeon processors are expected to be used in the next generation Mac Pro and should provide substantial performance boosts over existing models. The last we had heard of their release was simply 1st Quarter 2009. These Nehalem Xeon processors have been previously described as "ridiculously fast".

 

[Jonathan Stevenson]

I saw that this morning. So psyched!!!

 

[Kwan Khan]

its expecations that "upcoming Intel 'Nehalem' 8-core processors (and with two enabling a 16-core)" will be used in the new Mac Pro?
humm... Multiple actions of steroid

 

[Adam Glick]

There are no true 8-core intel chips on the roadmap for 2009.

What is being referenced are the "Nehalem" Xeon 5500-series CPUs. These are quadcore CPUs with an updated implementation of "hyperthreading" such as is present on current i7-based single socket systems.

With hyperthreading enabled, each core can effectively process two "threads" -and therefore a quadcore CPU will show up to the OS and applications as an 8-core CPU. With this being a dual-socket platform, the OS and multithreaded applications see the two CPUs as providing 16 cores.

While hyperthreading can improve the performance of applications -especially where "data streaming" processes that can make use of intel's SIMD instruction set- the best gains we've seen in any software application by having hyperthreading enabled is about 35%.

Interestingly enough, the current RED demosaic/decode algorithms don't seem to care about hyperthreading much at all. We get just about the same performance whether it's on or off...

But more to the point of the previous post, these new Xeons are indeed "ridiculously fast".



Adam
BOXXlabs

 

[Peter Aquilina]

A note sent to me by an associate, "A quick warning about the Nehalem proccessor! This is a very fast Chip.... however these chips do not support ECC RAM( Error Correcting RAM) and as a result will not be a reliable system to work on for sustained periods. The system could be creating errors and would not even know this was happening until it crashed. I would be very cautious to run a 24/7 mission critical operation based on this processor and its chipsets".