The Apple community's been waiting for this. It's been rumored that an eight-core Mac Pro is in the works, now it's a rumor no more. The Apple 8-core Mac Pro is finally here.

Back when the 8-core Mac Pro was still a rumor, it was said that it was going to be released later this year, possibly November. It was released earlier than everyone expected. This newly launched Mac Pro is the world's first 3.0 GHz, 8-core Intel Xeon-based Mac Pro. We can't help but get swayed by the tagline on the Apple site: "Consider the bar officially raised."

Mac Pro 8-core boasts advanced performance on workstation graphics, and "unparalleled" expansion in many possible configurations. Simply put, at 3.0 GHz the quad-core Mac Pro runs two times faster than Power Mac G5 Quad. Expansion-wise, it 8-core Mac Pro can accommodate up to four drives and 3TB of storage, eight DIMM slots to fill up with 16 GB of RAM, two Super Drives.

That's a lot of power. We are sure the programmers and software developers are going to be happy with the functions of this one.

   
 

Intel's quad-core (4 full execution cores) processors known as 'Kentsfield' and 'Clovertown' could ship before the end of the year instead of the first quarter of 2007. After a disappointing Q2 FY2006 results, Intel said it was pushing the launch of its first quad-core processors for high-end desktops and server earlier into the fourth quarter of 2006.

Mansfield is expected to ship in a multi-chip package in order to avoid low yields due to huge die sizes. Clovertown, the server version of the quad-core, is expected to be pin-compatible with the 'Woodcrest' dual-core Xeon DP 5100 family of server chip the company launched earlier. Clovertown is believed to have a TDP of 120W. Official specs of the quad-core CPUs have not been released by the Intel.

The company also said its upcoming Xeon MP 7100 series server processor, Tulsa, was already shipping to server vendors in preparation for its launch.