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.

   
 

Apple is known for revolutionizing our lives. The iPod alone has deeply rooted itself into cultures internationally. The more recent iPhone has also generated a lot of attention as well. Now, here comes Apple's latest product: a product-unveiling product, the iLaunch.

Now how is this revolutionary? As The Onion (*hint-hint*) reports, Steve Jobs introduced the iLaunch at a media event in San Francisco, and as the device was revealed to the audience, Jobs said:

Get ready for the future of product introduction. The iLaunch will be able to make announcements from this, or any other stage, making human participation in generating consumer awareness almost entirely unnecessary... CEOs have devoted their valuable time to strutting around on stage and breathlessly describing the features of their new products... Apple's goal within the next 12 months is to make me totally obsolete.

Powerful statements, yeah? The device, powered by Intel dual-core processors, runs Keynote-formatted presentations in high-definition through a projector, and, at the same time, displaying a rotating 3D image of the product. The iLaunch can also recite speeches via voice-recognition software built into the device. An AI is even incorporated into the system so much so that, when a glitch occurs during the presentation, it will generate humorous remarks to egg on the audience.

What's surprising: the whole presentation of Steve Jobs was produced by the iLaunch.

What isn't surprising: Microsoft just announced a similar product, the Launch-O, scheduled for 2009.

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Update: Apparently this bit of "news" has caused quite a stir at Digg (from 10 to 1000 Diggs in just a few hours). Do know that this story came from The Onion, and from that alone, most of you internet-savvy folks would know how... how shall we say it... satirical they are. So, just to make things clear, consider this as a pre-April Fool's piece. It's been fun while it lasted. To the guys up at The Onion, a warm round of applause for spread yet another great meme.

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.

Apple Computer named the dual-core Xeon server processors from Intel to power its next-gen high-performance professional Mac Pro desktops according to AppleInsider. The 64-bit chips Woodcrest (Xeon 5100 series) pack a 4MB L2 cache and run at speeds of up to 3.0GHz on a 1333MHz front-side bus. Apple will offer versions of its upcoming Mac Pro professional desktops that will sport two of the dual core chips. The new systems will also be available in a single processor configuration for a substantially reduced cost.

Aside from being the fastest of Intel's chips suited for a personal computer system, Woodcrest is also the first microprocessors to utilize Intel's "Core" microarchitecture. The architecture's advance cache technology allows one core of a dual-core processor to use the entire memory reservoir while the other core remains idle. It also supports "Smart Memory Access" that hides memory latency and bottlenecks and the "Wide Dynamic Execution," which widens the execution core and allows for more instructions per cycle.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs is expected to showcase the new computers along with the debut of the Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" at the annual Apple World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco next month.

Intel is just about ready to launch "Montecito" - the dual-core Itanium 2 processor for servers - sometime within this month according to sources close to the company. Montecito is widely seen by industry observers as Intel's attempt at regaining its technological dominance in the server space. Montecito is expected to offer improved performance with less power consumption. However, some analysts are unsure whether Montecito will make any difference in Itanium sales because three out of the four largest server vendors either have no Itanium products or any plans of manufacturing Itanium-based products. So far, Intel declined to confirm the date.

It looks like a busy week for Intel. The Godfather of Chips is expected to ship its new Core Duo T2700, a 2.33GHz dual-core 65nm Yonah-based CPU for high end notebooks and desktop replacement (DTR) devices sometime this week. The processor should start showing up in high-end notebooks in the near future.

Intel's new, dual-core Yonah processor has been voted most likely to be the CPU found in the first Intel-based Macs. Early test-drives showed it was a fairly strong candidate to replace the single core Pentium M offering performance equal to that of AMD's Athlon 64 X2 without an on-die memory controller.

The company will also comically release its Core Duo U2500 ultra-low voltage (ULV) CPU. The U2500 is a 1.2GHz Yonah processor with 2MB L2 cache and a 533MHz FSB consumes only about 0.75 W during normal operation.

On Monday, Intel, the largest chip manufacturer, took the sheets off its new dual-core Xeon Processor 5100 series. The chips, codenamed Woodcrest, are high-volume server and workstation chips which are capable of 135% performance improvement, and 40% power reduction over their previous server products. Power consumption will start at 40 watts for lower models, going up to 65 and 80 watts for the faster processors.

This is very important for Apple's view of things, aside from the obvious inclusion in future products, this would most certainly mean cheaper and lower prices for the current range of processors used in Apple machines.

The new Core micro-architecture is being implemented, which is based on the a power sensitive blueprint design. It is expected that this design will be used in two forthcoming chips for the desktop and notebook called Conroe and Merom. These are expected in July and August, but we all know about delays that can be involved. The 5100, will be shipped at speeds up to 3.0Ghz, with 1333Mhz front side bus and 4 MB of shared L2 cache. The chips are compatible with the current Bensley Platform, which means that they can be dropped in with the current pin format. The platform uses faster and more reliable memory technology, FB-DIMMs, Intel Virtualization Technology, Intel Active Server Manager and Intel I/O Acceleration Technology.

"Simply put, the Core micro-architecture is a technical marvel that is driving a new era of power efficiency without compromising on what can only be described as eye-popping dual-core 64-bit performance," said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of IntelÂ?s Digital Enterprise Group.

Pricing will start at $209 to $851 in 1000 unit quantities, and Intel expect the family of processors to be the fastest-ramping ever. However, they are still loosing ground to the AMD range of processors, and are aiming to rectify things with Woodcrest, Merom and Conroe.