Sunday, October 16, 2005

Yonah power specs confirmed

Intel Inside®AnandTech has confirmed the previous CNET article about Yonah's power utilization, and adds that the numbers are not absolute maximum values, but are in fact TDP:
E: TDP >50W
T: TDP 25W to 49W
L: TDP 15W to 24W
U: TDP <14W
49 Watts for the T series is disappointing, since it's much higher than Apple's preferred maximum usage of 30-ish Watts. (The L series are much lower power, but its clockspeeds are also low.) The good news is that some sites are reporting that most of the T chips will be closer to 31 Watts, as originally expected. The question remains however, if the 31 Watt spec as listed on the previous roadmap for the 2.16 GHz Yonah chip is accurate, or if that number has since creeped up too.

The other question is whether or not Apple will actually use these chips in PowerBooks. These chips are due out in the first quarter of 2006. By then I suspect that many pro-oriented applications will not have yet been ported to x86 Intel. Pros who are dependent upon such applications could thus have issues running their applications on Intel PowerBooks initially, and those issues would range from just poor performance all the way to programs not running at all. Will Apple risk this with a PowerBook release in the first half of 2006? My guess is probably yes, but I am by no means sure of this.

I suppose Apple could release a 1.9 GHz G5 PowerBook on Wednesday, and then another one in early 2006, before releasing an Intel PowerBook later on that supported 64-bit. (The 2006 Q1 Yonah chip is 32-bit.) However, ever since Jobs announced the Intel switch, I've thought the next PowerBook will likely have a G4, a 32-bit chip, and there will be no G5 PowerBook at all.

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