Chips just grow up so fast these days. It seems like only yesterday that we were all excited by the Mac Pro’s dual dual-core processors. Well that’s pretty much news of the past, as today Intel announced a definitive plan for their quad-core chips, covered by Derik a few weeks ago.
The quad-core chips will first surface in high-end HP workstations on November 13th. These workstations, likely using the Xeon 5300, will run mostly high-end apps like seismic analysis. Gamers, however, will likely see the first quad-core consumer chip when it comes around, as they will be the first to experience the Core 2 Extreme processor, which Intel has arranged to ship to 13 PC manufactures, including Dell, Gateway, and VoodooPC. The Core 2 Quad chip, which is aimed at consumer desktop computers, is planned to ship in Q1 2007.
Apple sure has entered into a new world. It will be interesting to see how they react to the rapid processor advancements and updates which inherently come by using Intel chips.
