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Jobs stole the stage again with the announcement of the MacBook air. The ultra thin MacBook Air will probably do to laptops what Motorolas’ Rzor phone did to cellular phones. No doubt Jobs managed to pull another rabbit out of his sleeve.
The question that been interesting all us hardware freaks is, what Core 2 Duo processor is in there? How did they get to be so small and thin?
Since no one has a MacBook Air to take apart yet there has been a lot of digging going on to find out what Apple and Intel put together to get such a thin chip. Intel intial response was: |
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"Intel provides its customers with a range of technology choices. If a customer requires a different technology feature-set, then where possible, Intel will work with them to develop a solution to meet their respective market needs, as we have done in this case."
AnandTech did some digging and released an article with there guesses and then Intel let out a bit more information:
"The MacBook Air uses the Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor and Intel 965GMS chipset with integrated Gfx using a new miniaturized package technology. This new CPU and chipset allows for approximately 60% reduction in total footprint. The Core 2 Duo Processor TDP is 20 watts. The Macbook Air is using existing Core 2 Duo technology with a lower voltage spec in a new miniaturized packaging design. It is not a ULV processor."
So in plain words what did Intel and Apple do? They took a 65nm Merom based Core 2 Duo, with a 4MB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB and repackaged it with the new package that initially was designed for the 45nm Mobile Core 2 Duo Penryn. The interesting part is the voltage; Intel is not using its ULV Core 2 Duo. That was the trade off for the ultra thin packaging. If you want all the details then read Anandtech’s full article.
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