Yonah benchmarks look promising for first Mactel systems
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Dec 28, 2005 at 1:09am
Things look promising for “Mactel” systems using Intel’s Yonah processor. As I explained in a July 5 article, Yonah is based on a mobile-optimized microarchitecture and 65nm process technology, Yonah is designed to provide power management capabilities and enhanced performance for multiple demanding applications and multi-threaded applications. Look for it to be used in Mac minis, iBooks, iMac G5s and perhaps PowerBooks (my prediction, not any official Apple position).
According to an Anandtech article (a long piece, but one well worth your time), Yonah is a “fairly strong successor” to the single core Pentium M that offers performance equal to that of AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 without an on-die memory controller (though Yonah is equipped with a full 2MB of L2 cache, whereas the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ in question only had 512KB per processor). Some are some of Anandtech’s findings:
° Yonah is the most efficient dual-core processor that Anandtech has tested to date.
° While Yonah will make its debut at a maximum speed of 2.16GHz, it will actually only receive a single speed bump before Merom’s release at the end of the year. (Merom is expected to be a completely revamped dual-core product for laptops with low power consumption but 20-30 percent better performance than that of its predecessors.) That means that we’ll see a 2.33GHz Yonah after the middle of the year, but we’ll have to turn to Merom to get any higher clock speeds. (This is one reason I expect to see PowerBooks using Merom rather than Yonah.)
° When it debuts, Yonah will probably be dubbed Centrino Core Duo or Centrino Core Single, depending on whether it’s the dual or single core version (though I expect Mactel systems to all be dual core).
° Intel’s Core Duo and Solo processors both support a 667MHz FSB, which is enabled by the 945 chipset that Intel is pairing with them. The move to a 667MHz FSB is necessary, thanks to the increased bandwidth demands of a dual core processor.
° Intel’s plan for 65nm is to rely on their deeper pipelined processors (Conroe/Merom/Woodcrest) for higher clock speed, with Yonah falling below the 2.5GHz mark. “And based on what we’ve seen in the first article, a 2.33GHz Yonah would be competitive with an Athlon 64 X2 4600+, but definitely not outpacing it,” Anadtech notes. “This does bode well for Intel’s next-generation processors, especially on the desktop with Conroe.”
Expect Power Macs to use the Conroe chips. Conroe, the desktop version of the Merom, is expected to remove certain power constraints, have additional performance tweaks for extra speed, as well as support the whole breed of desktop features, including virtualization capabilities, LaGrande technology, 64-bit capability in addition to EDB, EIST and iAMT2. Go here for details.
Now the interesting question is going to be: just how fast will a low-end dual-core Mactel machine be in comparison with current single-core systems. For instance, performance-wise, how would a Centrino Duo Core iMac with a 2.16GHz processor compare with a current iMac G5? With a current Power Mac G5 with dual 2.0GHz PowerPC processors? With a Power Mac G5 Quad? After all, the dual core systems will have the equivalent of two processors on one core.
2006 is going to be a fascinating year.
Thoughts? Write me at dsellers@macsimumnews.com
evamedia Says:
Levon, not a Mac user I guess, it’s the OS stupid.
Posted on December 28, 2005
hmurchison Says:
That’s the problem. Freescale doesn’t have their dual core PPC chips fabbed in volume. By the time they do Intel will have Merom out and the DC Freescale part is old again.
Posted on December 28, 2005
andrew z Says:
levon how do u know the dell equivalent will cost half as much when the product is even out yet? chances are the price will be the same or slight more. As it is now a comparable equipped dell is close to costing the same as a powerbook. I suspect this to continue if not improve as apple uses intel chips and chipsets.
Posted on December 28, 2005
R Boylin Says:
Intel is ahead of schedule. They’re now planning on their Merom board and chip debut in early summer. Apple may complete the transition early with server replacements by spring of ‘07.
Posted on December 28, 2005
JohnK Says:
Making Vista look like OS X is putting lipstick on the pig.
Posted on December 28, 2005
Tim Bush Says:
That pig has to have the personality ten times that of “Arnold”, the pig on “Green Acres”. On a serious note, dual core means speed, and I think Mac users will be very happy after MacWorld.
Posted on December 28, 2005
Frank Petrie Says:
“But here’s the real question. If I can buy a dual core Powerbook for a couple of grand and a Dell running the same processor for half as much and the Dell runs Vista, which looks awfully like OS X why buy the Mac? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that perception (ie, the Dell offers the same utility as the Mac for half as much) will rule the day and Apple will be relegated to selling iPods.”
Levon,
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the original has more value than the knock-off. That’s because the original is striving to create something. The knock-off is striving to make money.
Happy GNU Year,m all.
Posted on December 28, 2005
jf Leduc Says:
“Yonah may be hot for the Wintel world, but Freescale’s dual core G4 would blow the doors off it in head to head tests with its altivec processor.”
Ahahahahahaahaha…
You’re not serious.... Are you???
From day 1, the G4 was a dud. The G4 500Mhz is the chip that forced Apple to include dual CPU in their machines just to match single- cpu PC’s. The slow G4 with it’s ultra slow bus speed was first build to beat the Penthium III, and it succeeded. But when the P4 came out, Motorola abandonned their G5 plan and Apple has been 3 years behind PC technology ever since.
This new Yonah chip will be the fastest, most efficient chip ever build, and you wish you had a G4… Wow.
Posted on December 28, 2005
Big Boy Says:
WOW is right!
Posted on December 28, 2005
jbelkin Says:
Freescale/IBM is great about yakking up huge specs and prowess and good about talking about ‘what’s coming up!’ but when it comes to actually cranking up the plants, they are limiting as MS is finding out with the mythical XBox 360 - I’m sure they’ve been happy to show off an OctoG5 chip runnning at 8.3 but producing more than 5 after using 100 gigawatts of fab electricity - that’s Freescale - not so much free and not so much scale.
Posted on December 28, 2005
melgross Says:
hmurchison, are you sure that they have started production? The 7448 was scheduled to come out first, and it hasn’t appeared on the production line yet. I’m not sure if they have even finished testing. they are way behind schedule.
Last I checked, it was still varorware.
Posted on December 28, 2005
Beardedfish Says:
I can’t find info mentioning one way or the other, but I believe that Yonah does not have 64-bit support, so the iMac G5 (or whatever naming scheme Apple devises) probably won’t use Yonah. Jobs stated/suggested that they wouldn’t step back on the 64-bit support, so the next revision of the iMac would have to be a later chip.
Posted on December 28, 2005
Justin Says:
“but we’ll have to turn to Merom to get any higher clock speeds. (This is one reason I expect to see PowerBooks using Merom rather than Yonah.)”
First of all, clock speeds don’t mean a thing without throughput. It’s all about the number of instructions that you get off with each clock cycle that is the important thing. Merom will be a 64-bit processor, and as such will already be getting twice the instructions off per cycle assuming that the OS and applications running are compiled to support 64-bit processors.
Lower power consumption combined with higher throughput is what all laptop users are dieing to hear. Now finally the laptop can hold it’s own versus desktop computers.
(and by the way, the G4 is quite awful compaired to any modern era processor, esp. Yonah, which will be dual core 65nm process!!)
Posted on December 29, 2005
melgross Says:
You don’t really see much of an improvement from 64 bits. There will be some on x86 because the 64 bit OS’s won’t be using the baggage from IA-32, but that’s about it.
We saw no improvement going to 64 bits on PPC because there was no old baggage in the chips to begin with. (The G5 does have improvements, but they aren’t due to it being 64 bits).
As OS X on x86 is concerned, I don’t think we’ll see much of an improvement there either, as it doesn’t have the legacy code that Windows has. So going to an x86 64 bit chip won’t prove to be significant.
Posted on December 29, 2005
Levon Williams Says:
How do you suppose Yonah will decrease power consumption when its pulling 100 watts? The Freescale chip only pulls 21.
Posted on December 29, 2005
Animator guy Says:
I use osx tiger on systems ranging from a g3 to a dual g5. The system specs account for only frations of the preformance. I use high end apps like FCP, DVDSP and Maya. It is definetly the OS that makes the difference and windows is pitiful. slow and unwieldly.
I just hope this hardware adventure Apple is taking doesn’t cause them to water down OSX. They are the leaders and inovators. May it stay that way !
Posted on January 11, 2006
macuser Says:
going to intel will hurt Apple in the long run… they used a freaking intel chip before the 68ks… it was on the market for only a few months before they scrapped it!… go research history people… most of you just eat the crap that marketing gives you! this is good for you, you should have/buy it… so like the stupid Zealots that both the Mac and PC users alike who don’t have 2 brains cells to rub together, and I don’t mean all, but 99% of you do just like they tell you! buy the crap…
If i were Apple, I wouldn’t scrap PPC just yet… if you have guys like Microsoft and Sony using the bloody thing in their new gaming consoles… i wouldn’t say they are anything about them being slow processors or not having what ever capabilities or not coming up with the goods or what ever BS that S.J states…
as far as I’m concerned its a whole BS game that both the PC and Mac crowd play… you know I haven’t heard that much crap come from neither guys that use Sun with their Ultra Sparks or SGI with their Rxxxxx series… (just where REAL APPLICATIONS RUN… not fu_kn’ games and Microsoft word!) its all the Mac and PC boys playing who has got it better… what a buch of wankers!
PS: this is coming from a guy who owns a mac! a full soaped up G4… sould I be crying cause I don’t have a G5 or dual core itel in my freaking ibook which I don’t own… F.No!
Posted on February 15, 2006
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
Levon Williams Says:
Yonah may be hot for the Wintel world, but Freescale’s dual core G4 would blow the doors off it in head to head tests with its altivec processor.
But here’s the real question. If I can buy a dual core Powerbook for a couple of grand and a Dell running the same processor for half as much and the Dell runs Vista, which looks awfully like OS X why buy the Mac? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that perception (ie, the Dell offers the same utility as the Mac for half as much) will rule the day and Apple will be relegated to selling ipods.
Posted on December 28, 2005