Apple to adopt Intel’s UMPC platform?


Very interesting. Really!


Silverthorne

Here’s bits of the article:

The two firms have been rubbing the sticks ever since the Spring of 2005, when Apple agreed to use Intel’s desktop and mobile class processors to further the development of its Mac product line, leaving behind an ailing relationship with PowerPC chip supplier IBM.

In the months that followed, Intel went on to form an internal ‘Apple Group‘ comprised of engineering and sales staff who serve to aid Apple’s engineers in Intel-related product development, while pitching to the computer maker new technologies from its own internal skunkwork operations…

By last March, the two industry heavyweights were admittedly on to something when Deborah Conrad, vice president and director of Team Apple at Intel, told a group of CNet reporters that Apple’s way of looking at the world was making Intel “think different” about its own business…

More specifically, those same people say, Apple has taken a liking to the upcoming 45-nanometer (nm) “Silverthorne” chip, agreeing to use it in not one but multiple products currently situated on its 2008 calendar year product roadmap…

The chip is expected to be as fast as the second-generation of Pentium M processors, but use only between half a watt and 2 watts of electrical power — about one tenth as much as a typical notebook chip…

Phew! Setting aside the hype larding this “exclusive” - there could be some fascinating hardware coming down the pike.

Posted: Sat - December 22, 2007 at 09:30 AM