Supposedly, we'll see them early next year. If so, and if it uses Gulftown, that'd give Apple a small window of exclusivity with the speed demon chip, which wouldn't be the first time Intel's given them access to silicon before anybody else. [HardMac via AppleInsider]

Still classified as a Core i7 chip, the Xeon W5590 runs six 2.4GHz cores with 12MB of shared Level 3 cache and and 256KB of Level 2 cache per core. Hyperthreading support enables two program threads to run on each core, meaning that the whole system effectively delivers 12 cores. Price details have not been announced, but Westmere is officially due out in the first half of 2010. [Electronista]

Mac Mini
The new Mac Mini, available now, is heavily redesigned inside and in the rear, though its body is pretty much identical to the old ones. It comes in two configs ($600 and $800), both based on the 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics. Adam wants you to note that the $200 step up might not be worth it. [MORE]

iMac
The 24-Inch iMac comes down from $1800 to $1500, pushing the 20-Inch iMac down $300 itself to $1200. Despite having the same look they've had since August 2007 (not a problem for me but some people want new freshness), they also have better specs: The super-sick $2,200 iMac has a 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and a 7200rpm 1TB drive (though you still have to pay extra to max out RAM at 8GB). [MORE]

Mac Pro
The new Mac Pro now starts at $2500, down from $2800, but has Intel's Xeon "Nehalem" quad-core chipset and 1066MHz DDR3 RAM for superfast memory access. It comes standard with the fast Nvidia GeForce GT 120, but you can choose an ATI Radeon HD 4870 for even more graphical juice. It's coming March 9. [MORE]

Jesus points out that Apple's keyboard just got smaller—all except the price that is. The larger one will still sell, for now, too.

Time Capsule
The new Time Capsule also looks the same on the outside, but inside it's doubled up its Wi-Fi router power with dual-channel 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11n for managing more network traffic. The cooler innovation is "guest networking," which lets you create a virtual Wi-Fi hotspot for guests that is walled off from the rest of your network. [MORE]

The Dunnington is for the server line, as a successor for the Xeon Tigerton, and will be "Intel's first Core 2 Duo processor with three dual-core banks." The Nehalem should be of more interest to most of our readers, as it's the Intel Penryn successor (consumer line), and will have on-die memory controllers for "the first time in 18 years," along with tri-channel DDR3 memory. This means it'll be quite a bit faster than what you're currently running in terms of memory bandwidth. [Daily Tech]

The six-core beast will be succeeded by the even meatier, Nehalem micro-architecture, which will support greater than eight cores. The work regarding the Dunnington project is still under wraps, but our friends at EDJ insist Intel has already put together a die, the size of a postage stamp, with three dual-core 45nm Penryn chips on it sharing a 16MB L3 cache. Allegedly, we'll see the Dunnington in either Q2 or Q3, this year—we'll be sure to keep you posted on any developments. [EDJ via The Inquirer]

Intel Chips from 1971 to 2007:

Intel's History of the Transistor:

[Intel]

Further spec details are scarce, but Lenovo did mention that the D10 is outfitted with a 5400 Xeon processor and the S10 with a 3GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9650. They also noted that both computers would use NVIDIA graphics and dual Gigabit Ethernet and multiple slots, bays and USB ports for expandability. Expect the D10 and the S10 to be released this January for $1,739 and $1,199 respectively. [Press Release and Electronista]

The L5320 and L5310 Xeons, running at 1.86GHz and 1.6GHz respectively, probably won't be the ones showing up on those Apple machines that are said to be debuting on April 15 in Las Vegas at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention. Hey, Macs use Xeons, don't they? Will these Xeons be part and parcel of the fabled "OctoMac?"

Nah. The processors in the OctoMac will eventually be the higher-end 3.0GHz version of the quad core Xeon that Intel revealed last week, saying they'll be shipping later this year. Those are the chips the speed freaks will use, users who don't care so much about energy efficiency and care everything about the fastest processors available.

In the meantime, maybe Apple will make do with a pair of the existing Core 2 Extreme quad-core processors, which we're using right here on a PC and can attest to their already-blazing speed and serious video rendering capabilities.

Either way, we just got our invite to the big Apple unveiling in Sleazetown, and will be positioned right up front to let you know what happens. – Charlie White

More efficient quad-core Xeons [Macworld]

It's no surprise that this is the next step for the top-line Mac Pro. Those quad-core Xeon 5300 series "Clovertown" chips are being readied for lots of workstations we can't tell you about yet. The best news is that pricing of the base config of Apple's eight-way machine may closely match that of its four-way incumbent.

Who says we're Mac fanboys? Bile-spitting skepticism, after the jump.

Judging from the slowpoke rollout of Apple's Intel Core 2 Duo "Merom" MacBook Pro notebooks, we're thinking that "after mid-November" scuttlebutt about the eight-way Mac Pro's ship date is about as credible as Apple's claim that the Merom notebooks are "up to 39% faster" than their predecessors. – Charlie White

Ripe in Cupertino: an Apple with 8 cores [AppleInsider]

These four Clovertown chips will constitute the Xeon 53xx family, arriving in speeds of 1.6GHz, 1.86GHz, 2.33GHz and 2.66GHz. They're all flying, too, running on a 1066MHz front-side bus, and contain a whopping 8MB of L2 cache.

Geez, isn't this processor parade speeding up tenfold? And, our only objection to those Clovertown chips was their power-hungriness, and now Intel solves that problem, too. Does this leave AMD completely in the dust? Discuss. – Charlie White

Intel preps four-chip four-core Xeon Q4 debut [Reg Hardware]

Can anyone do better? Maybe some sysadmin from Google/Yahoo? Let's see what you guys got!–Brian Lam

[Previously: Mad Hatter's Quad Core 2 Duo Server Goes Sixteen Ways]

Schiller announced that the basic configuration would be priced at $2499 for a dual-2.6GHz Xeon dual core Mac Pro with 1GB RAM, Geforce 7300 GT (256 MB VRAM) graphics and a SuperDrive. He quickly took a dig at Dell, saying that a comparable machine from that company would cost $1000 more. Fully tricked out, the machine can include dual 3GHz processors with 16GB of RAM, 2TB of storage and graphics choices of a Radeon X1900 or FX4500 graphics card, along with Bluetooth and AirPort connectivity. Schiller also announced these products will be available today.

More after the jump.

Kicking off the conference was Steve Jobs, who first sung the praises of the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), lauding the number of engineers attending—1000 of them on site—and emphasizing that there was one engineer for every four attendees. Then he mentioned the growth rate of the Mac, saying that the last quarter was the best Mac quarter ever. The Mac continued to gain market share, with 1.3 million shipped last quarter. Jobs also added that market share dramatically rose in June for the MacBook, with the MacBook Pro leading the lineup. Of all the Macs shipped, three quarters of them were Intel-based.

Schiller added that the Xserve product will also have Xeons built in, with performance similar to that of the new Mac Pro machines. He added it will have a smaller chip footprint, and asserted that the newer Xserve unit will be five times faster than its predecessor.

Next Steve Jobs took the stage once again, and explained the new features of Leopard, the latest update of OS X. Taking various jabs at rival company Microsoft, Jobs compared this latest version of OS X to the upcoming Microsoft operating system, Vista. "Redmond, start your photocopiers," he quipped to the adoring audience.

Jobs said a major improvement of Leopard is its 64-bit user interface that has been modified in a way that's still compatible with 32-bit applications. According to Jobs, it's now possible to run 32-bit apps side by side with 64-bit without needing emulation or translation. He called it "full 64-bit support, from top to bottom." He also touted the Time Machine, a backup routine that automatically makes a copy of everything on the Mac, taking snapshots in configurable points of time that are easily recalled. It can restore everything or just one file at a time.

Jobs then mentioned that Boot Camp, the software that allows Windows XP to also be run on the Mac, will now ship as a standard part of the Leopard operating system. He added that there have been a half million downloads of Boot Camp to date.

Other operating system features announce were Virtual Desktops, or multiple desktops can be created, and then the feature allows users to zoom out to see all the desktops and drag items between one and the other, or quickly switch between them. Improvements in Apple's instant search feature Spotlight were also announced, where now users can also search other machines if proper permissions are given.

Rounding out the package were additional to-do list and notes features, along with the addition of Core Animation which will allow developers to create applications which easily display multiple layers of text, images, video and animations. – Charlie White

Even the slightly cheaper 490 is no slouch, where you can configure it in a similar way and even use its smaller case horizontally or vertically. Fully tricked out with the fastest processors, four gigs of RAM and a couple of 10,000RPM disks, the 690 will run you about $6,500, but pricing starts at $1529. These monsters will start shipping in the middle of June.

Precision Workstation Product Page [Dell]

Intel Xeon Sossaman shown off in Japan [The Inquirer]

Intel brings forward 90nm dual-core Xeons [TheRegister]