Apple Wrapping Up 27-inch LED Cinema Display, New Mac Pro
Posted 03/19/2010 at 4:36am
| by J.R. Bookwalter
(Image courtesy of AppleInsider)Professionals who rely on their high-end Macs may be feeling left out by the absence of any new Mac Pro or Cinema Display models, but if a new report is accurate, you won’t have to wait too much longer.
AppleInsider has been told that Apple is hard at work “putting the finishing touches” on both a larger version of its LED Cinema Display as well as a “major” update to its Mac Pro model -- both which have been largely neglected in recent months.
First on deck is a super-sized version of the LED-backlit Cinema Display in a 27-inch form with the same general style and features as the 24-inch model introduced what seems like forever ago in October, 2008. Apparently the larger model has been lounging about in Apple labs for some time now under the code name “K59,” while the company has been waiting for the expensive LCD panels to come down a bit in price.
Pros will have the recent 27-inch iMacs to thank for finally getting the new Cinema Display out of the lab. The biggest iMac has been quite a hit with consumers and since it uses similar components, it has the extra benefit of driving down the cost factor for the Cinema Display at the same.
So when can you warm up the credit card for the new 27-inch Cinema Display? Apparently in June, which is when the new model is slated to arrive alongside a new Mac Pro.
According to AppleInsider, the “Mac maker’s plans call for a dodeca-core model, sporting a pair of Intel’s latest Westmere-based hexacore chips for a total of 12 cores.” Further details are scarce, but it’s been widely rumored that Apple will use a pair of costly Xeon 5600 Series “Gulftown” chips for a high-end model at the same time that they offer a cheaper (i.e., comparable to today’s $2,500 quad-core model), single-processor model with only six cores.
Intel will start making the 5600 series available within the next 45 days, available in 2.66, 2.8., 2.93 and 3.33GHz variations with the processor cost ranging from $996 to $1,663 when purchased in lots of 1,000. The Gulftown chips are 32 nanometers with 12MB of L3 cache and six cores with 12 threads for each CPU.
