What will the CPU of your next MacBook look like? Well, it’ll almost definitely be one of Intel’s Sandy Bridge microprocessors, and if you want to see the future, you should peer into the entrails of the latest Windows notebooks.
Over at Laptoping they managed to spot some of the next-gen notebooks on offer from the likes of Acer, Gateway and Lenovo, replete with a new 2.0+ GHz, quad-core CPU called the Intel i7-2630QM, based on Intel’s 32 nanometer process.
Also of note in the new Sandy Bridge chips: an integrate graphics core which is far more impressive than previous Intel offerings. This graphics core isn’t going to match the oomph o even NVIDIA’s and AMD’s entry-level GPUs, but it’s a massive improvement on Intel’s previous offerings nonetheless. My guess is that Apple will continue to embrace a discrete GPU in their future MacBook Pros, but could this integrated core could drive future entry-level MacBooks? My guess — given the MacBook Air’s NVIDIA GeForce 320M — is no, but it’s possible, if the performance sacrifice isn’t too great.
Of course, none of the notebooks Laptoping has spotted are available yet, and won’t be until January 2011. Don’t be surprised, though, if these CPUs end up in your next MacBook Pro.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
