Rumors about MacBook and MacBook Pro updates coming in September have been around for past few months. But if you consider the latest small footprint Centrino 2 CPUs announced by Intel at the Developer Forum, it is very likely that we will see MacBook Air updates very soon.
Intel had designed a special small-footprint Merom processor for Apple to use in the extremely thin MacBook Air. Intel had also compressed the 965 chipset to reduce it footprint by 60 percent, there by decreasing the power requirement for the system. Intel’s chip had just 20W TDP but was a powerful Core 2 Duo chip.
On Thursday, at Intel Developer Forum, the company announced new Centrino 2 processors that will have TDP of just 17W making them ideal for the Macbook Air. The two processors that Intel announced are SL9400 with 1.8GHz speed and SL9300 with 1.6GHz speed. Both the processors will have 1066MHz front side bus and 6MB of L2 cache.
Lenovo and HP have already announced that they will use the chips in their thin and light notebooks. But it is believed that this time also Apple will get preferential treatment and Intel will design a special 2.0GHz chip for the company with same TDP. Notebooks based on the new chip should start shipping in September and it is possible that Apple might update Macbook Air in October.