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After all the lead up, Intel finally officially announced the new Core i7, i5 and i3 chips this morning. These chips were previously known by the Arrandale and Clarksdale codenames. The new chips represents the arrival of the 32nm manufacturing process and the Intel Turbo Boost Technology. Information about the new processors have leaked out for months with benchmarks posted earlier this week.
For Apple followers, the processor of most interest is the Intel Core i5 (Arrandale) which represents the first mobile version of the Nehalem architecture that could be used in Apple's notebooks. Early benchmarks have shown performance boosts of 11-29% compared to the similarly clocked processors found in the MacBook Pro.
When asked during the Q&A portion at the end of the press conference about which new processors will appear in Apple's product lines, Sean Maloney, executive Vice President and General Manager of the Intel Architecture Group, replied, "I do not pre-announce our partners' products and I certainly don't pre-announce Apple's products."
