Apple Servers Headed To Tulsa?

Blog coverage by MacDailyNews from the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco this week includes more details of Intel's newest Xeon, code-named Tulsa, which our colleagues at CRN first tipped back in November and which is expected for the second half of the year. Now, is it an accident that it's a Mac-based website that's looking at this? No way. With Apple's switchover to Intel already under way, there is every likelihood that the new-generation Xeon could be the processor that drives Apple's next server line. Assuming that's the direction they're headed in, Tulsa's performance will kick Apple servers up from the top-end 2.3 GHz speed available now to 3.4 GHz, a raw percentage leap of almost 50%; usher Apple into the dual-core era (its current PowerPC-based Xserves run in a dual-processor environment, which is a different kettle of fish); and bring on-board virtualization into the mix.

The move to dual-core processors may require some extra recoding in OS X Server, but that's not going to affect anyone pulling a new Intel-based Apple server out of the box anyway. In general, anyone running on Apple now, if they're willing to make the jump to the Intel servers, is going to see a pretty good speed boost and a better feature set than they have now. So the remaining questions are time and price. Apple, back to you....