New Apple Powerbooks could gain Freescale edge

SOURCES SUGGEST that if Apple introduces a refresh on its Powerbook range, perhaps at the end of this quarter, the motherboard will take advantage of Freescale's MPC8641 Power PC processor.

The CPU is made using a 90 nanometre SOI (silicon on insulator) process and will whizz along at 1.7GHz, use a 200MHz frontside bus and consume about 15 watts.

The Freescale, formerly known as Motorola, chip includes 1MB of level two cache, a PCI Express controller and a network controller will all be integrated.

The high level of integration, our source suggested, means an inexpensive and straightforward motherboard.

Higher resolution TFT-LCD screens may also be in the offing, the same sources suggest. The MPC8641 is a single core variant of the dual core processor Motorola, sorry, Freescale also makes.

There's details of this chip on its website, here. µ