No, that’s not a place where all the four-leafers come from… it’s the name of Intel’s newest technological beastie.  Four cores in the same processor.  Four!

Now I don’t know if Apple will introduce these in their high-end Mactel replacement for the PowerMac line, but man, what a workstation a couple of those bad boys would be!  My quad G5 is a screamer, and I can’t imagine how Photoshop (optimized for Intel, of course) would run on an 8-way processor environment.  From what I’ve read, PS can run as much as 45% faster on the quad G5 as compared to a dualie, so I’ve gotta figure that a dual-quad-core box would scream in PS, as well as for video rendering.

However, I think it’ll be a while before that happens.  The chips aren’t due out until next year, and I’d be surprised if Apple jumped on them immediately.  Apple’s committed to replacing the whole line of PPC-based Macs with Intel chips, so they’ll have to do something for the high end workstation before the quad-cores are ready from Intel.

So what’ll happen with the replacement for the PowerMacs?  Dunno, but I’m committed for at least two years to the workstation hardware I’ve come to know and love!