Apple may be looking to open up the speed gap between the iMac and Mac Pro once again with the Gulftown processor, according to HardMac.

Gulftown is the codename of a future six-core Intel processor using the Intel Nehalem microarchitecture in the 32 nm "Westmere" shrink. It will be the first processor to be sold as Intel Core i9. [W]

According to our sources, this CPU will be installed in the future Mac Pro revision expected early 2010, in order to create a new gap between the iMac Core i7 and the Mac Pro models. This future Mac Pro will then offer 12 physical and 24 logical cores, more than enough power for heavy task, the bottleneck now being the way application are coded to benefit from such raw power.

At equivalent clock speed, it is 50% faster than the corresponding quad core Xeon for parallel tasks, drains 50% less power in idle mode, and drains 10% less in full loading mode.

Read More