What better way to wind down 2007 than to have more Apple rumors for the upcoming new year. This time, the rumors center around Apple’s possible usage of Intel’s upcoming Silverthorne CPU in upcoming products. What is Silverthorne you might be asking yourself? It’s Intel’s latest push into mobile device market (things like handhelds, ultra-portable PCs, and mobile phones) by making the x86 processor more acceptable for small footprint, low power consumption devices. News.com is reporting that Silverthorne appears to be a Pentium M-like processor with a power consumption of approximately one or two watts (compared to 35 watts for the Core 2 Duo processor).

So what would Apple want with a low power processor? The folks at AppleInsider theorize that the processor could find its way into either the rumored Apple Tablet device or a new 3G iPhone. News.com thinks the former is more likely than the latter since at 1 watt, the Silverthorne processor is still too power hungry for a mobile phone (compared to the ARM1176 core which runs at 620MHz and consumes only 279 milliwatts.). So the possibilities that Apple would come out with a Tablet-like device in 2008 could very well be true – especially if the company decides to adopt the Silverthorne processor.

Even more interesting for Intel and Apple is the processor due out after Silverthorne known as Moorestown. This processor is expected to bring the product line into the milliwatt area which would then make it ideal for the iPhone or any other phone/handheld devices out there. Again – this is all speculation at this point.. but if the iPhone and the Mac product lineup had the same instruction set, consider how much easier application development will be.

Ahh.. nothing like rumors and speculation.

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