The chip advancements bode well for Apple's effort to push parallelism through its future Mac OS X server operating system, code-named Snow Leopard Server. The OS is built for a multicore system, and includes Grand Central technologies that will help server software better allocate tasks across multiple cores while saving power.

Details about the server operating system that will ship with these new servers are scarce, but it could possibly have hooks to crank down the clock speed as it executes tasks in parallel, McCarron said. Intel allows reduction in clock speed through the Turbo Mode feature that can crank down chip clock speed to save power.