Gulftown is the codename of a yet-unreleased Intel chip. It will be sold under the Intel Core i9 name, while the server version is to be called the Xeon 5600 series. It will be the first dual-socket, six-core processor for Intel. 
Hardmac has reported that Apple is testing the Gulftown Xeon chip in the new Mac Pro desktop. The chip is an improvement over the model currently being used in the 2009 model with more horsepower and lower power consumption.
The new Mac Pro will have a modified motherboard with a 10Gbit/second Ethernet port. In addition, it is said to support 8GB and 16GB RAM modules, an increase from the 4GB offered today. That would mean the system could carry up to 128GB of RAM.
The new 32 nanometer chips have 12MB of L3 cache, and 6 cores with 12 threads for each CPU. Apple usually doubles the processors in its high-end professional workstations, so it’s possible the new Mac Pro system could have a total of 12 cores. The new hardware could be released sometime in the first quarter of 2010.
The new hardware is said to possibly arrive in early 2010, before the new chip enters mass production. If true, it is likely that the Mac maker would have short-term exclusive use of the new Xeon CPU.
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