Science

Intel's newest lands in an old standard: Commodore 64

What does a MacBook Pro and Commodore 64 have in common? They both adopted quad-core Intel processors for the first time this year.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor

Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.

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Brooke Crothers

Nov. 7, 2011 9:44 p.m. PT

The venerable Commodore 64 now has the latest Intel quad-core chip inside. Commodore USA

Apple surprised many when it introduced quad-core processors into its MacBook line for the first time in February. But a Commodore 64 packing quad-core?

For the uninitiated, the Commodore 64 Keyboard PC was introduced back in 1982 packing a MOS Technology 6510 1MHz (yes, that's one megahertz) chip running the Commodore kernal accessed via BASIC commands.

That model competed with the Apple II and Atari computers.

Well, a lot has changed in 30 years. After resurrecting the Commodore name in April of 2010, the company came out with an Intel Atom-based design in April of this year. That's a relatively pokey processor though. So, now Commodore has bulked up its lineup with Intel's latest 2.2GHz Core-i7-2720QM quad-core processor (which turbos to 3.3GHz).

Commodore isn't stopping there with the contemporaneous upgrade. It has added two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, and DVI-D ports, among other connectors.

Other specifications include 8GB of memory, DVD Drive (slot load), Intel HD 3000 graphics, and 2TB hard disk drive (7200 RPM). Also inside is a mini-ITX motherboard and power supply. All for $1,499.