During IDF (Intel Developer Forum), Intel announced a quite clear and detailed roadmap for its future processors. The details revealed tend to confirm the arguments that Steve Jobs used during WWDC 2005, justifying Apple's move to the Intel architecture. Among them, the impressive power per watt ratio that Intel promisses for its future processors.

Intel will have three categories of processors, each targeting a specific market: Notebooks, Desktops and Servers. Their availability is set for 2006.

Notebooks:
- Yonah
- Merom

Desktops:
- Presler
- Conroe

Servers:
- Paxville
- Woodcrest

The new chips are based on the Pentium M's architecture which was actually first introducted on the Pentium 3 processor. They use from 5 watt (Yonah, Merom) to 80 watt (Woodcrest) of power. Most of them are dual core and some of them dual-core and 64 bits, like the PowerPC 970MP that is to be used in forthcoming PowerMacs.

The notebook processors have quite impressive power per watt ratio, considering current processors intented for the notebook market consume at least 15W.

Intel also announced during the event that it would provide optimized compilers for the Apple-Intel architecture. Those compilers will be integrated with Apple's xCode development suite.

You'll find additionnal information about Intel's processors roadmap on AnandTech's coverage of IDF.