Whereas, earlier, speculation abounded, it is currently believed that, of the various upcoming CPUs from Intel, the dual-core Yonah will power the first generation of Intel-based Macs. MacRumors has pointed out an interesting feature of this upcoming chip that may be of particular note to Apple in the move to the Intel platform.

A unique feature of the upcoming Yonah processor is its "virtualization technology," which Intel describes as follows.

The company describes a general scenario in which users might create virtual "partitions" which would serve to isolate workspaces in a multi-user environment, dedicating various resources to gaming, personal video, and productivity-type environments. More specific to the issue at hand here, Apple may choose to implement this feature in such a way as to allow the launching of multiple operating systems (Linux, Windows, etc.) along side the Mac OS X host environment.

During the fall IDF 2005 tradeshow, Intel confirmed that this "virtualization technology" would be part of their new CPU architecture.

As MacRumors points out, the nature of this technology brings to mind a recent patent for tamper-resistant code, which Apple was recently granted. The patent makes specific mention of the use of multiple operating systems. Could the two be tied?