The new socket 2011 form factor is turning out to be intersting! As Intel squeezes ever more CPU's/power on die, other constraints are beginning to show - the main being memory access. Take a look this from EVGA:
Note the two sets of memory sockets surrounding each CPU.....
A big factor delaying release has been a nasty bug involving hardware based Virtual Machine support - it looks like Intel got this fixed starting with stepping 3.....
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2011/10/04/rumour-intel-discovers-sandy-bridge-e-bug/1The question beginning to arise in my mind, is whether a single O/S instance will be really capable of fully utilizing a dual CPU platform moving forward? EVGA's prototype seems to indicate otherwise......
In the server world, VM's are wonderfull! They allow us to immediately fire up another instance of the machine on a different server, quite nice for core services such as DNS, DHCP, web hosting, etc. Honestly, MS is light years ahead of Apple leveraging this technology, allowing mapping of VM's to individual PCIe lanes, etc....
All that said, I really like FCP-X, and am impressed with the way it works. With design choices being made in consultation with the BBC, one has to assume there is a significant future for it.