Rumors of Apple seeding WWDC developers with an early release of 'Snow Leopard' are confirmed. Attending developers just got a fresh copy of OS X 10.6 (pictured left) for preview purposes. Courtesy of OrchardSpy, we even have screenshots from the actual Snow Leopard installation.

As you can see, the screen-grabs below reveal a build number of 10A96 (memorize it) and an unchanged System Preferences window. In fact, Apple itself noted yesterday that Snow Leopard would change "focus" for OS X users and developers, rather than add new features. This was already rumored prior to Apple's unveiling of the new OS.

It is said that Snow Leopard delivers unrivaled support for multi-core processors with a new technology code-named "Grand Central." This is supposed to make it easier for devs to create programs that take full advantage of the power of multi-core Macs.

Apple, has also confirmed in a press release that Snow Leopard extends support for modern hardware with Open Computing Language (OpenCL). This enables any application to "tap into the vast gigaflops of GPU computing power previously available only to graphics applications," Apple reveals. OpenCL is based on C (programming language) and has been proposed as an open standard, according to the Cupertino-based Mac maker. The company has already made it clear today that Snow Leopard raises the software limit on system memory up to a theoretical 16TB of RAM, emphasizing OS X's focus on 64-bit technology.

As always, performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. Apple's benchmark was based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test on an iMac 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system running Mac OS X Snow Leopard, with 2GB of RAM. It has also been revealed that OS X includes out-of-the-box (native) support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in OS X applications Mail, iCal and Address Book.

More information on Apple's Snow Leopard can be found right here.