Hard Times - All change down at the chippy
IBM decides to stop making Apple-flavored chips
posted by Sideath
The majority of computer users couldn't care less what make their central processor unit (CPU) is - whether it's Intel, AMD, IBM or Motorola. Get online, however, and you'll find a huge contigent of people who care passionately about precisely who makes their chip. Not that it really makes much difference. There are in depth discussions on 'pipelines', 'threading', and 'frontside BUS speed'. And every camp for a certain make is sure it's choice is best; to deviate is tantamount to betrayal!
Which is why a huge shockwave reverberated through technogeek chat rooms last week when Steve Jobs, head of Apple Computers (yes, maker of that pretty G5 on your desk, or that stylistic iPod in your pocket), announced that the company would from next year start building its computers from using CPUs from Intel (currently mainly makers of the famous PC Pentium CPU series), not IBM or Motorola, its suppliers since it was originally founded.
The reason Jobs gave was pragmatic. He said IBM's projections for improvement in the performance of its "PowerPC" chips for the next few years simply weren't good as Intel's. And IBM had already fallen behind in its earlier promises - that it would make G5 CPUs running at 3Ghz by last year (they're still not out), and that it could supply enough G5s to meet Apple's demands. It's inability on both counts has cost Apple millions of dollars in lost sales.
IBM just wasn't interested in making quicker, smaller chips for Apple because it could make more money from other clients, such as Microsoft (which is using its PowerPC chip to work in parallel in the forthcoming Xbox 360) and Sony (PlayStation 3). Apple, it seems, was last in the queue.
But the online chatterers might have seen the change coming as Apple ensured thta its OSX OS could run on both PowerPC chips and Intel chips back in mid 2000.
So the chage shouldn't be so hard. Though the devil is in the detail - that is , getting independent developers such as Adobe, and the thousands of others who make the Mac platform useful, to twidde their software so it works on Intel chips. Because these things aren't quite as simple as they look.
But nowhere near impossible. Brent Simmons, whose NetNews Wire program is widely used to read online news, says it took him just two hours to recomplie it to run on both PowerPC and Intel chips.
posted by Sideath
The majority of computer users couldn't care less what make their central processor unit (CPU) is - whether it's Intel, AMD, IBM or Motorola. Get online, however, and you'll find a huge contigent of people who care passionately about precisely who makes their chip. Not that it really makes much difference. There are in depth discussions on 'pipelines', 'threading', and 'frontside BUS speed'. And every camp for a certain make is sure it's choice is best; to deviate is tantamount to betrayal!
Which is why a huge shockwave reverberated through technogeek chat rooms last week when Steve Jobs, head of Apple Computers (yes, maker of that pretty G5 on your desk, or that stylistic iPod in your pocket), announced that the company would from next year start building its computers from using CPUs from Intel (currently mainly makers of the famous PC Pentium CPU series), not IBM or Motorola, its suppliers since it was originally founded.
The reason Jobs gave was pragmatic. He said IBM's projections for improvement in the performance of its "PowerPC" chips for the next few years simply weren't good as Intel's. And IBM had already fallen behind in its earlier promises - that it would make G5 CPUs running at 3Ghz by last year (they're still not out), and that it could supply enough G5s to meet Apple's demands. It's inability on both counts has cost Apple millions of dollars in lost sales.
IBM just wasn't interested in making quicker, smaller chips for Apple because it could make more money from other clients, such as Microsoft (which is using its PowerPC chip to work in parallel in the forthcoming Xbox 360) and Sony (PlayStation 3). Apple, it seems, was last in the queue.
But the online chatterers might have seen the change coming as Apple ensured thta its OSX OS could run on both PowerPC chips and Intel chips back in mid 2000.
So the chage shouldn't be so hard. Though the devil is in the detail - that is , getting independent developers such as Adobe, and the thousands of others who make the Mac platform useful, to twidde their software so it works on Intel chips. Because these things aren't quite as simple as they look.
But nowhere near impossible. Brent Simmons, whose NetNews Wire program is widely used to read online news, says it took him just two hours to recomplie it to run on both PowerPC and Intel chips.
posted by sideath at 6/22/2005 12:28:00 pm
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