On Oct 24, 2010, at 8:10 AM, Dan wrote:
At 5:07 AM -0600 10/24/2010, James Therrault wrote:
When the PowerPC alliance dropped the ball (inability to produce
faster PowerPC G4 processors for laptops), Apple jumped ship by
switching to Intel's new Core architecture.
Don'tcha mean G5?
The roadmap called for both the G4 and G5 to progress. The G5 was
really targeted toward desktop and server type machines, that had
the available power and room for giant heat sinks. The G4 (7450)
was the laptop chip that stalled out hard.
Interesting, but I still think that Apple dropped the ball with
regard to option to power sucking G5 chips for laptops. Neither
IBM or Motorola could do it but maybe a special arrangement with
other Intel competitors to work on a low power PPC such as AMD
could have proven fruitful.
hah. No way would Big Blue ever license the Power architecture to
the likes of Intel or AMD!!!!
Apple had little to do with things, back in the day. It was the
IBM / Motorola / Freescale collective that was designing and
producing the chips. Their sales to Apple were so trivial that
Apple basically had no influence. Ultimately, they went in the
direction best for them... IBM put their efforts in the real Power
chips. Moto/Freescale went for the embedded processor market. And
Apple switched to the lemming platform.
But if you look back at the original IBM/Motorola/Apple alliance, the
only partner that fulfilled it's obligations/promises was Apple. IBM
was supposed to adapt PS2 to run on the PPC chips and IBM and
Motorola continuously squabbled over things like ALTIVEC etc. The PS2
effort was a failure and chip speeds/attributes began to lag behind
Intel/AMD.
Most of the earlier PPC chips were made and (co-designed) by IBM/
Motorola and were made right here in Austin at a brand spankin' new FAB.
Eventurally and partly due to the ALTIVEC squabble, IBM took over
most G4 production and I believe virtually all of the G5 work. It is
during the G5 era that Motorola spun off its semiconductor business
which is now known as freescale. (AMD did the same with Spansion, we
have both in Austin).
When I look at things, I tend to think big picture. I see a lot of
opportunities missed.
Power technology is now way up there with regards to clock speed
supporting multiple cores.
Yea. We call that Defeat Snatched From The Jaws of Victory. ...
which of course brings us back the old argument of wanting that
robust build of OS X, that runs on Intel x86, AMD x86, ARM, and Power.
You bet! Such a build may exist but... Does Apple see the opportunity?
<sigh>
JT
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