"There have been a few recent PowerPC announcements that have caused the Mac Faithful to wonder anew about The Switch and the "real" reasons behind it. First, there was the 970FX announcement, which clearly showed that IBM is capable of putting out a 970 processor that compares quite well with the Pentium M in performance/watt. And then there's the 970MP, which Apple has used to make a monster of a quad-processor 64-bit RISC workstation. To make matters even more interesting, P.A. Semi has just announced a dual-core 64-bit PowerPC processor SoC that, if the specs and numbers are to be believed, could take PowerPC to a whole new performance/watt level."
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Member since:2005-07-06
>"I thought the whole idea to switch was due to Intel selling the chips cheaper than IBM. "
Actually the chips are the same price.
It costs less to produce PPC chips than it does x86. x86 is able to be produced at a similar price to PPC because of volume.
>"But apparently there is a lot more to it?"
I don't know why its so hard for people to accept the fact that it was due to future road maps of the two companies.
Member since:2005-07-06
I don't know why its so hard for people to accept the fact that it was due to future road maps of the two companies.
Because IBM has been meeting their roadmaps, and Intel has not. Intel is currently a joke when speaking of roadmaps. They threw out yet another roadmap just this week.
If the switch is about roadmaps, Apple is in serious trouble. Intel hasn't met a roadmap in more than a year, and isn't expected to meet one for at least two more.
Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:
2005-10-02
I thought the whole idea to switch was due to Intel selling the chips cheaper than IBM.
That would make it a simple question of economy. But apparently there is a lot more to it?