Repeat after me: Motorola isn't going anywhere
Why would Apple put all of their eggs in one basket? Don't you think they learned their lesson? Apple will keep Motorola chips in their lineup to keep the money flowing into Motorola so they can play them off against IBM at at a later date.....I suspect the G4 is here to stay for a long while, so get used to it.
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Originally posted by I, Fred
Why would Apple put all of their eggs in one basket? Don't you think they learned their lesson? Apple will keep Motorola chips in their lineup to keep the money flowing into Motorola so they can play them off against IBM at at a later date.....I suspect the G4 is here to stay for a long while, so get used to it.
Well, they might have no choice. The SPS division of Mot was for sale. They haven't because they can't find anyone insane enough to buy it. Then it did turn around a bit, they started expanding and spending a bit on it and worked out the kinks in their .13 micron fab, almost 2 years late. But I pity the few friends I have left who still work there.
motorola,for now,still has its uses.
SAN JOSE, Calif. --- Motorola has started transferring silicon-on-insulator (SOI) capability to the 90-nanometer manufacturing process technology being developed by the alliance of Motorola, Philips, STMicroelectronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. at Crolles, France.
A PowerPC processor made for performance in 90-nm SOI CMOS, and for economic efficiency on 300-mm diameter wafers, should be in manufacture at Crolles in 2004, according to Claudine Simson, the recently appointed chief technology officer of the Semiconductor Products Sector of Motorola.
Work is underway at Motorola's Dan Noble Center in Austin, Texas, where the company is developing the 90-nanometer CMOS-on-SOI manufacturing process technology on the 200-mm diameter wafers that Motorola runs there in MOS-13 wafer fab. As that is perfected Motorola engineers are to transfer the high performance technology to 300-mm wafers being run at Crolles, Simson said.
Motorola engineers are in Crolles and SOI test chips for the 90-nm manufacturing process technology are expected to run on 300-mm wafers at Crolles, ?this summer? Simson said in an interview with SBN (see June 23 story).
Of the technology transfer she said: ?It's starting now. Test chips will run in Crolles in the summer and a PowerPC will run next year.? Simson said Motorola usually sees a 25 to 35 percent performance improvement for a given circuit over its equivalent in plain CMOS at the same minimum geometry.
In a keynote address to the Embedded Processor Forum last week Simson said Motorola is backing SOI to evolve from being a high-performance option to CMOS today to become the foundation of all leading-edge digital circuit manufacture over the next decade and several process technology generations (see June 19 story).
Originally posted by I, Fred
Why would Apple put all of their eggs in one basket? Don't you think they learned their lesson? Apple will keep Motorola chips in their lineup to keep the money flowing into Motorola so they can play them off against IBM at at a later date.....I suspect the G4 is here to stay for a long while, so get used to it.
Oh you mean like the initial Powermas which all used the "IBM" PPC 601 chip. Yes they learned their lesson. Motorola is still as uncompetitive as ever. I suspect you don't realize today's rift between Apple and Moto. It's as bad as it's ever been.
It appears that Apple could drop the 7457 into the powerbooks, the iMacs and the remaining G4 Powermac without ANY additional engineering costs.
The 7457 is half the price of the 7455, and so even cheaper than the 970, (which is itself about 25% cheaper than the 7455).
So IF THEY EVER SHIP THE DAMN THING... Apple, on the low end, could adopt the 7457 and
- avoid short-term engineering costs on its low end lines.
- Lower the prices on all G4 products by $100
- Bump speeds across the board by 30%
- Reduce powerconsumption on its powerbooks.
Prediction: The .09 nm 970 will eventually be found across the entire line of macs. However, if the 7457 can beat the .09 970 to market by more than 3 months, we'll see one last iteration of the g4.
Originally posted by Ompus
Prediction: The .09 nm 970 will eventually be found across the entire line of macs. However, if the 7457 can beat the .09 970 to market by more than 3 months, we'll see one last iteration of the g4.
Is the 7457 slated to begin life at 90 nm, or 130? Sounds like from what Eric_Z posted that PowerPCs at 90 nm won't get underway until 2004.
The current G4 is still at 180 nm, right? So even 130 would be a big improvement. Of course, Motorola would have to close to ready to ship a 130-nm 7457 to be much help for Apple's current transition dilemma.
The 7455, is .18
To repeat myself, I think the .09 970 is the future for the powerbooks...but before we get there, I think we'll see the 7457 as a speed bump.
Btw, wow, look how long Moto has spent at the 180 nm node:
Moto 7400: 220 nm Cu interconnect
Moto 7410: 180 nm Cu
Moto 7450: 180 nm Cu
Moto 7451: 180 nm Cu
Moto 7455A: 180 nm Cu SOI for early versions
Moto 7455B: 180 nm Cu SOI low-k dielectric
Moto 7457: 130 nm Cu SOI, maybe low-k dielectric, ships who knows when
Moto dual-core PPC: 90 nm, it's probably a fantasy right now
IBM 750: 200 nm Cu, possibly SOI
IBM 750cx/cxe: 180 nm Cu SOI
IBM 750fx: 130 nm Cu SOI, shipped last year
IBM 970: 130 nm Cu SOI, almost shipping
IBM 970+: 90 nm Cu SOI, low-k (970+ follows same nomenclature as Power4+, but could be different))
IBM 980: 90 nm Power5 derived PPC
"Motorola is not going anywhere"
"Motorola is huge for us," said Joswiak. "Our partnership with Motorola is not going away, G4s are in every other part of our product line. As you can see, [the G5] is not going in a PowerBook anytime soon. Motorola remains very important to us, but IBM is the one that can take us to the next level."
Originally posted by murk
Quote from MacCentral:
G4s are in every other part of our product line.
'cept the ibooks
Apple's renewed relationship with IBM doesn't mean that Motorola will be going away anytime soon. In fact, Apple will keep one G4-based configuration around for as long as the market demands. The G4 model will sell for $1299 directly from Apple.
"Motorola is huge for us," said Joswiak. "Our partnership with Motorola is not going away, G4s are in every other part of our product line. As you can see, [the G5] is not going in a PowerBook anytime soon. Motorola remains very important to us, but IBM is the one that can take us to the next level."
fyi
End of Line
Originally posted by snoopy
What about the bus on the next G4? If the Motorola bus cannot match competition from the P4, why would Apple stay with them? IBM could produce a G4 replacement with a good bus.
Yeah, alas, the thing is not about the CPU only. Motorola can possibly make G4 @ 3 GHz, but it won't perform any better than at 1.4 GHz on the same 167 MHz bus.
While the introduction of the MPC7457 may be imminent, it still is old architecture only now on a smaller process. 200MHz FSB, whoopeeee
For significant performance, it really requires L3 sram and this only drives up cost.
OR, it could mean that Motorola has something other than the MPC7457 close to production that addresses the FSB and pathetically weak floating point performance when compared to modern desktop cpu's.
Don't get me wrong, I like Motorola, but have no faith in them providing modern desktop cpu's any time soon.
The key, unfortunately, to continued use of the G4 is when and if we will see the mysterious 7457-RM. As noted by others, the bus limitations will continue to dog the G4 and make a significant performance gap between it and the G5 into a chasm.
Although, Motorola has screwed Apple royally, a 13 nm G4 on a modern mother board (with a real FSB) followed by a 9 nm version could serve Apple well for the next couple of years. If it's not going to see the light of day for a year, though, Apple has no good reason not drop the G4 completely once the 9 nm 970 is available.
Originally posted by rickag
OR, it could mean that Motorola has something other than the MPC7457 close to production that addresses the FSB and pathetically weak floating point performance when compared to modern desktop cpu's.
You can't stray too far from the current G4 (7455) and remain pin compatible. If a new chip isn't pin compatible the old, a major motherboard redesign is needed to use them.
Since you mentioned "Mr. Joswiak's comments", can I assume your main concern is the PowerBooks? If so, consider that PowerBooks might be using the G5 around a year from now. Would it make sense for Apple to redesign the motherboards of the PowerBooks twice over the next year (once for a G4 with a new bus architecture, once again for the G5), when faster, lower-power 7457s will probably be sufficient to make most potential PowerBook buyers happy, and could be plugged into current motherboards with little engineering effort?
(Of course, a 15" AlBook will have a fairly different motherboard than a 15" TiBook, with form-factor changes and new features force the issue, but a lot of that update might only be a physical rearrangement of board layout without any fundamental architectural changes. The 12" and 17" can be spared any major redesign by using the 7457.)