Bodhi wrote:
[quote]I do not think that Apple is putting all of its eggs from the Motorola basket and putting them in the IBM basket. They would gain nothing other than better engineering, but still dependant on one company.<hr></blockquote>
They never had all their eggs in Motorola's basket. Just a few too many.
The chief architect of the PPC ISA was an Apple employee, and so was the architect of the "Velocity Engine" ISA. Mot owns the implementation in silicon that they call "AltiVec," but to my understanding IBM could design a compatible unit - or license Mot's on favorable terms - tomorrow. They didn't at first, and they haven't yet, because they have no use for a CPU with SIMD built in. The IBM design philosophy is to use a pure RISC CPU and farm additional kinds of computation out to dedicated processors. On the other hand, they were more than happy to fab G4s for Mot - at their usual premium, using excess production capacity reserved for third party contracts.
[quote]Motorolla and IBM would not be manufacturing G3's and G4's right now if they were not making any money off of them.[quote]
Obviously. But that doesn't imply anything about the viability of the alliance, or its usefulness to any of the parties. IBM Semiconductor will manufacture just about anything if you pay them enough to.
[ 12-08-2001: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
[quote]I do not think that Apple is putting all of its eggs from the Motorola basket and putting them in the IBM basket. They would gain nothing other than better engineering, but still dependant on one company.<hr></blockquote>
They never had all their eggs in Motorola's basket. Just a few too many.
The chief architect of the PPC ISA was an Apple employee, and so was the architect of the "Velocity Engine" ISA. Mot owns the implementation in silicon that they call "AltiVec," but to my understanding IBM could design a compatible unit - or license Mot's on favorable terms - tomorrow. They didn't at first, and they haven't yet, because they have no use for a CPU with SIMD built in. The IBM design philosophy is to use a pure RISC CPU and farm additional kinds of computation out to dedicated processors. On the other hand, they were more than happy to fab G4s for Mot - at their usual premium, using excess production capacity reserved for third party contracts.[quote]Motorolla and IBM would not be manufacturing G3's and G4's right now if they were not making any money off of them.[quote]
Obviously. But that doesn't imply anything about the viability of the alliance, or its usefulness to any of the parties. IBM Semiconductor will manufacture just about anything if you pay them enough to.
[ 12-08-2001: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
"...within intervention's distance of the embassy." - CvB
Original music:
The Mayflies - Black earth Americana. Now on iTMS!
Becca Sutlive - Iowa Fried Rock 'n Roll - now on iTMS!
Original music:
The Mayflies - Black earth Americana. Now on iTMS!
Becca Sutlive - Iowa Fried Rock 'n Roll - now on iTMS!
"...within intervention's distance of the embassy." - CvB
Original music:
The Mayflies - Black earth Americana. Now on iTMS!
Becca Sutlive - Iowa Fried Rock 'n Roll - now on iTMS!
Original music:
The Mayflies - Black earth Americana. Now on iTMS!
Becca Sutlive - Iowa Fried Rock 'n Roll - now on iTMS!
