Moto to revive chip division
<a href="http://theregister.com/content/3/29628.html"; target="_blank">Moto to revive chip division wih $400m feed</a>
I wondered what made Moto 'anticipate a ten per cent increase in sales?
A 60% increase in spending isn't what you'd expect from Moto's troubled SPS.
I wondered what made Moto 'anticipate a ten per cent increase in sales?
A 60% increase in spending isn't what you'd expect from Moto's troubled SPS.
Comments
<strong>moto moto moto! what are we gonna do with. Do you not get the message? ITS TOO LATE!!!
Mot does have other customers.
Even for the G4.
Mot SPS doesn't revolve around Apple. Get over your (vicarious) self
Unless Mot found a way to get Eleven working on either one of their fabs or a partner's (which, for the record, I consider unlikely), they're probably anticipating a strong embedded product line. However, they have a long history of building desktop chips with an eye toward eventual embedded use, and desktop chips are a great way to keep pressing forward with R&D. Their main problem has been their fabs. They just aren't in any shape to make high-end product. Maybe the $400M is so they can run their fabs clean for the first time in two years and actually produce something other than flash memory on their now-mature .13 micron fab?
This might give Apple options at the low end that they haven't had before, too. Don't be so quick to rule Mot out. Just because they aren't (and probably won't be) producing something that can go in a PowerMac doesn't mean that they're of no use to Apple, or of no use generally.
If IBM bought into AltiVec, Motorola would be dead right now, as compared to possibly being dead a year or two from now. So lucky for them I guess...
<strong>... MOTO goes after the desktop market again.</strong><hr></blockquote>
with all respect, mots proc designs are not bad, they are (hm...were) pretty competitive in the not so far past.
and apple is a solid partner. Why sould they drop them?
best
Moto, as much as you might like to berate them, are very good at making chips that run cool. This makes them preferable to the 970 in, say, your iMacs which you don't want to put a really noisy fan into, or your laptops, in which you're concerned about battery life.
<strong>What is the process then announced a year or two ago? Geranium somethingorother? Wasn't it 100+ GHZ chips?</strong><hr></blockquote>
That would be SiGe: Silicon Germanium
<a href="http://www.research.ibm.com/sigetech/describe.html"; target="_blank">Good intro to the topic</a>
<strong>Moto, as much as you might like to berate them, are very good at making chips that run cool.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Really?! Since when? Every OC'er worth his salt knows to find G3/G4's made by IBM, as they run cooler at the same speed, and can therefore be OC'd much higher/more stable.
I'm not saying MOT is dead, though I wouldn't cry too much. I'd love to see NEC get into the mix, and become a new PPC partner. They have amazing R&D, big-picture understanding, and are dying to get into the PC market somehow. They've got the high-$ R&D for the big stuff, and would love to cash in (as IBM does) on a lot of that research in the lower end of stuff (meaning server-range stuff, as opposed to National Labratory/Earth Sim sized projects).
If NEC could put their engineering behind the marketing brains of apple, there would be no need for these boards (mixed blessing).
Ahem, yes. It wasn't that long ago that Motorola had my respect for their cpu design.
But what a difference four years and a steady stream of broken promises and lukewarm updates can make.
Still. Competition is good, folks. It wasn't that long ago that everybody was counting Ati out when Nvidia put them on the canvas.
But they have since proven...they weren't counted out...
Lemon Bon Bon
(970 in 'POWER'Macs. 'Squealll...ruk...pop...What's that? It's...why yes it is...IBM's opening a a huge can of Whup-ass...')
<strong>
Really?! Since when? Every OC'er worth his salt knows to find G3/G4's made by IBM, as they run cooler at the same speed, and can therefore be OC'd much higher/more stable.</strong><hr></blockquote>
CharlesS probably meant that Mot can design cool chips that run well. That is factually true. The fact that a G4 fabbed by IBM runs cool and clocks high is a testimony to the combination of Mot's design talent and IBM's fab skills.
Mot has been burned on actual factory production of CPUs. Their design talents are still excellent and highly respected.
[quote]<strong>I'd love to see NEC get into the mix, and become a new PPC partner. They have amazing R&D, big-picture understanding, and are dying to get into the PC market somehow. They've got the high-$ R&D for the big stuff, and would love to cash in (as IBM does) on a lot of that research in the lower end of stuff (meaning server-range stuff, as opposed to National Labratory/Earth Sim sized projects).</strong><hr></blockquote>
If Apple could get IBM and NEC in one room without starting a war, more power to them.
<strong>Lets face it. Moto figures that no one will want to have bragging rights on the integrated processor in their set-top DVD player.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that high end routers and the like that use Mot's G4s could definitely use higher clock speeds, if they were available. I'm sure there are other embedded applications we could come up with that give Mot some impetus for pushing the Hz higher too.
Besides, Mot charges Apple premium $$ for the high Hz stuff at such a rate that it helps in their overall PPC development fueling other improvements in the lower end that are not necessarily Hz driven.
MM
<strong>If the new funding doesn't give Moto a clean 130 nm fab and doesn't let them get to 90 nm sooner, it pretty much doesn't matter how good their embedded chips are, they are dead. Being about 1 year late, and possibly still counting, on their HiP 7 130 nm fab is already endangering them.
If IBM bought into AltiVec, Motorola would be dead right now, as compared to possibly being dead a year or two from now. So lucky for them I guess...</strong><hr></blockquote>Motorola dead? Motorola is dominant in the production of embedded microprocessors. This is a market that is substantially larger than the desktop personal computers and departmental servers markets were Intel processors are dominant. Go to a window and look out onto the street. Every automobile you see has several microprocessors. Your DVD player, cable TV set-top tuner, stove, refrigerator, microwave--just about every electronic device you can think of has microcontrollers. And do you know where Intel is in that market? Nowhere, that's where. Why? Because they suck, that's why. How do they suck? They give the wrong results. The embedded market demands that processors be reliable.