Does Apple have an option to buy PPC assets from Mot?
A few months ago, MOSR had an 'insider' who claimed that Apple had taken over much of the production (R&D atleast) of the G5. This source also said that Apple had some kind of option to buy the assets at a certain time.
Does anyone else remember this story? I cant recall the specifics, but was wondering if there were any indications that this rumor had any truth to it.
I agree w/the sentiments voiced here about Moto. They are not interested in a long term involvement w/the desktop market. They are a company reeling from economic blows of the past year and are looking toward the most profitable elements of their business to carry them foward. Unfortunately, the G4/5 does not fit into this plan (IMO).
If the MOSR story had any truth to it, it would be an excellent opportunity for Apple to regain control of their destiny.
Does anyone else remember this story? I cant recall the specifics, but was wondering if there were any indications that this rumor had any truth to it.
I agree w/the sentiments voiced here about Moto. They are not interested in a long term involvement w/the desktop market. They are a company reeling from economic blows of the past year and are looking toward the most profitable elements of their business to carry them foward. Unfortunately, the G4/5 does not fit into this plan (IMO).
If the MOSR story had any truth to it, it would be an excellent opportunity for Apple to regain control of their destiny.
Comments
<strong>A few months ago, MOSR had an 'insider' who claimed that Apple had taken over much of the production (R&D atleast) of the G5. This source also said that Apple had some kind of option to buy the assets at a certain time.
Does anyone else remember this story? I cant recall the specifics, but was wondering if there were any indications that this rumor had any truth to it.
I agree w/the sentiments voiced here about Moto. They are not interested in a long term involvement w/the desktop market. They are a company reeling from economic blows of the past year and are looking toward the most profitable elements of their business to carry them foward. Unfortunately, the G4/5 does not fit into this plan (IMO).
If the MOSR story had any truth to it, it would be an excellent opportunity for Apple to regain control of their destiny.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I hope this is true... I want apple to licience out the AltiVec unit. I also want AMD to produce a G5! Or mabey slightly modified Hammer... :eek:
That way, Apple can stop begging Motorola to make bigger chips, when Motorola makes it's money by selling embedded devices.
It could happen. Motorola Semiconductor is hemmoraging money, and if Apple were to throw some bucks there way for the AltiVec portfolio, they might take it. (IBM has no interest in AltiVec, and are developing their own SIMD unit).
IBM has all kind of experience with fast, high performance chips and devices.
Why AIM when AI(-M) would work better?
SdC
<strong>AMD and apple would probably make could partners, how about the AIMA alliance? 4 companies 3 of which are only working on the processors, 1 is working on everything else(just about) I think that with Mot AMD and IBM making PPC chips apple would have ALOT to gain, even if Mot or IBM wasn't in the mix, I believe AMD would be a good partner, I wonder how AMD feels about the PPC chip?</strong><hr></blockquote>
I think I remember last fall IBM dumped their line of AMD desktops. Not that I am saying it is hard evidence, but it makes it less likely they will buddy up with AMD on processor development.
I also generally agree that there is something waiting to happen with PowerPC development, but I haven't read anything that said AMD has EVER thought about getting into the deal. It seems to me they have their hands full trying to beat Intel in Mhz. Besides, I thoght the AIM alliance was pretty much shot when IBM decided to continue in the direction of G3 and Moto decided to do G4 without them. The future is truly bleak for a clear cut answer.
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/20038.html"; target="_blank">Apple to buy PowerPC from Motorola?
</a> (6/28/01)
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/21321.html"; target="_blank">Motorola to link PowerPC direct to DRAM
</a> (8/29/01)
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/21692.html"; target="_blank">Motorola completes 1.6GHz PowerPC G5
</a> (9/17/01)
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/21813.html"; target="_blank">Apple to score industry first with dual 1394b, USB 2 support
</a> (9/21/01)
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/22388.html"; target="_blank">Apple looks to future - post-Motorola? - PowerPC world</a> (10/22/01)
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/23078.html"; target="_blank">PowerPC G5 enters 'volume production' - source
</a> (11/28/01)
[There are more. Go to <a href="http://theregister.co.uk"; target="_blank">The Register
</a> and search for "G5".]
The Reg is usually pretty reliable with their info, so I was really counting on the G5s based on this long-running series of reports. It may be that the G5s really are (almost) ready, but for its own reasons, Apple is waiting a bit to introduce it. Beats me, anyway, as to what's going on.
[edit: Adding aritcle titles to URLs]
[ 01-08-2002: Message edited by: TJM ]</p>
1) they could partner with IBM. IBM has SOI insulation technology that yeilds a nice 20-30% speed boost, plus they have a .13 micron process. IBM already builds G4's and has all the experience apple needs. this seems like the logical path.
2) more uncertain and certainly more controversial would be for apple and SGI to partner together. SGI is interested in the G5 as a potential replacement for their own line of RISC processors and they have lots of experience with high-powered workstations and servers.. apple could make good use of their expertise and working together they could swing a very heavy hammer and gain instant credibility with power users...many of whom are still using octanes and indigos.
3) AMD could fabricate chips for apple using the purchased altivec technologies. given their recent contract losses, they might be all too willing to get some additional business. plus apple would gain an ally in PC manufacturing circles and could use AMD's street credibility with windows users to get more of them to look seriously at mac hardware.
amazingly, the only company that seems truly disinterested in working with apple is motorola itself. i know they have their own problems right now, but apple can't continue to pay for motorola's mistakes.
i hope apple takes whatever steps are necessary to regain control of their own collective destiny. if that means letting motorola bleed to death while apple goes shopping for another partner, then that's how it needs to be. nobody can say motorola didn't have it coming.
Assuming things didnt go as planned, but its not worse case either, it looks like a real possibility to see a G5 in the coming month(s).
I thought it was pretty interesting that one of the articles predicted that the Apollo would be used for the iMac. This was a few months b4 MWSF...noone knew a G4 was going to be in the iMac. They also predicted side by side roll outs for the G5 and Apollo.
Very cool stuff.
<strong>To those saying Apple could take over PPC and AltiVec design and contract fab to IBM, don't you realize that IBM is the most expensive foundry in the world? Sure, it'd be nice to not have to depend on Mot, but you don't want to depend totally on IBM either.</strong><hr></blockquote>
There are quite a few foundries out there, I'm sure Apple would shop around. Perhaps even Intel could be persauded to fab PowerPC processors. That would be quite a PR coup for them.
The key is for Apple to have more control over its own CPU destiny, but this is an expensive and risky undertaking. AMD and Intel pour huge amounts of development money into chip development, and their market is 20x bigger than Apple's. The PowerPC has fallen behind simply because there isn't enough of a market to drive development of a desktop processor -- it has only stayed as close as it has to the x86 because of the embedded market, and the better architecture of the PowerPC.
Apple needs partners to help with funding the design work, but there aren't many around. Motorola's semiconductor division is in real trouble, and focussing more and more on the embedded market all the time.
- - IBM makes the POWER3/4 series, and IBM Microelectronics is a large and strong division.
Did I miss anybody?- SGI ditched their hardware division (MIPS) a while back, but they didn't meet with much success using Intel chips. I'm dubious they'd be much of a partner, but stranger things have happened.
- MIPS exists to create MIPS designs, so I doubt they're interested in PowerPCs. They are currently owned by NEC, aren't they?
- Sun builds SPARCs, and that has got to be costing them. This is probably a better possibility than SGI, but that doesn't mean its likely. They do have experience building big 64-bit chips and fast bussed machines though, so it could be a good thing for Apple. It would be strange if Apple wants to compete in the server market though.
- AMD is busy doing x86 chips. They might be an option as a foundry, but I'd be surprised if they would let any design teams be distracted by the small PPC market.
- Intel is huge, they are doing x86, IA64, ARM, and possibly Alpha. A potential foundry, but doing PowerPC design work would conflict with the IA64 goal of exlusively ruling the world.
- HP has their Precision line, and they're teamed with Intel for the IA-64 although its not clear how that relationship is doing. HP and Compaq are trying to merge and doing a bad job of it. I can't see this being an option.
- nVidia or ATI? They are busy doing graphics chips, but they are branching out into memory controllers. The line is blurring though, so who knows?
[ 01-09-2002: Message edited by: Programmer ]</p>
<strong>
- AMD is busy doing x86 chips. They might be an option as a foundry, but I'd be surprised if they would let any design teams be distracted by the small PPC market.</strong><hr></blockquote>
It might be interesting for PowerPC 64 bit and Hammer chips to share part of the design. The Hammer chips will incorporate an onboard memory controller, three hypertransport busses, and a switch, as well as a two level cache architecture, some or all of which may be shareable with a different core (probably not the caches because of byte ordering problems). If this were so, a large amount of design effort on Apple's part might be removed, and in an area in which they have in the past not been a first-rate performer.
Using hypertransport like this would give them access to standard motherboard chips for things like AGP/PCI(X)/USB, as well a marvellous multiprocessor system.
I don't think it will happen, but it's a nice thought.
Michael
I don't think they do their own fabbing.