Motorola To Spin Off Chip Division
dafz1 writes "According to an article
at CNET News, Motorola
has announced they will create a new company from their Semiconductor Products
Sector (SPS), which builds chips such as the PowerPC. Reasons cited include 'surrendering to IBM a key role in delivering the PowerPC for Apple Computer's top-of-the-line desktop'. This follows earlier news that Motorola's CEO will step down, citing a 'difference
of opinion' with fellow executives."
I don't think it will change. Apple is already moving off to greener pastures (IBM). Once IBM can lower the requirements of a G5 so that they are suitable for notebooks, and cheap enough for consumer machines, I expect the G4 to be dropped completely. In addition, Apple will probably use the next revision of the G3 with Altivec, which IBM is developing, for the iBooks.
The main problem for Apple was that Motorola found making slower chips for embedded systems to be more profitable than making faster ones for computers. So Apple turned to IBM, which does make computers and understands the issues. The new G5 is very competitive.