Slashdot Mirror
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."
Too bad they didn't do this a couple of years ago. We would have been a lot better off. Good to see the executives saw the same thing.
- oZ
// i am here.
in this, but from what I have gathered, Motorola was the prime reason Apple chips fell behind, Moto and Co. simply weren't interested (or up to the task?) in producing new chips for them.
With a new division spun off, perhaps this will change?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
The new company at least will give a damn about its chip business -- it's all they've got -- something that Mot itself never did.
Surprised they didn't sell it, but they probably couldn't find any takers.
Surrendering to IBM a key role in delivering the PowerPC for Apple Computer's top-of-the-line desktop'
Um... last time I checked it was Motorola lackluster development the drove Apple into IBM's arms.
Fellow Executives: "We'd like to make market-leading products. And money."
CEO: "Meh."
Thre you have it, a difference of opinion.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Years ago I was talking to some of the semi guys, and they were royally pissed at MOTO corporate for screwing them over, funding-wise. The PPC division was always paranoid that they were getting screwed because Moto lost big $$ when Apple shut down the Mac clones way back when.
Basically, they believed Moto corporate was sandbagging the PPC to "screw Apple."
One thing for sure, they definitely need better cooks for the broth. They've seem to forgotten how to make chips.
Motorola has been having problems with their advanced semiconductor products, particularly PowerPC microprocessors, for years. When Apple first released the Power Mac G4, there were so many fabrication problems at Motorola's chip foundries that Apple initially had to scale back what were supposed to be 500MHz G4s to 450MHz, a move that really hurt Apple's credibility in the computing world.
More recently, Moto had been having problems delivering G4 7447s in sufficient quantities for Apple to release their Powerbook upgrades, including the much-ballyhooed 15" Aluminum model. In any case, Apple's decision to go with IBM's PowerPC technology was probably motivated as much by pragmatic corporate survivalism as any other factor -- they simply couldn't afford to be tied down by a semiconductor sloth like Motorola.
In any case, I doubt this means much for Moto's embedded processor and microcontroller business, which has been thriving for quite some time. It just doesn't operate under the same pressure as the rapidly advancing world of high-performance microprocessor products. The 68HC11 and HCS12 will probably be around for a very long time to come.
I think the difference was he wanted to remain employed, and they didn't agree...
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
Sure, it's great for employees to have an in-house Potato Chips departement, but companies should concentrate on one thing, and do it well.
It's seems likely to me that Motorolla did not want to use it's own semiconductors in it's communications business. But doing so would, in essence, be a vote of no confidence in their own semiconductor business.
By spinning off their semi-conductor biz and framing it as a move to meet demands from other customers, they are able to ditch their processors without outright killing their semiconductor business.
If the spinoff does poorly, they'll quietly kill it later. If it does well, they'll either start using their products again or sell it off for a big profit.
It's sad to see Motorolla leaving the chip business though. :-(
What's to become of Metrowerks?
Presumably it will follow the semiconductor division [since a CPU ain't worth diddly-squat without a compiler], but maybe they want to keep you so that you can write a compiler for their cellphone operating systems?
Have you heard yet?
Motorola has done a horrible job of marketing their technology over the years, from the failed and forgotten AIM (Apple, IBM, and Motorola) alliance (remember? Taligent? "Pink"? Yeah, me neither...) to their more recent "Digital DNA" (I still don't know what that meant) marketing campaign.
What does Motorola do? As far as the rest of the world is concerned, they make cellphones and stuff. People hear about the PowerMac from Apple, and occasionally the PowerPC from IBM, but they hear nothing that makes sense out of Motorola. Hopefully this will change, for their sake.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Motorola was placed in contrast with Zenith. Both companies were established at around the same time and were basically in the same market. Over time, however, Zenith languished while Motorola kept on crankin' out the hits. Motorola's culture encouraged innovation and relentless focus on quality.
Those of you who graduated from college in the 1990s or 2000s likely won't remember this, but in the 1980s, Motorola was one of the view companies that was consistently beating Japanese companies in quality. They were hailed by US government and business leaders alike as an exemplar of what an American business could do in a challenging international market.
This is just further proof that nobody sits on top forever, and that keeping a very large, multinational business dynamic is a tremendously difficult task.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The G3 chips that Apple still uses (ibooks) have been made by IBM for some time now.
Ithe rumor mills claim great things in store for the IBM G3s in future generations (including altivec support) and ever increased efficiency. I would guess in the next year or so, when Apple roughly predicted a G5 powerbook, we will see everything switch to G5 or these next generation G3 chips.
These super efficient and powerful G3 chips might lead to more fun machines like the fanless cube and iMac... let alone great news for ibook users.
Are you just trolling? If not, this might help you next time. These things are easy to do.1 33
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=95
That whiz-bang Opteron/Itanium is Backwards compatible to the Pentium II MMX/K6-2, which is backwards compatible to the 80486, which is backwards compatible to the 386+387, which is backwards compatible to the 286+287, which is backwards compatible to the 8086+8087, which is backwards compatible to the 8080, which is backwards compatible to the 8008, which is backwards compatible to the 4004, which was designed for use in a pocket calculator. Likewise, that VIA K7VMM is backwards compatible to the PC JR and Win XP is backwards compatible (to some degree) to QDOS.
Because I do not use legacy binary-only software, I do not need my machine to be backwards compatible to run old DOS programs etc. Some things can be done much more efficiently with an architecture designed with modern features in mind from the start. I would love to get my hands on sizeable quantities of PPC G5 workstations, but because of economies of scale & microsoft's stranglehold, the only architechture available at a reasonable price from multiple vendors is the descendants of the IBM PC.
I graduated in '93, and I got a job at Motorola in the cellular division. I worked there for 5 years, and couldn't take it anymore. Their "culture" is manufactured, and I was very surprised that they got anything accomplished. But it depends on the different divisions and how they are doing. Ours (cellular services) did OK, but we were riding on the coattails of the divisions that were doing really good (phone mfgr and radios comes to mind). They had a bonus plan in place were every 6 months you got a bonus if you met the goals set out for your division. It was given to you as a percentage of what you made in the previous 6 months. My first 6 months there we got 11%, then 4%, then 1.3%, then they cut it out all together. The year before I got there, one division got 34%. They capped it after that. It would actually produce animosity within the company. It was generally a solid company that was on a steady decline. People who had been there 10 years who were just skating on their "time served". People who had been there 20+ years who were called "lifers" and they could pretty much do as little as they wished. Ten years was called "getting your tenure". Boy, those people got a wake-up call a couple of years ago. Some people have only worked there, and they don't know what goes on outside of Moto. If you have ever met someone who has worked there for a long time, you know what I mean. Many people I know that left there have had similar experiences.
It is a very weird place. After I lost my job at the place I left Moto for (company investors pulled out during the bubble burst), I went back to Moto. I thought "it can't be as bad as I remember it." It was. I went to have a meeting to do a pre-interview. Some HR drone talked to me to gauge my skillset. I was told it would be about 4 weeks for my paperwork to be processed, and if I was a fit anywhere, I would be contacted for interviews. It was such a sterile, devoid atmosphere that it was creepy. I told her "thanks, but no thanks" and walked out, vowing to never go back.
This is just further proof that nobody sits on top forever, and that keeping a very large, multinational business dynamic is a tremendously difficult task.
I got to see just one small piece of the company, and if the rest of it was anything at all like where I worked, good riddance. Of course, I do own stock that I purchased while there. It was around 90, then did a 3 to 1 split, and now it is around 11. Yay.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
First I had to take the entire thing apart. This, if you've been inside a laptop, is not an easy trivial task. It needs the battery and case to come off, the drive and optical drive to come out, and apples STUPID design inside them meant I had to file away some parts as they were put in without obviously meaning to be taken apart again.
RTFM, dumbass.
For starters, Apple's optional AirPort is built to use the pre-wired Powerbook antennae (for what they're worth in the TiPB) so it's a custom part. You _can_ use a standard part (such as an 802.11g) in the PC-card slot, though it's uglier.
In addition, according to Apple's free installation documentation, you remove the battery, pull the base plate, slip in the airport card, attach antenna, and close it up. They even draw you a picture!
If you were pulling optical drives or filing pieces, then you obviously didn't RTFM.
OTOH, having worked on junker PC laptops for the better part of a decade, I have to say that the PB is probably the easiest to work on I've ever owned. I had to reseat the 'q' key at one point after I dropped something on the keyboard, and luckily the keyboard is removable via ribbon connector! I restored the kybd with a bit of under-membrane surgery and tweezing, and I couldn't have asked for better. BTW, if you want to upgrade the PB RAM, the SODIMM slot is under the easily-removed keyboard.
I plan on holding onto mine until the toy budget recovers and/or the G5 Powerbook is available.
I need to vent guys and here I hope I find sympathy! I HATE MACS
There are perfectly valid reasons to hate Macs. Your rant, OTOH, is just sad.
Anyway, I've talked my friend into getting rid of her Mac addiction, she will definitely be buying a Dell next!
With friends like you, who needs Saddam Hussein?
I understand what you are saying too. I do have a mono phone that I use for talking & text messages. The nice thing about text messages is that it can be delivered late, not phone calls. How can you depend on a system that is not dependable? I expect that all my calls are going to come through to me not too look down at my phone and see 1 missed call when it did not ring. Could it be the phone? Probably, my problem is not only with missed calls but dropped calls. I can also understand each cell site can have X amount of people and if I am transferring sites and it happens to be full, tough I get dropped.
Yeah cool, bring additional features, fix what you have first and then add on. Otherwise you are going to end up Windows XP, an OS that is nearly 2+ gb to install where most of the code is patches to existing problems.
alias dir='rm -rf
IBM did the same thing with its old printer division. IBM spun off the division into a separate company, Lexmark.
In this age where many companies like Sun, Cisco, and Intel favor H-1B workers and deliberately create a work environment with brutal, cutthroat competition, it is nice to know that some companies like Motorola and IBM still try to cling to some shred of humanity that once characterized the finest American companies.
...and coherence seems to be firmly behind you...
Speaking as an ex-Motorolan, I have to agree that this guy is spot-on. I worked there for two years, and this place was as close to Dilbert-land as can be possible in real life. "Steady decline", lifers, guys who have not done a stitch of work for years, baffling political undercurrents etc. I quickly learned that some of the secretaries are mines of information. I befriended a pretty one to whom all the bosses were known to spill the beans to make themselves seem important, and learned of important stuff weeks (sometimes months) before public pronouncements.
During the two years I worked there, I worked on at least 5 different projects that were subsequently canceled. Motorola does not believe in canceling projects efficiently. What happens is that funding for the project dries up, and the politically savvy guys get out. The naive ones (I was one for a while) show up to work and keep working, desperately trying to fix bugs etc while their bosses try to feign interest.
Motorola does not have much longer to run. Samsung and Nokia will kick their asses.
Magnus.