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Apple Switch to Intel Not a Big Loss for IBM
KaushalParekh writes "An interesting article about how Apple's switch to Intel chips may not be that bad for IBM after all. "Apple sees an opportunity with Intel. But IBM continues the same chip development that allowed Apple to claim several firsts and fastests. Now, Big Blue will plow its research efforts into processors for game consoles and other consumer products that might one day knock the PC down a rung." Also, "a lucrative avenue for IBM in China, where the marriage of the Linux OS to PCs armed with [IBM] PowerPC chips presents some intriguing possibilities." And, "Large firms like Sony, Microsoft and Comcast are betting that a home-entertainment device, evolved from a game console or set-top box, will replace many of the PC's functions. IBM plans to be inside these new systems.""
IBM has so many area they are excellent in that I doubt Apple's departure will be all that bad. They are moving to be a very service oriented business and that seems to be a big market in the future. Add to that their dominance in the supercomputer market and their future looks very positive to me.
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Not just that, but IBM is as much a business services company as anything else theese days.
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What are the possibilities we could have Thinkpads running on PPC chips?
It was already known when Apple announced the switch that it wouldn't mean a huge financial loss for IBM.
;)
The demand from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo is a lot higher so IBM doesn't need to cry
Game console becomes set-top box; set-top box becomes PC; game console gets invented.
"Forward into the past!" - Firesign Theater
Yesterday I went to a client's home that has 2 PCs and 2 Macs, they are the Design/Publicity kind of crew. They are utterly unaware of the switch, and believe me, the will remain so AFTER it. IBM is probably right in pursuing this path, but I dont honestly see embedded/game consoles taking over corporate turf anytime soon.
To hear IBM, inventor of the "IBM PC" sounding off on the theme that the PC is dead is very signifigant. All us geeks here like the PC chassis for it's customization capabilities... not true of the general public.
Console manufacturers have, I believe, the largest number of non-PC systems sold. They've been pulling their punches as far as turning those systems into a general purpose computing platform, for some unknown reason. This may give them the "go ahead."
Someone had to do it.
"Certainly, Apple sees an opportunity with Intel. But IBM continues the same chip development that allowed Apple to claim several firsts and fastests."
How much of IBM's innovative chip design was pushed forward by Apple? I'm honestly not that familiar with the design/manufacture process but certainly IBM and Apple were working together on new designs for at least Apple hardware.
With Apple and Intel working together now we're sure to (eventually) see some products that Intel wouldn't have developed on their own.
If you get an error, type "OVERRIDE" or "SECURITY OVERRIDE" and then try the optimize command again.
I've heard that Apple was a real pain in the ass for IBM. They may have even broke out the good campaign and threw a big party after Apple sent their "Dear John" letter.
Apple and Intel strategically have very little issues (aside from Intel's current partner Microsoft... but that's another story)
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I think IBM should make PPC linux PCs made just for running linux and nothing else. put only well supported proven hardware in them. Give us a desktop with dual core G5s and out of the box support for every bit of hardware via linux. They could price this about mac mini cost and give it commodity accessories like ide ram optical pci etc and make a killing by being THE supplier to the world's geeks.
My amigos at Freescale's Apple support division were actually quite happy that the Jobs monkey was finally off their backs.
I will play Mr. Smith: It was inevitable.
The cost of producing new leading edge semiconductor processors has always, and will always, grow at a very high rate. The cost of a chip fab is outrageous. It has been doubling for many years now. A new chip fab today costs about $4 Billion US!!! (For a 65nm fab) Most companies have started renovating there fabs to use ever larger wafers instead of building new fabs. Currently many fabs are using 300mm wafers. Many of the older 150mm fabs that have already upgraded to 200mm don't have the room to upgrade further.
Some big new 300mm fabs are:
D1C in Hillsboro, Oregon
F11X in Albuquerque, New Mexico
F24 in Leixlip, Ireland
The "break even" point for development costs has been skyrocketing!
In the 1980's and early 1990's 50,000 units were required to recoup development costs on a chip. At 130nm, fab costs hit more than $1 billion and the break-even point for chips was about 500,000 units. A chip made with a 65nm process needs approximately 5 million units to break even on development costs. With 45nm processes at the edge of the current horizon for chip manufactures, how many markets are there for a chip that has to sell 50 million units to break even!!!
For many years Motorola, AMD and other chip makers were moving steadily away from having there own fabs. Motorola was outsourcing 7% of its chip manufacturing in 1997, and over 30% in 2003. It seems this might have been a bad idea. Apple sited manufacturing capacity as one of its reasons for choosing Intel over AMD; and well, Motorola it seems just lost the Apple contract... (AMD is expanding its Dresden "Fab 36", and considering building a new fab to be opened early 2008. In the mean time they signed Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor to help make AMD64's starting in 2006.)
Currently chip fabs are operating at about 85% capacity; new fabs traditionally start getting built when 90% capacity is reached.
The biggest financial problem that chip manufactures face is the wavelength of light. For several generations of chips we have been using 193nm light. How is this possible you ask when chip feature sizes have been shrinking well below that size for several years now? Well I will let someone else explain:
Quote:
Since the 180nm technology node, the feature size has fallen BELOW the stepper wavelength. How can a 193nm wavelength of light expose gaps and widths that are 180nm wide? The laws of optics tell us that in order to resolve or "see" a gap of X nm in width, we must use a wavelength of light that is itself LESS than X nm in width. Today's feature sizes are down to 65nm and are still being printed with 193nm light! This seeming violation of the laws of physics and optics is being achieved by very clever techniques generally known as RET or Resolution Enhancement Techniques. Since the 180nm technology node, RET has been growing in cost and complexity from simple OPC (optical proximity correction) to PSM (phase shift mask) to the combination of OPC plus PSM, and now on to SRAF (sub-resolution assist features) which is ushering in a new category of RET called X-RET or Extreme-RET. The industry could have reduced the stepper wavelength from 193nm to 154nm, but a detailed analysis showed that simply shortening the stepper wavelength would be cost-prohibitive! Instead, use of 193nm has been extended to the 45nm technology node, but the gap between 193nm and 45nm is quite large and cannot be completely resolved even by the most advanced RET.
Fortunately, something called Immersion Lithography has been introduced. It has been tried before with mixed results, but the need for it has never been as urgent as it is now. By immersing the wafer in water, one can reduce the effective numerical aperture (NA), allowing 193nm light to act as if it were a shorter wavelength. The wafer now has to be immersed in water, however, and this creates new challenges for new types of resist and topcoat materials that can withstand the effects of water contamination. Today, however
"one reason Apple switched is because it said IBM could not keep up with Intel's power-consumption technologies" A simple chart on power consumption of Intel/Itanium/AMD/AMD64/AMD_Opteron processors shows that Intel is far behind on increasing performance while stabilizing growth in power use in wattage. While I don't have data on PPC chips - AMD is clearly the leader in keeping power consumption down, while increasing processor performance. The article comment seems a little backwards to me... If taken literally, yep, Intel is on top of sucking more and more watts with each release, and although Intel states they will stabilize power use by 2007, I don't see the trend today.
And everyone thought IBM was at a loss when it chose the three largest game console manufacturers instead of a computer manufacturer with 4% market share.
Mozilla stole tabs from NetCaptor. So what? Right?
Is anyone else completly skeptical of the theroy that the home entertainment center will take over the pc? I mean personally I'm not gonna want to do what I do on the computer, on my television. My opinion is surely not indicative of mainstream... but I'm sure there are tons of people who have similar sentiments
Because Intel/AMD/x86 are not anywhere nearly as entrenched there as they are here, as very few people (percentage-wise) in China *have* computers yet.
This is a (nearly) level playing field for other architectures in China.
Also, if other architectures gain ground in China, they might start cropping up outside of China as well, giving us relief from x86 hell -- and a big boost to IBM's processor division.
Go IBM.
multifariam.net -- yet another nerd blog
do you guys realize that the apple systems aren't where all of IBM's POWER chips go? all of their enterprise servers(pseries,iseries,zseries), use the POWER platform. putting the chips into apple computers is but a tiny tiny fraction of the number of systems running the POWER processor. All the AIX, AS/400 and Z/OS systems are still going to run POWER, and IBM will still continue to churn those out. losing apple as a purchaser is not going to affect IBM's overall plan or development of the POWER chips.
considering that IBM's enterprise level offerings cost anywhere from $10,000 to several $million, i dont' think this affects their bottom line as much as everyone here seems to think it will.
look at the ten-millions of consoles that sell each year, then look at the (hopeful here) millions of apples that sell each year. which one is the better market to be in? especially considering that whatever next-gen console you buy, you're buying ibm.
seeing how the consoles seem to be a pissing contest for each company in terms of features and speeds, and that ibm's chips are both easier to develop for (i'm a risc fan) and are generally considered better, i think they do have an inside track.
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Because they ARE inside these new systems. The Revolution will use an IBM CPU (PowerPC variant). The PS3 will use an IBM CPU (Cell). The Xbox 360 uses an IBM CPU (Microsoft even dropped Intel to switch to IBM). The war will go on for years but IBM has secured quite a beachhead in the opening salvo.
IBM has a lock on the next-generation game consoles. "Computer Business Review" reports that Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony (MNS) are collaborating with IBM to build the next-generation processors for game consoles. "PC World" reports that MNS will incorporate IBM processors in their next-generation game consoles.
The hidden sub-text is that the future IBM processors will be excellent for pornographic games, providing life-like flesh tones and smooth-motion "thrusting", "quivering", and "wiggling". Pornography has traditionally be a significant driver of video-processing technology.
"Yeah, well, so do Intel and AMD. Why does IBM think they have the inside track all of a sudden?
2 19.html
Furthermore, nVidia and ATI are marketing their GPUs as capable of taking over more primary PC functions, thus, thet makes 4 HUGE opponents for this kind of stuff. Personally, I believe this is IBM's attempt at wagging the dog. They're still screwed."
Except that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are already using IBM's PowerPC processors (yes, Sony's Cell has a PowerPC core as the primary processor). Which means that all THREE consoles are using IBM processors, for sure. And that means for the next five years, every console sold (about 150 million were sold this last generation IIRC) will have an IBM processor in it. There's only 10-20 million Macs, on the other hand.
Not only will these hundreds of millions of consoles have IBM processors...but they'll have to CONTINUE to use IBM processors to retain backwards compatability unless there is a massive speed breakthrough enough to get a competing processor and emulate the PowerPC's. That's why the XBox 360 will have to have backwards compatability with 'top selling games' via recompiled patches preinstalled on the hard drive; the processor architecture change. It won't have full compatabilty while PS3 and Revolution will.
So IBM is set for the next five years and unless the console manufacturers DESPERATELy want to change architectures and forfeit backwards compatability, they're set for the next ten.
IBM already is inside these new systems.
And the PS3, btw, may even boot Linux by default when you buy the hard drive, turning it into a full PC with six USB ports, a powerful graphics card, a decent processor, WiFi, Bluetooth, and three gigabit ethernet ports.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/06/09/news_6127
http://www.maconintel.com/news.php?article=29 ( MacOnIntel link )
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
Yeah I don't get it. /.'ers angry at Apple, supporting IBM, looking forward to seeing the PC knocked down a rung. WTF!? BLASPHEMY!
IBM is every bit as Evil as Apple and Microsoft, they're just on our side temporarily. Let the big shots duke it out. What we want is deadlock, no party ending up with a significant advantage over each other, but seeing profit in code portability.
Nerds don't use computers, they sculpt them like artwork. The current generation has warts.
-or- Thank you, Captain Obvious.
I think its mostly that the PC market (Apple) doesn't have the potential to give the same ROI as the big iron or game consoles -the requirements and dynamic are very different.
Especially looking at the game consoles, its a different dynamic. For the PS3, IBM needs to produce a processor that meets requirements A,B and C. In general those requirements won't change for the life of the PS3. IOW, as the years go by, the processor will be cheaper and cheaper to make.
In contrast, for the PC market, nobody's going to be happy with a processor 5 years from now that's essentially the same speed as the one being sold today. That means continuously pushing the envelope, which means continously spending money on R&D. That's a lot of money spent on chips without the volume of the game systems and without the high margins of the servers.
Nobody was saying IBM couldn't do it. The question is did they want to do it for the money they would make?
My opinion, based on vague things I've seen and heard and a lot of guessing, is that IBM never really wanted Apple's business in the first place. The plan for the PPC alliance always seemed to be that IBM would take the high-end kinda stuff, Motorola would target the PPC area, and Apple would buy chips from Motorola.
Unfortunately then Motorola lost interest in the CPU market, their CPU group started getting neglected and sucky, Motorola spun off their CPU group into Freescale, and Freescale turned out to be sucky as well. So Apple wound up pretty much having to buy from IBM instead. But IBM never seemed very enthusiastic about this-- for example there were reports they didn't really want to bother with altivec/VMX/"velocity engine", and altivec was the or a cornerstone of Apple's CPU strategy. (Though, ironically, VMX is a really big part of all those new video game CPUs IBM is making, so I guess that kinda turned out well for IBM...) When I heard Apple really was going to Intel, honestly one of my first responses was to wonder whether this happened because Apple was pushing IBM away, or because IBM was trying to push Apple away and Apple was just complying..
I really wonder what's going to happen to Freescale at this point.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
apple probably was a small volume but high profile buyer. they bought a few million units every year but the cache of apple and PowerPC, yada yada, carried more weight than the dollars from Steve and the boys. are PPC chips in the iPod? I don't know, but I'd gather that that's at least as vital a chip demand.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are selling at loss. IBM is selling the chips to those three at profit.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
You really should see this article:
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436
OS X may look nice, but internaly it's a mess...
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
PowerPC is a standard developed jointly by IBM, Apple, and Motorola (now Freescale). It was written in the mid nineties and was based on and extended the instruction set for IBM's POWER series. A processor can is a PowerPC processor if it implements the PowerPC instruction set. So the Revolution will use a PPC chip. The Cell is a PPC chip. The XBox 360 will use a PPC chip. Every processor in the current POWER line is a PPC chip. G3 and G4, manufactured by Motorola/Freescale are PPC chips. I'm sure there are other PPC chips out there too.
After all, I am strangely colored.
It's a troll, but I'll bite. If you want, you can download Fedora, Gentoo, or Debian and run it on your Power Mac G5 right now, if you so desire. The rest of us will enjoy Mac OS X, thankyouverymuch.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
People like to take shots at the x86, but it is hard to deny that there are brilliant people working on it, really making implementations that fly. Intel's development team has a long proud history (they pretty much single-handedly turned the perception of CISC/RISC around with the Pentium Pro after all), and the AMD K8 team looked suspiciously much like the Alpha team at one point.
That is not to say that the POWER4 and derivatives are not impressive, they are, but the performance of chips like the AMD K8 really proves that if you have a competent team small details like the ISA don't matter all that much. I see no easy way for IBM to sneak into China, and it is actually a good thing; We are all better off with:
By comparison the PPC would be a fairly serious case of lock-in, only two companies manufacture chips (Freescale/Motorola and IBM), and Freescale mostly bothers with embedded applications.In summary, having some PPC around is nice, but having it take over a market would be a bad thing at this point.
The switch is a huge mindshare loss for PPC. While most people dont' care what processor is in there computer, it hurts the PPC in software development/ mindshare.
its only a short matter of time (5 years I guess) before gcc and associated free software stuff is not ported to PPC. Linux will be much more expensive, if available at all. You will still be able to buy compilers from IBM/Freescale and development kits and the like, but for the home hobbiest the platform is dead. Nobody is buying POWER boxes from IBM to develop Linux on due to excessive cost.
I work on HPUX which is a platform on the outs. Some gnu tools come our way, but not a lot compared to linux/freebsd/solaris. There are not a lot of HP pa-risc machines floating around that allow development testing and optimization to occur.
Also I know a couple of folks working in the embeded space with PPC. Have a supply of workers that can get up to speed on PPC is much easier when you have a computer platform based on it.
IBM loosing Apple is more of a marketing shot to IBM that a $$ one. Now IBM is the only major company producing PowerPC based server/workstations. Not a good sign for the power architecture long term.
I doubt Apple's move to Intel is particularly harmful to IBM either.
But it does paint a bleak picture for the future in locking consumers into one architecture (x86) and this is an extremely dangerous and uncompetitive situation for consumers.
Sure Apple are under no moral responsibility to keep using PPC to avert that outcome, but it hardly represents a step forward for choice.
Whilst someone could theoretically put G5s into a new desktop PC and bundle Linux with it that doesn't seem a very likely outcome, and you have to wonder about IBM's appetite for continuing a line in PowerPCs suitable for a desktop machine when most of their stuff seems to be geared toward consoles these days.
The repurcussions of Apple moving to Intel are, in a wider sense no joke and a very real. Quite frankly customers deserve better.
This might be interesting to you:
From Desktop to Grid, the ODW (Open Desktop Workstation) is designed to assume its position and fulfill the missing link of the first true PowerPC Linux Development and Desktop System. The fully configured machine comes bundled with a variety of tools and applications that make the platform the perfect partner for any serious embedded system development based on Linux.
The Open Desktop Workstation is the only GNU/Linux PowerPC solution available on the market today that is endorsed by IBM and Freescale Semiconductor.
Not all big companies are Evil(tm). Big companies are when they become so dominant their customers have no choices. They can't help it, they may not even WANT to be Evil, but they will become Evil if given the chance. Companies in self-regulating markets will go out of business if they become Evil, but the computer business is not one of those, yet. Microsoft is Evil and dangerous. Apple has been Evil in the past. IBM is simply not good at being Evil, but it's not for lack of trying.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely, if any of these companies subdue their competitors they WILL become Evil. It is a guarantee. They are all in a position to do this because Microsoft has dropped the ball and there is a vacuum that needs filling.
Fundamentally the world still lacks applications that are truly platform agnostic, such that we, the consumer, can pick and choose platforms, operating systems & applications without "lock-in". If anyone is successful at dethroning Microsoft until this is solved, they will then become the new Microsoft.
Hasty generalization, Appeal to the 'knowledge of large populations'. I have a hard time believing it was "insignificant". However, we will certainly see over the next few years whether it is a drag on IBM's finances.
However, what it clearly shows is that any one customer's needs is also insignificant to IBM - no matter how large the customer.
Assumption (Fallacy of interrogation): Your statement presumes facts which are not in evidence: You are assuming that IBM had a hand in Apple's decision. The truth is that there has been a LOT of speculation in the press - and very few facts - regarding why Apple switched to Intel. I certainly don't know the truth, and without further evidence, will doubt you do either... but keep in mind Apple has the most control, since they are the customer.
It also shows that IBM does not honor commitments they make to their "partners".
Non-sequitur; speculation without basis. Even ignoring the fallacy of interrogation above, that does not necessarily lead to failure to meet commitments. More importantly, there is no evidence of failure to honor commitments. If you're referring to the "3GHz" issue, part of the speculation in the press has been that IBM never made the 3GHz commitment to Apple (that Jobs made it up to push IBM into it). Note the treatment of the issue in this article (and subsequent discussion on the Ars dicussion boards). If you have evidence to tip the balance, by all means present it... otherwise it seems you're just out to find a way to tarnish IBM's image.
While the same thing can be potentially said for any large company, if you're a company who is a partner or looking at partnering with IBM for some reason, Apple-IBM should be a case study to consider when making your decision
Sweeping Generalization, shifting the burden of proof, potentially Post-Hoc argument: Your argument is based on what material facts? The problem is, you apply culture of "any large company" to IBM, claim IBM must defend against the claim without you providing any evidence (shifting the burden of proof to the defense) and make an argument based on a result (the proper term isn't post-hoc, but I forget the actual name at the moment). Importantly, in order to use it, you need data to be both measurable and actionable. In this case, there is a lot of speculation, which leads me to conclude that you can't meet the first criteria - you can't measure it. You have an output (relationship ended) without understanding the root cause. Making decisions based on such data is risky, at best.
I suspect this will be discussed in b-schools for years (they'll say IBM did the right thing in screwing their customer Apple).
Speculation, Appeal to the virtuous poor: Any of my professors who said that would have been called on it on the spot. One of the things you learn in business school is the cost of acquiring a new customer. Another is the (intangible) cost of dealing with a public relations issue (which could lead to morale/productivity issues, etc. in your employees). I highly doubt this is fun for IBM. IBM's finances over the next few years may tell us it worked out okay, but even then, I suspect that IBM's general silence on the issue (like many other issues) would make it hard for any professor to get enough data to know the decision was conscious. If any improvement was an accident, it's not very insteresting for a b-school to talk about it, since it's pretty hard to learn how to act from accidents (not impossible, just rarely hit on in b-school).
It would seem that the advantages of a xServe cluster (altivec, 64-bit and good performance per watt) would be lost when Apple produces an x86 version when compared to a (inevitably) cheaper x86 Linux system.
By the time XServe migrates, I believe Apple will be using x86-64-capable CPUs in that line. Also, IIRC SSE3 has support for double-precision float arithmetic in its vector ops, whereas Altivec doesn't.
Also, Apple is pushing their Accelerate.framework, which should make vectorized code somewhat portable between Altivec and SSE3. Check Apple's guide to SSE for more details.
Here's the dream:
Whether the "chip" business is in reference to the "PowerPC chip" (which, knowing USA Today, it could be), or IBM's overall CPU business, or IBM's general semiconductor business as a whole, Apple still represents a vanishingly small proportion of IBM's business. Sure, no company wants to lose 2% of its business - on this scale, that can account for millions - or tens of millions - of dollars. However, 2% is still small enough, regardless of the frame of reference, that Apple was most certainly not significantly driving IBM chip development. In fact, since raw clock frequency is about the last thing IBM cares about (at least from a specification one-upsmanship standpoint), Apple was probably a thorn in IBM's side in that respect. (It might pay to remember that at the time of Jobs' Intel announcement, IBM had missed its 3GHz commitment to Apple by over a year, and was/is still only shipping 2.7GHz parts.)
It's also probably worth mentioning to all the people who think that IBM's recent 970MP and low-power 970FX offerings are "perfect" for Apple that, while the 970MP may certainly be attractive for the Xserve and Power Mac lines (and may in fact be used), the low-power 970FX can't just be popped into a PowerBook. The support chipsets (e.g., HyperTransport) required for the G5 all generate substantially more heat than the similar support chipsets with the G4 (74xx) family, making the total heat profile of a hypothetical low-power G5-based PowerBook still much higher than even the highest-end G4-based PowerBooks.
As for the Apple/Intel FAQ, I am the author of that site (and it is completely non-commercial, non-profit, not associated with anything monetarily or financially in any way, and is exclusively for informational purposes), so that's why it's described as such. I'll try to confirm whether it is PowerPC, POWER + PowerPC, all CPU products, or all semiconductor products. Ultimately, though, whatever it actually is, Apple was still a very small part of IBM's business, and, as such, was not "driving" PowerPC development in any significant way, and the truth of my statement remains.