Slashdot Mirror
2005 Good Year for Power Architecture
An anonymous reader wrote to mention an IBM article looking back on what the piece calls the best year ever for the Power Architecture. From the article: "While IBM is considered by many to be an 800lb. gorilla, in the microelectronics space, it is actually very small -- last year IBM was way down at number 21 on the iSuppli list of the top 25 semiconductor suppliers worldwide. Now, that isn't necessarily a bad thing: for instance, it means that IBM Semiconductor solutions is small and nimble and competitive -- and this agility (coupled with the fact that we do get to share Research and some other resources with the parts of IBM that are 800lb. gorillas) has led some to predict that the IBM chips division will be named the fastest growing semiconductor supplier of 2005. In fact, there is a very good chance that IBM may regain the coveted #18 spot on iSuppli's list this year!"
We're posting press releases now?
Apple was/is a relatively minor customer. The business from next-gen consoles (all of which use POWER chips) is/will be at least an order of magnitude larger than Apple.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
well, I fortunately don't have any shares in Apple.
You do realize that Apple's stock has been outperforming nearly every other big tech company this year sans Google, including IBM.
Also, four words for you: MacOS + Windows + Linux = Tri-Boot
If that isn't potential incentive, I don't know what is.
The CPU supplier for iPods does over 400m a quarter. http://www.arm.com/ir/financialnews/10757.html
Apple was never IBMs biggest customer, PPC is everywhere, cars, routers, smart devices of all types, granted that Freescale has the majority of these markets, but IBM has more than enough share to outweight Apple. I'll grant that Apple was IBMs highest-profile customer, but I've seen numbers that place revenue generated by Apple at fewer than 1% of IBMs business. Not only that, but they're going to be manufacturing CPUs for all of the next generation game consoles. The Xbox 360 has already sold more units than Apple would have over the ~4 years or more (keep in mind that the only IBM processor in the Macs is the G5, The G4s are still provided by freescale.) How many PS2s, Xboxes, and Gamecubes have been sold worldwide? 150+ million combined, and that number is growing with each new generation (plus we're not even at the end of this generation's sales!) So IBM is looking at basically guaranteed sales of ~200 million PPC-based parts over the next 5-6 years. Apple doesn't even drive PPC development, its driven on both ends by the embedded and big-iron/server markets.
IBM won't be hurting by loosing Apple, neither will PPC. I am a bit sad to loose the only "mainstream" consumer-level PPC hardware, but there are some smaller PPC manufacturers such as Genesi to provide for the hardcore PPC fan market.