Apple Switched Chips Too Soon?

Ctrl+Alt+De1337 writes "C|Net is reporting that IBM has announced a method of altering silicon that will allow its next generation of Power chips to run at speeds between 4 and 5 gigahertz, and consume less power as well. From the article: 'Instead of just making transistors smaller, IBM came up with a process to alter how silicon behaves by placing a layer of insulator underneath a layer of silicon less than 500 atoms thick ... The higher speed of the Power6 will be achieved with existing chip manufacturing technology that etches transistors only 65 nanometers wide, several hundred times smaller than a human blood cell.' These won't be out until 2007, but it still raises the question: did Apple jump the gun by switching to Intel?"

Comments

Less than 2% of one fabs capacity

[charnov]

Actually, chips for Apple accounted for less than 2% of the capacity of just one IBM fab. IBM's tech division (which does chip fabbing) accounted for less than 3% of IBM's total revenue. That's a really small piece of IBM's global business. It's kind of like an oil company losing one gas station...not really gonna hurt them that much.

This is strained silicon, though.

[Anonymous Coward]

SOI just makes the chip run cooler.
They are talking about strained silicon, which makes the electron mobility larger in one direction. Intel, in fact, is working on that too, as are others.