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Apple Switched Chips Too Soon?

Posted by Zonk on from the too-late-for-second-guessing dept.

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?"

4 of 533 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Apple too soon or IBM too late? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Bingo!

    Apple is Silly!!!

    Almost as silly as the magnificently gullible Mac public...

    They believe anything they hear from jobs, and will pay through the nose for it as well...

  2. Whatever by painandgreed · · Score: 0, Troll

    Wake me when their chips manage to hit 3 gigahertz.

  3. Re:Apple too soon or IBM too late? by DaedalusHKX · · Score: -1, Troll

    Sheesh, you must be living at Intel. Ever notice that frequency isn't everything? Hence why in x86 mode, a 2 ghz AMD 64 chip can SLAUGHTER a P4 at 4 ghz... strange eh?? I guess 5 ghz intels will be SOOOO fast, right?

    I can believe AMD's but intels are power and heat hogs, apple is hoping its ipod business will make its desktop units more desirable, but now that they're intel based, there is NO reason for me to switch anyone I know to one...

    ~D

    --
    " What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
  4. Performance is irrelevent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    Apple is all about selling to the metrosexual. These sort of customers don't know anything about megahertz, gigabytes, or any of that techno mumbojumbo, they want good looking cases and prominently displayed logos.

    Have you ever met a mac user? They don't know anything about computers except how to pilot a mouse.