I guess PCTalk must believe it's less than a 95% copy of the original, so it didn't bother linking to the story. The original story was developed by Microprocessor Report. Sorry, but we're a paid subscription newsletter, so we can only publish an abstract in the public domain.
You can the original abstract at:
http://www.in-stat.com/tr/index.asp
and follow the link to "China's Emerging Microprocessors"
There are plenty of good reasons for Apple NOT to move to x86 (or AMD64) platform:
Minor issue but Apple is a Big-endian plaform, PCs are Little-Endian. The translation would add some overhead.
They couldn't get the higher margins for their own x86 platform.
There's good money in that hardware. Should Apple have only sold iTunes, how exciting would that product be without the iPod?
The PowerPC platform has more companies developing processors than there are for x86. I think you'll see more competition and higher performing PowerPCs.
There may even be a secret weapon in the works--the Cell processor! It's PowerPC based and should be fast and will have tremendous processing power.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess PCTalk must believe it's less than a 95% copy of the original, so it didn't bother linking to the story. The original story was developed by Microprocessor Report. Sorry, but we're a paid subscription newsletter, so we can only publish an abstract in the public domain. You can the original abstract at: http://www.in-stat.com/tr/index.asp and follow the link to "China's Emerging Microprocessors"
There are plenty of good reasons for Apple NOT to move to x86 (or AMD64) platform: Minor issue but Apple is a Big-endian plaform, PCs are Little-Endian. The translation would add some overhead. They couldn't get the higher margins for their own x86 platform. There's good money in that hardware. Should Apple have only sold iTunes, how exciting would that product be without the iPod? The PowerPC platform has more companies developing processors than there are for x86. I think you'll see more competition and higher performing PowerPCs. There may even be a secret weapon in the works--the Cell processor! It's PowerPC based and should be fast and will have tremendous processing power.