On Sep 7, 2006, at 1:03 PM, Adam Maas wrote: >> Thanks for interesting insights Godfrey :-) But I doubt if there was >> a real problem with development of higher spec PowerPC. Right now >> Microsoft's XBOX 360 uses tri core PowerPC running at 3.2 GHz - >> imagine having two such a CPUs in Mac - six cores in total, each >> running at 3.2 GHz - I guess it would easily outperform the fastest >> Xeon configuration... I guess one of the reasons for switching to >> Intel was lack of G5 processors suitable for portable use - after all >> no Powerbook was available with this CPU. > > Both were issues. IBM wasn't particularly interested in producing > general-purpose G5 units of faster speed (And indeed had lagged on > it's > promises to Apple about 3GHz G5's) while they had concentrated on > producing the tri-core and Cell variants for MS and Sony. Also IBM had > not produced a version suitable for laptop use, which was the driving > factor in the timing of the conversion to Intel from all reports.
Most of the factors involved in what was or wasn't developed are political rather than technological. I cannot discuss such details in depth, for obvious reasons, but in the end the PowerPC consortium of Motorola/IBM were not heading in the development direction that Apple needed, and other vendors were happy to step up to the plate and participate in development that was to Apple's advantage. The team at Apple predicted this result as far back as 1999 (maybe a little earlier ... that's when I became involved in the effort) and much of Mac OS X's inner workings were architected to provide a good degree of processor independence and a reasonable schema for moving forward through a processor change. The results of my five/six years of effort along with that of several thousand other people are producing the Apple systems, Mac OS X and the third party applications of today and into the foreseeable future. It was a darn good feeling hearing the MacBook Pro announced at last. :-) Godfrey -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
