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IBM on Apple/Intel and the G5

Friday September 12, 2003 10:39 am PDT by Arnold Kim
On September 11, IBM published a story on their intranet promoting their Technology Group and their relationship to Apple with regard to the PowerPC 970. This story has been made available to MacRumors.



The item offers some unique insight into Apple, and their relationship with IBM as well as Apple's thoughts on the alternative.



Of particular interest are some comments on Apple's situation and decision to use IBM's PowerPC 970 processor. According to the report, amidst the speculation that Apple would move to an Intel-based processor, Apple felt the transition would be too difficult:



    While Intel is aggressive in achieving its performance and speed goals, Apple believed that using Intel would deeply affect its current customer base. Using an Intel architecture might solve Apple's short-term megahertz dilemma, but customers would have to suffer through a slow transition from PowerPC over the long term. Every existing Mac program would potentially have to be recompiled to work on an Intel platform. These massive software changes were something that Apple wanted to avoid, and IBM had the solution."



IBM's Technology Group took on the task for Apple and developed the PowerPC 970 in a 12-18 month timeframe. Beyond the PowerPC 970, IBM is committed to a long-term technology roadmap. According to the report: "IBM has committed to provide several generations of processor development to Apple over the course of five years."

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spinner
110 months ago
Perhaps this will finally put all of that Marklar crap to rest once and for all. Its nice to have a plan b, but intel based Macs are not going to happen.
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Doraemon
110 months ago
WOW.

So there was a plan to switch to Intel processors.

I mean, it made sense that Apple considered the options, but I sort of doubted that they would seriously consider moving to Intel CPUs.
Fortunately, "IBM had the sollution"!

:)
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Powerbook G5
110 months ago
I personally believe that IBM is a much more developed and technologically crucial player in the industry than Intel, anyway. I seriously cannot think of any other processor company out there with as much R&D and resources capable of giving Apple the kind of options that IBM can.
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Mudbug
110 months ago
wow - so they did think it through...

Interesting to note the 5 year timeframe - that's good news for the solidity of the PowerPC architechture for Apple, and should dispell the rumors of Apple on Intel for a while at least.
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whooleytoo
110 months ago

Every existing Mac program would potentially have to be recompiled to work on an Intel platform.


This bit's odd. A re-compile would be the best case scenario; most software would have to be, partially to entirely rewritten, depending on whether it was Carbon or Cocoa etc.

Mike.
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deepkid
110 months ago
would be interesting to read...
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suzerain
110 months ago
...nice to finally see the obvious pointed out like that. All the 'switch to Intel' idiots fueled the fire so much that this became a story, when any sane Mac watcher knew moving to Intel was pretty much out of the question.
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cc bcc
110 months ago

On September 11, IBM published a story on their intranet promoting their Technology Group and their relationship to Apple with regard to the PowerPC 970. This story has been made available to MacRumors.
The item offers some unique insight into Apple, and their relationship with IBM as well as Apple's thoughts on the alternative.


Can you post the full article or is this all?
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Makosuke
110 months ago
Assuming that is accurate, I guess it answers once and for all the debate over exactly how easy a PowerPC to x86 transition would be, and it sounds like the doubters were right this time.
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daveL
110 months ago

Originally posted by whooleytoo
This bit's odd. A re-compile would be the best case scenario; most software would have to be, partially to entirely rewritten, depending on whether it was Carbon or Cocoa etc.

Mike.

Why? Just because you go to a different CPU doesn't mean you have to throw your frameworks out and start over. Apple would have (and actually did) gotten OS X and the UI framewaorks re-compiled and running on Intel. At that point, the same APIs would be available for Mac applications, which would also, obviously, be re-compiled. That's not to say there wouldn't have been some other changes involved, but certainly not an application rewrite.

Sun's code base for Solaris on Intel is identical to the Sparc code base, except at the drive/HW layer. Getting a GNU app running on both CPUs under Solaris *is* simply a re-compile.

None of this is to say that I think Apple should have gone down that road, because I absolutely think staying with PPC is the right way to go, especially now that IBM is on the scene.
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