Life after Apple for IBM

Apple has finally confirmed that they have had it with IBM and Intel would be their next supplier for the processors for the next generation Macintosh computers. The company is expected to launch the first Macs to come with Intel inside next year with the complete transition aimed for 2007. The announcement came this Monday with Steve Jobs displaying a Macintosh computer running on an Intel Pentium 4 Processor.

IBM on their part seems to be pretty cool about all these latest events with the company releasing no particular statement on the decision taken by their long time partner Apple. Instead, the company is busy with their plans for its Power processors by making it a stronger competitor to Intel chips.

The company announced on Wednesday that more members have joined the consortium of Power processor users and they also released specifications and software to make it easier to build computers using the forthcoming Power-based Cell processor. Cell is said to be the next generation microprocessor, which has been co-jointly developed by IBM, Toshiba, and Sony. It would be making its public appearance in the high profile launch of the Sony PlayStation 3.

IBM in their latest standing believes that desktop computers are no longer the hottest market to develop processors for. Servers, gaming consoles, and mobile phones are becoming the biggest market for powerful processors and Cell has been developed to be compatible with all these devices. IBM’s recently unveiled section on their website on these new events said: “IBM’s strategy is to spread its open chip technology and establish Power Architecture as the dominant industry standard”.

Looks like Cell Processor is where the future of processing power from the Big Blue would come.