IBM’s Cell chip would cover up the damage caused by Apple’s switch to Intel
June 11th, 2005 Leave a comment Visited 42 times, 1 so far today
IBM’s Cell chip would cover up the damage caused by Apple’s switch to Intel
Market analysts believe that IBM has not much to lose in spite of the fact that their long time partner Apple has decided to leave them for Intel. Macintosh computers from next year would start featuring Intel microprocessors and Apple would be moving completely over to Intel by 2007. The reason behind IBM’s cool attitude is the recently unveiled Cell Processor.
IBM has developed this new age processor in collaboration with Toshiba and Sony. This is a multi-purpose chip, which has got potential usage in all kind of devices like gaming consoles and other gadgets. The company has been shifting their focus from the personal computer processor market to this alternative segment for quite sometime.
In fact, IBM is going to power some of the most awaited gadgets to arrive this year in Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Sony’s PlayStation 3, and Nintendo’s Revolution. These devices sell in big numbers (certainly bigger numbers than Apple Computers!) and would help IBM in recovering any losses caused by the Apple’s ‘switch’.
In fact, IBM seems to be finding the personal computing market no longer interesting. It recently sold its personal computer division to the Chinese tech giant Lenovo, which takes care of the various IBM, brands now. The sales of processors to Apple made just 1% of the IBM’s overall earnings. Therefore, it is not such a big deal for them anyways.
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June 12th, 2005 at 2:26 am
I think that IBM should not be so eager to leave the personal computing market. Competition is always good, Intel and AMD are the only companies that consumers can really purchase CPU’s from just now. VIA’s new C7 CPU (I think will be mass produced by IBM) sounds like it could take quite a large chunk of the budget PC and Laptop market. Its low power usage should mean that itâ??s not a hot CPU, meaning less fans would be required and therefore less noise. I have had 3 PC in the last 5 years all have been noisy with fans. Anyway I donâ??t know why Apple don’t just make there operating system available to any PC. Lots of people would like an alternative to Windows, developers might start making more games for MAC’s being on an x86 architecture.