Aqua-Soft ForumsI just find this news today, says that Intel will produce processors based on x86 for Apple Computer !!
According to an article of Wall Street Journal, APPLE would be in talks with INTEL. Few information filtered but the speculations go good train. Can one expect to see processors x86 in the macs?From a technical point of view, all is possible. But that would have many disadvantages. First of all, the current applications functioning on Macintosh should be recompilées even rewritten. That would force the editors to maintain several versions of their software for each family of processor, as it was the case in 1994 at the time of the transition towards PowerPC. Then, a compatibility could not be preserved because there is not at the present time any means of emulating a PowerPC processor on a machine x86 with good performances (PearPC has a ration of 1 approximately:70).
On the other hand two more realistic assumptions emergent of the specialized forums. APPLE being member of PowerPC Alliance, it has a complete access to the patents and plans of the processors, and could call upon INTEL to manufacture them at a lower cost has that of IBM. That could allow the use of clean technologies to INTEL for the manufacture of a range of chips more powerful than those of IBM.
Another possibility would be that APPLE is not interested in the processors x86 but in range ARM of INTEL or other products of its catalogue. Chips ARM, used in particular in Pocket PC (XScale), are intended for products with low fuel consumption of energy. APPLE could want to be started again on the market of the PDA (which it had cleared in 1992 with Newton), where could create products new completions. Some on thought well of the Vidéo walkmans but Steve Jobs announced at the time of the conference "D: All Things DIGITAL "which it did not believe in the success of such apparatuses for the moment.
Though it arrives, a co-operation between APPLE and INTEL would be new and be able to initiate well great changes in data-processing industry. Point out last news which presents AMD in very good agreement with Microsoft... I see from here the three future mastodons: Microsoft-amd, APPLE-INTEL and Linux-IBM.
P.S.: Another interpretation of the facts could be worth the turning well. By holding account of the strategy "x86 everywhere" of AMD, of the projections carried out in term of performances and electric consumption on this architecture (Pentium M at the head), and of the new strategy of IBM which wishes to separate from the least profitable activities, while keeping with the spirit that IBM manufacture also chips for AMD, the orientation of APPLE in favour of the x86 could be a deciding factor in the policy of optimization of the costs of the company. That would allow the use of a tested technology and whose design is largely deadened rather than to maintain a range of processors whose sales remain weak vis-a-vis with competition. This choice is on the way to be made by SUN which chose Opteron of AMD for its waiters of entry of range, it could thus just as easily apply to APPLE.
Link to the original news (french)
what u are thinkin about this ?