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Hardware Technology

Motorola To Spin Off Chip Division 144

Posted by simoniker from the parto-of-moto-go-solo dept.
dafz1 writes "According to an article at CNET News, Motorola has announced they will create a new company from their Semiconductor Products Sector (SPS), which builds chips such as the PowerPC. Reasons cited include 'surrendering to IBM a key role in delivering the PowerPC for Apple Computer's top-of-the-line desktop'. This follows earlier news that Motorola's CEO will step down, citing a 'difference of opinion' with fellow executives."
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Motorola To Spin Off Chip Division More

Motorola To Spin Off Chip Division

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  • About time. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by outZider ( 165286 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:35PM (#7145761) Homepage
    Too bad they didn't do this a couple of years ago. We would have been a lot better off. Good to see the executives saw the same thing.
    • In all the technical discussion, we have overlooked the ethical aspect of this spinoff. Clearly, the Semiconductor Products Sector (SPS) is not performing well, and Motorola could have simply downsized the division, firing thousands of loyal, hardworking American employees. However, instead of acting in this ruthless way, Motorola decided to spin off the SPS into a separate company so that it has a fighting chance to survive and to enable its employees to pay the house mortgage, braces for the kids, etc.

  • Not a strong follower (Score:4, Interesting)

    by IWantMoreSpamPlease ( 571972 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:35PM (#7145764) Homepage Journal
    in this, but from what I have gathered, Motorola was the prime reason Apple chips fell behind, Moto and Co. simply weren't interested (or up to the task?) in producing new chips for them.

    With a new division spun off, perhaps this will change?

    • Re:Not a strong follower (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Exitthree ( 646294 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:38PM (#7145796) Homepage
      I don't think it will change. Apple is already moving off to greener pastures (IBM). Once IBM can lower the requirements of a G5 so that they are suitable for notebooks, and cheap enough for consumer machines, I expect the G4 to be dropped completely. In addition, Apple will probably use the next revision of the G3 with Altivec, which IBM is developing, for the iBooks.

      • Re:Not a strong follower (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Zelet ( 515452 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:51PM (#7145912) Journal
        The G5 are actually 25% cheaper to produce than the Moto G4s. The expense comes into manufacturing the mobos and the cooling systems and so the cost of the main components stays the same. The price point of the professional line of comptuers from Apple has not increased with the release of the G5.
        • The total cost of using a PPC 970 in one of Apple's consumer machines is still too great. Cost here can be the mobo and cooling system, as you suggest, or the competition between the "professional" and "consumer" systems if they both use the same processor. In any case, Apple can't use the G5 in an iMac yet, but as soon as they can, I see them doing it.

          • Re:Not a strong follower (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Apple's bread and butter is high margin professional systems. They will not bring the G5 'down market' until there are even faster G5s available on the high end. Availability and marketing are a lot more important than cost here.
      • The G3 chips that Apple still uses (ibooks) have been made by IBM for some time now.

        Ithe rumor mills claim great things in store for the IBM G3s in future generations (including altivec support) and ever increased efficiency. I would guess in the next year or so, when Apple roughly predicted a G5 powerbook, we will see everything switch to G5 or these next generation G3 chips.

        These super efficient and powerful G3 chips might lead to more fun machines like the fanless cube and iMac... let alone great news

    • Re:Not a strong follower (Score:5, Interesting)

      by herwin ( 169154 ) <herwinNO@SPAMtheworld.com> on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:46PM (#7145869) Homepage Journal
      The main problem for Apple was that Motorola found making slower chips for embedded systems to be more profitable than making faster ones for computers. So Apple turned to IBM, which does make computers and understands the issues. The new G5 is very competitive.
      • Indeed. Motorola makes a fine line of embedded controllers and other processors and chips. I've worried for some time that trying to compete in the hot-dog contest with the likes of Intel and AMD was seriously damaging the company.

        Now maybe they can get back to the 68HC11, '12, '05, '08 parts where they've got a damned fine product line. Let someone else be the megaherz weenies.
        • I loved the HC11, with its Serial peripheral interface and the AD/DA converters.
          Really, the assembler language was great and 10 years or so ago you could get EVBU kits with the Buffalo environment loaded into EPROm on the board for, what, 50 bucks.
          I have a nephew who's learning them in a Microcontrollers class. Great chip in my opinion.

          • Purdue's ECE362 (Junior level micro-processor / assembly programming) is based on the HC12, using the P&E micro assembler and debugger.
          • It's a good class. I learned more in 362 with Meyer than in just about any other class I've taken.

            Working with assembly and examining exactly how computers work is invaluable. Learn what's going on under the hood and suddenly your coding ability in most languages improves dramatically.
      • Motorola made most of their microcontrollers for the automotive sector where massive volumes ruled. One unfortunate consequence of this was their absolute minimum of support for anyone designing lower volume applications, which I feel has really hurt them in getting mindshare of engineers working for smaller companies and expanding their market. Good tools were horribly expensive and most of their documentation was even worse (I still have nightmares about the horribly inconsistent Dragonball documentatio
  • Perhaps now they will be able to crank out those new chips in good time... as opposed to every other year!

  • About time ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mfago ( 514801 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:36PM (#7145780)
    The new company at least will give a damn about its chip business -- it's all they've got -- something that Mot itself never did.

    Surprised they didn't sell it, but they probably couldn't find any takers.

  • Surrendering? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Surrendering to IBM a key role in delivering the PowerPC for Apple Computer's top-of-the-line desktop'

    Um... last time I checked it was Motorola lackluster development the drove Apple into IBM's arms.

  • Difference of Opinion (Score:4, Funny)

    by 1010011010 ( 53039 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:38PM (#7145800) Homepage
    Fellow Executives: "We'd like to make market-leading products. And money."

    CEO: "Meh."

    Thre you have it, a difference of opinion.
    • "Just because we can do something doesn't mean we have to do it," Galvin told an audience of thousands of wireless executives on Monday during his keynote address at the CTIA Wireless 2003 spring convention.

      Galvin's comments run counter to what other CEOs had to say in their keynotes. Instead of stressing the voice call, most wireless companies are using the show to introduce even more complex data services such as behind-the-firewall access for mobile workers, or the ability to tap into wireless "hot sp
      • I know what you are trying to say, but from another point of view, you are looking at a phone as a strickly "talk to one another" device, as it was invented many decades ago - but it does not have to be like that.

        case in point: In Japan, the most frequent thing people in general do on their cellphones is to key email messages to eachother (especially students, since it's cheaper to email), that followed closely by snapping shots at nearly EVERYTHING.

        for me, I use my phone (DoCoMo) the most for
        1) schedule
        • I understand what you are saying too. I do have a mono phone that I use for talking & text messages. The nice thing about text messages is that it can be delivered late, not phone calls. How can you depend on a system that is not dependable? I expect that all my calls are going to come through to me not too look down at my phone and see 1 missed call when it did not ring. Could it be the phone? Probably, my problem is not only with missed calls but dropped calls. I can also understand each cell site can
    • Motorola also produces microcontrollers, and AFAIK is market leader in that sector. And it is far larger market than the one for desktop-processors.

      As they (partly) stated in the article:

      "We believe SPS is well positioned to increase its leadership in the end markets it serves, including the networking, communications, transportation and industrial markets," Scott Anderson, president of Motorola SPS, said in a statement.


  • Good for the semi guys (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:40PM (#7145813)
    Years ago I was talking to some of the semi guys, and they were royally pissed at MOTO corporate for screwing them over, funding-wise. The PPC division was always paranoid that they were getting screwed because Moto lost big $$ when Apple shut down the Mac clones way back when.

    Basically, they believed Moto corporate was sandbagging the PPC to "screw Apple."

    One thing for sure, they definitely need better cooks for the broth. They've seem to forgotten how to make chips.

    • Re:Good for the semi guys (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Basically, they believed Moto corporate was sandbagging the PPC to "screw Apple."

      I guess that didn't work out.
      • It sure worked during the late 90s and early 2000s. If Apple hadn't branched out into other stuff, it would have died.

        As it is, the other stuff kept Apple going until the hardware side could catch up to the x86 in price/performance.

    • Basically, they believed Moto corporate was sandbagging the PPC to "screw Apple."

      As an avid Mac follower, yeah, I could believe that too, exactly for the reason that you mention--to spite Apple after Jobs killed the clones.

      Here's a related question: there've been rumors that Apple will sue Moto for stopping production on the G4 prematurely; apparently the contract with Moto spelled out a timeframe of warning that Moto would have to give Apple. Would the parent Moto be liable, or would the spun off co
      • PowerPC was developed originaly in a joint development by Motorola, Apple and IBM. After that IBM and Motorola created they own additions to the lines (ej altivex). But basicaly is still the same PowerPC implementation to witch Apple has access in the worst case scenario.

        I mainly think Appla has no interest in manufacturing it's own cpu's. It will be to expensive to build MAC only CPU's.
      • Concidering Apples phycotic behavior towards its suppliers over the years, I doubt that they would get very far in attempting to sue Motorola. Also, the PPC was not sandbagged per say. Apple wanted things that would have negativly affected the PPCs use for embeded apps. They also kept changing their mind about what they wanted. Motorola probably could have spun out another line of PPC, but after Apples past behavior, decided it was too much bother.

        On the other hand, Motorola has been caught up in that whol

      • I'm curious... where did you hear Moto was prematurely stopping production on the G4? I'd like to follow up on that. If you have any links, etc. Please post them. Thanks
      • Its already a well established legal precident that companies cannot avoid liability simply by spinning off the offending department. There is no time limit on this either. All that needs to be proved is that the company is spinning off the unit in order to evade liability.
    • While I'm sure Motorolla DID lose some $$ when Apple pulled the plug on clones but it's definately my opinion that they did not do ANYTHING INTENTIONAL to screw Apple. I think the just made some HUGE business mistakes which were combined with technical INABILITY to provide a competitive product.

      Here are a couple of examples of their business cluelessness:

      At one time Windows Ran on the PPC-and instead of investing in a hard-core partnership with MS ala Intel they let Windows NT for PPC die on the vine.

      • A note on the PPC Windows. IIRC at the time this was a availible, the primary consumer of the PPC chips were Apple users, so it wasnt' so much that motorola let it die so much as there was no demand.
        • Not sure I agree w/you completey. Yes Apple has always been Motos main computer chip custumer but maybe whe have a "whch came first the chicken or the egg" situation here.

          You think that there was no demand for Windows/PPC. I think there was no demand because Moto is and perhapbs will always be TERRIBLE at marketing their often very good products.

          Again I point out the fact they they were not even a customer of their own products as indicative of their backwards buisness sense. WHile I know that intern

          • Can you imagine Intel using AMD PC's?

            Heh, just an amusing factoid for you. Up untill I think a little before the debut of the P4, Intel's marketing division used almost exclusively macintosh computers. Does that count?

            But yeah, i see your point, I just think the death of WinPPC had more to do with no mac users wanting Windows rather than Moto not marketing the chip well.
      • My understanding was that Moto lost around a hundred million on the deal, which back then was (and still is today) a large chunk of cash. It probably nuked a bunch of careers and caused serious ill will.

        If you've ever dealt with corps at that level, well, people don't forgive and forget. Upper management are elephants when it comes to stuff like this, and institutional memory preserves the vibe.

        Just look at IBM going after Microsoft with Linux. They're loving every minute, and every Linux win is another w

  • This is hardly surprising... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by schmidt349 ( 690948 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:43PM (#7145840)
    Motorola has been having problems with their advanced semiconductor products, particularly PowerPC microprocessors, for years. When Apple first released the Power Mac G4, there were so many fabrication problems at Motorola's chip foundries that Apple initially had to scale back what were supposed to be 500MHz G4s to 450MHz, a move that really hurt Apple's credibility in the computing world.
    More recently, Moto had been having problems delivering G4 7447s in sufficient quantities for Apple to release their Powerbook upgrades, including the much-ballyhooed 15" Aluminum model. In any case, Apple's decision to go with IBM's PowerPC technology was probably motivated as much by pragmatic corporate survivalism as any other factor -- they simply couldn't afford to be tied down by a semiconductor sloth like Motorola.
    In any case, I doubt this means much for Moto's embedded processor and microcontroller business, which has been thriving for quite some time. It just doesn't operate under the same pressure as the rapidly advancing world of high-performance microprocessor products. The 68HC11 and HCS12 will probably be around for a very long time to come.
    • Sloth is right; and Wasteful too. They did a whole new chip a few years ago, did the tools alongside the chip (I was part of the tools team) so the tools and chip would go out together. The chip was late, and riddled with fabrication problems. Then they dropped the whole program. About an years work of over a hundred people down the drain. That was about when they started to lose money.
    • Sadly the HC11 and HC16 will be around for a long time, I write code for them still....

  • Difference of opinion (Score:5, Funny)

    by bladernr ( 683269 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:43PM (#7145841)
    This follows earlier news that Motorola's CEO will step down, citing a 'difference of opinion' with fellow executives."

    I think the difference was he wanted to remain employed, and they didn't agree...

    • I'll just be glad for some change.....I bought the stock when I thought it was at a bargain......which was shortly followed by them laying off 4000 people and having management issues.

      I think this is a great idea and as a shareholder I'll be glad to see MOT do something to improve its situation for once.

  • What where they thinking (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:44PM (#7145852)
    Sure, it's great for employees to have an in-house Potato Chips departement, but companies should concentrate on one thing, and do it well.
  • Well, not totally of course. We'll have to see what type of name they give it, but it's another once proud pioneer of the industry fading into obscurity. Moto's big downfall in the cpu market was their utter failure to acknowledge the importance of RISC to many of their core customers (the workstation manufs). Causing Sun to develop SPARC and opening the door to the likes of MIPS. Sigh ....
    • So what was the 88000?
      • So what was the 88000?

        It was a too little too late attempt to rectify their mistake. By the time they came out with the 88k all the major workstation manufacturers had already chosen or rolled their own. The 88k would be less than a footnote in history if not for the parts of it that they utilized for the PPC. Fact is that Sun begged and pleaded with Moto to come up with a RISC proccie and Moto's failure to act is one of the biggest management mistakes in the early days of computing.
        • Very little if any of the 88000 went into the PPC. As for the 88000 not finding a home in Workstations, that is hardly suprising concidering the processor was designed with robotics in mind. The CPU world does not revolve around Workstations. In fact, they account for only a fraction of the CPU/MPU market. Some of the concepts pioneered in the 88000 did show up later in some high end DSPs. I can't remember, off teh top of my head, which series. RISC design concepts were incorporated in the 68000 series from
      • You should look up the history of the 78000 > 88100 family... look for names like Richard Ross and Tom Gunter. It's the reason why Moto never succeeded in the high end microprocessor market.

        Then look up the MicroTac marketing fiasco, and how the analog cellular group held down the digital group to preserve their status. That's what let Nokia and Ericsson into the market.

  • Most interesting. (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So, is the new chip division/ company going to not suck?

    [[ / bitter mac user who blames Motorola for the fact that the PowerPC was basically at a total standstill for the two years before the G5 was released ]]

  • No More Soylent Dog Chow (Score:4, Interesting)

    by buckhead_buddy ( 186384 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:54PM (#7145940)
    Many tech companies are proud of the claim that We eat our own dog food.

    It's seems likely to me that Motorolla did not want to use it's own semiconductors in it's communications business. But doing so would, in essence, be a vote of no confidence in their own semiconductor business.

    By spinning off their semi-conductor biz and framing it as a move to meet demands from other customers, they are able to ditch their processors without outright killing their semiconductor business.

    If the spinoff does poorly, they'll quietly kill it later. If it does well, they'll either start using their products again or sell it off for a big profit.

    It's sad to see Motorolla leaving the chip business though. :-(

    • Or... it will go on a rampage of litigation, suing IBM for 'stealing SIMD' and Intel for infringing on their 'use silicon chips as CPUs'. Eventually all Apple G4 users will get mail asking for an 'extended Altivec Licensing Fee' of $499 per CPU.

      Nevermind.
    • Actually Moto has not been eating their own dog food for quite some time as I and a few others have mentioned.

      The did not spin off the chip biz so they would not have to use Moto chips - they already don't.

      They spun it off becuase they could not compete and they lost their biggest customer. In short the Moto chip biz was about to D I E.

  • Any Metrowerks Guys Following this Thread? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    What's to become of Metrowerks?

    Presumably it will follow the semiconductor division [since a CPU ain't worth diddly-squat without a compiler], but maybe they want to keep you so that you can write a compiler for their cellphone operating systems?

    Have you heard yet?

  • I bet. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pb ( 1020 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @02:02PM (#7146017)
    Motorola has done a horrible job of marketing their technology over the years, from the failed and forgotten AIM (Apple, IBM, and Motorola) alliance (remember? Taligent? "Pink"? Yeah, me neither...) to their more recent "Digital DNA" (I still don't know what that meant) marketing campaign.

    What does Motorola do? As far as the rest of the world is concerned, they make cellphones and stuff. People hear about the PowerMac from Apple, and occasionally the PowerPC from IBM, but they hear nothing that makes sense out of Motorola. Hopefully this will change, for their sake.

    • Re:I bet. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by IM6100 ( 692796 )
      It really doesn't matter what 'Joe on the street' thinks Motorola does.

      Joe's car has eight or twelve Motorola 6805 processors in it, and almost every appliance in his house has a motorola processor or two. It matters a lot more what the hardware designers think of Motorola, and Motorola is STRONG in that market.
      • You're right, I remember reading a production survey a few years ago and the 68332 production a few orders of magnitude higher than ALL of the X86 production. So I would imagine that this chip business would still be valuable to the right folks

  • Motorola's sad decline (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Monday October 06, 2003 @02:04PM (#7146035) Homepage Journal
    Just a few years ago, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras wrote the classic business book Built to Last [amazon.com] which detailed why some companies are great, and others are just good.

    Motorola was placed in contrast with Zenith. Both companies were established at around the same time and were basically in the same market. Over time, however, Zenith languished while Motorola kept on crankin' out the hits. Motorola's culture encouraged innovation and relentless focus on quality.

    Those of you who graduated from college in the 1990s or 2000s likely won't remember this, but in the 1980s, Motorola was one of the view companies that was consistently beating Japanese companies in quality. They were hailed by US government and business leaders alike as an exemplar of what an American business could do in a challenging international market.

    This is just further proof that nobody sits on top forever, and that keeping a very large, multinational business dynamic is a tremendously difficult task.

    • My experience there. (Score:5, Informative)

      by gosand ( 234100 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @03:03PM (#7146615)
      Those of you who graduated from college in the 1990s or 2000s likely won't remember this, but in the 1980s, Motorola was one of the view companies that was consistently beating Japanese companies in quality. They were hailed by US government and business leaders alike as an exemplar of what an American business could do in a challenging international market.

      I graduated in '93, and I got a job at Motorola in the cellular division. I worked there for 5 years, and couldn't take it anymore. Their "culture" is manufactured, and I was very surprised that they got anything accomplished. But it depends on the different divisions and how they are doing. Ours (cellular services) did OK, but we were riding on the coattails of the divisions that were doing really good (phone mfgr and radios comes to mind). They had a bonus plan in place were every 6 months you got a bonus if you met the goals set out for your division. It was given to you as a percentage of what you made in the previous 6 months. My first 6 months there we got 11%, then 4%, then 1.3%, then they cut it out all together. The year before I got there, one division got 34%. They capped it after that. It would actually produce animosity within the company. It was generally a solid company that was on a steady decline. People who had been there 10 years who were just skating on their "time served". People who had been there 20+ years who were called "lifers" and they could pretty much do as little as they wished. Ten years was called "getting your tenure". Boy, those people got a wake-up call a couple of years ago. Some people have only worked there, and they don't know what goes on outside of Moto. If you have ever met someone who has worked there for a long time, you know what I mean. Many people I know that left there have had similar experiences.

      It is a very weird place. After I lost my job at the place I left Moto for (company investors pulled out during the bubble burst), I went back to Moto. I thought "it can't be as bad as I remember it." It was. I went to have a meeting to do a pre-interview. Some HR drone talked to me to gauge my skillset. I was told it would be about 4 weeks for my paperwork to be processed, and if I was a fit anywhere, I would be contacted for interviews. It was such a sterile, devoid atmosphere that it was creepy. I told her "thanks, but no thanks" and walked out, vowing to never go back.

      This is just further proof that nobody sits on top forever, and that keeping a very large, multinational business dynamic is a tremendously difficult task.

      I got to see just one small piece of the company, and if the rest of it was anything at all like where I worked, good riddance. Of course, I do own stock that I purchased while there. It was around 90, then did a 3 to 1 split, and now it is around 11. Yay.

      • Damn, that's some interesting commentary, gosand. It's always difficult to get a feel for a company from the outside, but I could tell by what you wrote that Motorola has lost its identity. Of course, soulless companies can go on for quite some time before they finally wither away and die. It sounds like it wouldn't be any fun to work there, though.

        • Sounds like the "punch the clock" mentality ruled

          Surprisingly enough, it was the opposite. We were on flex time. I came in around 9:00, would take an hour lunch, sometimes more, and would work until 6:00 or 7:00. But I put in a lot of late nights, many times weekends. There was one stretch where I worked 60 hour weeks back to back. The record hours for our department was 83 in a week. It seemed the more we worked, the more was expected of us. But aside from all that, which I think was just our depa

      • Speaking as an ex-Motorolan, I have to agree that this guy is spot-on. I worked there for two years, and this place was as close to Dilbert-land as can be possible in real life. "Steady decline", lifers, guys who have not done a stitch of work for years, baffling political undercurrents etc. I quickly learned that some of the secretaries are mines of information. I befriended a pretty one to whom all the bosses were known to spill the beans to make themselves seem important, and learned of important stuff

        • Re:This man speaks the truth! (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I've modded in this thread, so I'll have to post anonymously, but I agree with everything the two of you have said. I'm also an ex-Motorolan (yes, they call their employees Motorolans - sounds like some kind of weird cult, eh?), and the place had the worst corporate culture you can imagine. It was just like Dilbert, except worse. Many managers were there because of ass-licking ability only. I had a manager who would bawl us out every so often ("You lazy f***s!") and then wonder why we weren't motivated to w
          • Many managers were there because of ass-licking ability only.

            Ahh, I could swap stories like this all day.

            One of my managers there (who is still there) was a total incompetent ass. His theory was to promote people under him, because the more senior people you had working for you, the better you looked. But he would talk out of his ass too, and if he didn't like you, you wouldn't get the promotion. He told me what I needed to do to get promoted, then when I did it he would change his story. All the wh

        • Speaking as an ex-Motorolan, I have to agree that this guy is spot-on. I worked there for two years, and this place was as close to Dilbert-land as can be possible in real life. "Steady decline", lifers, guys who have not done a stitch of work for years, baffling political undercurrents etc. I quickly learned that some of the secretaries are mines of information. I befriended a pretty one to whom all the bosses were known to spill the beans to make themselves seem important, and learned of important stuff w
      • You can thank George Fisher for the miserable time you had. I worked for Motorola ( several divisions) from the early 80s untill the mid 90s. I saw first hand, the fall. Too bad, Motorola use to be a great place to work. See what happens when the Board of Directors start running a company?

    • Along those lines is their famous Six Sigma program. [qualitydigest.com]

      I hope the detached orbit of their semiconductor business is not patterned after what happened to their satellite telephone business (Iridium). Another great idea before its time.

  • I would like to see the new spinoff merge with MIPS and create some real compeition to IBM if not Intel. Then maybe we can get some real alternatives to x86. It would be nice to be able to compute on cheap platforms other than x86. With with Linux as your OS it will not matter much which platform one uses along as the the platform supports linux and vice versa.
    • It would be nice to be able to compute on cheap platforms other than x86

      Not that I am disagreeing, but why? Why is it important that we use this or the other basic set of machine instructions?

      Overall, the end user sees no difference (run linux on ppc or x86. they both behave the same).

      Sometimes change for the sake of change is not the desired effect. Now, if they were to come up with a revoutionary way of combining the basic operational instructions into one low-power chip (cpu, io, gpu, etc.) then ther

      • That whiz-bang Opteron/Itanium is Backwards compatible to the Pentium II MMX/K6-2, which is backwards compatible to the 80486, which is backwards compatible to the 386+387, which is backwards compatible to the 286+287, which is backwards compatible to the 8086+8087, which is backwards compatible to the 8080, which is backwards compatible to the 8008, which is backwards compatible to the 4004, which was designed for use in a pocket calculator. Likewise, that VIA K7VMM is backwards compatible to the PC JR an

  • Could Apple buy Motorola's semiconductor unit and would they have reason to do so?
    • That is a possibility. I recall reading somewhere that Apple has the option to buy out all of Moto's PPC operations, the option is coming up in a year or two. This move could be preparation for that sale. But the big question is, why the hell would Apple WANT to buy it? I think Moto holds some fundamental patents on PPC that are licensed to IBM, maybe Apple and IBM could break the shackles completely by owning all the rights free and clear.
    • I'm sure apple could buy it; they have significant cash reserves, but why would they?

      The G4 is only a very small part of Motorola's semiconductor unit and arguably a 'loss leader'. The largest part of the business is embedded processors like the 68332, HC11&16, and MPC5XXX (the automotive series).

      Perhaps a smaller firm would be interested in it then divest the G4 technology and rights to IBM/Apple and retain the rest.

      I'm not really sure IBM would be that interested in getting involved seriously in

    • About the only reason for Apple to buy Motorola's semiconductor unit would be if Apple (Jobs) wanted to get back into the handheld market or CPU market and have more control over chip development. But for the most part this can really be done with their current relationship with IBM.

      If Apple (Jobs) is moving to a consumer electronics driven company (iPod, iSight, iMac, etc, etc) as it appears, they may want to be able to design the chips that they use and possibly even direct development into those areas.
  • Isn't the more important question who would buy the division? My best guess (and hope) would be IBM. They already have an understanding of the underlying architecture for the 7400 and 7500 series chips, and their new fab could probably use the business brought in by the lower speed embedded market

  • A few years ago (in the wake of the Iridium fiasco) they already spun off part of their Semiconductor Products Sector (specifically the division that made discrete components, SSI glue logic, power electronics, and similar stuff) into the company that eventually became ON Semiconductor [onsemi.com]. Now the rest of SPS is following! At this rate, what will be left of their company?

  • The real sad thing is that once again x86 is the only architecture left with a fundamental market feature, alternative sources of supply.

    I really want to see PowerPC or some other RISC succeeding in the mass market with GNU. But we need alternative sources of supply: SPARC is not targetting the mass market or GNU, PowerPC is left with IBM, Alpha is dying, MIPS also misses the mass market, ARM doesn't scale up... and x86 is fragmenting, and no one know if the future generations will be proprietary as too

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