“International Business Machines Corp. sued a top executive on Thursday to prevent him from joining Apple Inc., court documents [filed with the United States District Court in Manhattan] showed,” Ajay Kamalakaran reports for Reuters.
“IBM said Mark Papermaster, who was vice president of the company’s Blade Development unit until last week, signed a noncompete agreement with IBM that would prevent him from accepting a job with a competitor until one year after leaving the company,” Kamalakaran reports.
“Papermaster, who was with IBM for the past 26 years, served as a member of the company’s Integration & Values Team since 2006. “In his capacity as a member of the I&VT, Mr. Papermaster has gained access to confidential information concerning the company’s strategic plans, marketing plans and long term business opportunities, including the development of specific IBM products,” the company said,” Kamalakaran reports.
Full article here.
Max Hertz reports for Apple Eclectic, “Mark Papermaster is described as an expert in the fields of both server and processor design — both areas of interest to Apple. Processor design is probably initially the more interesting of these. Papermaster is experienced in the design of chips using IBM’s Power architecture, the same area of specialisation as PA Semi, the company which Apple purchased earlier this year. Part of IBM’s suit is that his experience could help Apple compete against them in the market for these chips. This seems more than unlikely. Apple rarely if ever in its past has manufactured components or anything else for third parties. If they plan to design Power chips they’ll be destined for their own products.”
“I think Apple’s future server business has to be seen in conjuncture with the new multi-processor technologies due in Snow Leopard. There are other markets where Apple and the Xserve already has some traction, and those are academic research and the science industries. Here, users need access to as much computational power as possible. HPC [High Performance Computing], generally based on networks of Linux machines, are the more popular tool, but Apple has gained some ground due to the ease with which its Xgrid software can be used to control similar arrays of Macs,” Hertz reports.
More in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “James W.” for the heads up.]