“The news of [the last] fairly slow week for Apple watchers came in the form of a lawsuit from Apple’s PowerPC partner, IBM, who apparently are trying to protect some chip design IP,” Seth Weintraub blogs for Computerworld. “What are Apple’s intentions with Mr. Papermaster?”
“In the late 90’s Papermaster was one of the main drivers of the PowerPC chip. He likely had lots of interaction with Apple at this point as they were the PowerPC platform’s biggest customer. The PowerPC 630 (or Power3) was ultimately used in IBM mainframe computers but was originally built with the intention of going in desktops – perhaps Apple’s. Papermaster was one of the main architects of this processor,” Weintraub reports. “Since then, he has authored many papers on chip design and is generally regarded as one of the leaders in the chip design field.”
“Then a few years ago, he was put in charge of IBM’s blade server division. I think this point is moot because I don’t think Apple is going after the blade server market. I’d frankly be surprised if they put any more resources into their Xserves or server hardware in general. Apple, the consumer company, just doesn’t spend much in the way on resources on servers,” Weintraub reports.
“PA Semi, the company Apple purchased a few months ago, was going up against IBM in selling PowerPCs (PA Semi’s PWREfficient was in the running to replace the IBM G5 when Apple moved to Intel). PA Semi, as a unit of Apple, is still fulfilling PowerPC contracts for embedded systems for military and other uses,” Weintraub reports. “But will the final product that Apple is working on be a PowerPC processor? Probably not. One of PA Semi’s engineers let slip a few months ago that he is working on an ARM-based processor that will be in future Apple products.”
More in the full article here.
Interesting. I expect future apple hardware will be PA Semi powered. The question is, will it eventually be the replacement for desktop and notebook chips, or is it for the mobile device line?
Time will tell…
Apple is obviously not satisfied with the general state of low power processors and chips available from other companies. The PA Semi acquisition made this very clear, and Papermaster’s hire seems to cement that Apple has specific needs/wants for its processors/chips which Apple will solve itself rather than waiting for Intel, AMD, or anyone else to develop the solution.
Apple has a vision of portable computing, which has been apparent for years with the strong emphasis on laptops and iMacs and a low priority on Mac Pros and Xserves. Now with the iPhone and likely other small, portable devices coming to market in the next couple of years, Apple wants to have an advantage in processing power.
Apple doesn’t need to produce the processors/chips, just design them. Someone else with the proper manufacturing capacity can always build them (like IBM or Intel).
It is obvious that Apple wants to get back into the printer business with a new line of multifunction printers to be branded Papermaster and this hire was just to cover there buts.
Papermaster. That’s kind of a cool name. Would be even cooler name if he was really good at origami.
A long time ago there was a move afoot to make a processor that wasn’t tied to a particular instruction set. Theoretically it could run PPC code, or x86 code, or any other kind of code on the same chip.
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PA Semi is for the handheld stuff.
Apple will stay with Intel on the desktop/laptop. Of course they could just throw in, with the Intel, one of their proprietary chips developed by PA Semi, which would make it impossible to clone a Mac computer.
I don’t recall for sure, didn’t Apple pay about $1 million per person at PA Semi?
Obviously they hired him because he is a master with paper.
The plot thickens…
Is this the response from Apple to Microsoft’s unsuccessful Origami?
Hey, you, Ballmy, look at the way we master the paper fold art!
Stupid is as stupid does®
thethirdshoe: “I don’t recall for sure, didn’t Apple pay about $1 million per person at PA Semi?”
APPLE INC(NasdaqGS: AAPL)
Market Cap: 95.02B
According to wiki:
” Apple has about 28,000 employees worldwide”
That puts the average value of an apple employee at 3.392 Billion based on open Market Capitalization.
I think Apple can afford a few 1 Million dollar employees.
Bah I fail at math, that should be 3.392 Million.
Oh well, that’s still more than 1 Million per.
They still diluted the average value of an Apple employee, so my point still stands.
What’s a few damn zeros anyways…..
A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money!
“A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money!”
UNLESS you are speaking about the US government spending, then just a few minutes worth of spending.
…As complementary chips for an unmatchable Mac products line…
Papermaster sounds less lewd than Masterpaper.
Now use that in a sentence kids:
“Steve Ballmer masterpapered over the first Zune.”
MacRaven now we know where he got the term “squirt” from.
>_>
I didn’t just go there did I?