Com Apple got two pieces of good news in its long-term battle with the Megahertz Gap this week. IBM announced that it would join Motorola in producing 1 GHz and beyond CPUs for the Mac early next year. The new family of CPUs will draw very little power, reducing heat output and thus allowing faster and cooler laptops. It is even said to use an acceleration engine much like the Motorola Velocity Engine that powers Macintosh G4s.
Details are sketchy, but the basics of the planned announcements are clear.
The chips are also part of an effort by IBM to cut the amount of heat-producing power consumed by all of its chips. Aside from laptops, this is important to the networking hardware business, which is where the bulk of IBMs PowerPC chips go. Velocity is the reason Motorola's G4 line has significantly more speed than the G3s. IBM's news, to be unveiled at the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose next week, comes on the heels of a promise by Motorola that it will achieve 1 GHz soon. The best news from IBM, at least in the short term, is the low power consumption of the new chips.