Could it be the end of the PowerPC?

[eltonjohn]

Steve jobs just announced that the new macs will be using INTEL CPUS ..in order to be able to watch movies ..over the internet .
So once the biggest custumer of this CPU is gone i don't see any more devellopment of that CPU .. it means that XILINX will have to chose something else .!

 

[Prasanna Kumar]

Steve jobs i believe is the executive of APPLE MAC's and he is willing to use Intel processor rather than IBM's. so why would the era end. intel will produce its own processors, there is a change only in Apple not in intel.

regards

 

[XNOX_Rambo]

I have led projects using different types of the IBM PowerPC. The hardware
documentation was 20 pages and the software documentation 1600 pages (approx),
so IBM obviously focused on the "soft" issues. I also found a hardware bug that
was due to IBM's neglect to test the chip thoroughly.
Good riddance to the PowerPC!

/Rambo

 

[Ice-Tea]

I highly doubt this would mean the end, especially since at leasy two out of three new gaming consoles are based on PowerPC architecture, the much hyped CELL technology is based on it and, as you mentioned, is also in Xylinx devicxes and presumably many others I don't know about.

There are many CPU architectures out there that don't have half of the volume PowerPC will still have (C3, Eden,...) that have found a niche, so why not the PowerPC.

On the other hand, it would prove my point that I made at the company I work for. When we had to migrate from Philips XA processors due to obsoleteness to a new platform, we went to Xilinx/PowerPC, much to my dismay. While SW developers argued that PowerPC had a more solid developer community then Nios, my main argument was that, no matter what, you could always synthesise a Nios in whatever new component Altera comes out with while this was not a guarantee for the PowerPC.

 

[flatulent]

When Apple stopped using the 68000 series it still survived and I am told that it is used in automobiles.

What is going to happen is that Apple market share will shrink yet again as they make even more of the older programs not operate on the most recent macintosh computers. They have driven away so many developers that users of these older programs cannot get a more recent version and they will be forced to either not get a new macintosh or they will migrate to the windows system where there is a wide selection of supported programs.

You may remember that in the past Pspice, eagleware, and matLAB were available on the macintosh but not now.

 

[eltonjohn]

Hi FLATULENT .. In the article i read they said that apple wants now to concentrate on iPOD + iTunes version for hollywood big studios .Probably then the MAC will become just a MULTI MEDIA PLATAFORM . ANd for that as you said they don't need to keep up with obsolete SOFT !

 

[Ice-Tea]

Wouldn''t that be an enormous risk? You could argue that the MAC had it's use, more user friendly, better graphics editing (although that's really not a discussion I want to get into ;-) ) but on the MP3 player market nothing sets iPod's apart from the rest of the field except for th price tag and something as volitile as bragging rights...