Motorola in Talks to Improve G4 Production

It's not Motorola's G4 development team that has been lagging behind the industry in innovation and design enhancements, it's the company's manufacturing process, sources say. And while it may seem like semiconductor division at Motorola has made great strides by bumping its high-end G4 processors from 500MHz to 733MHz, it is slowly becoming apparent that those chips sporting the faster two clock-speeds won't be shipping in quantity for at least another few months.

In fact, upon closer inspection, it is only the 466MHz and 533MHz Power Mac G4s that are immediately available, sporting only a 33MHz improvement from September of 1999.

Today's problems at Motorola are similar, if not identical to those AppleInsider reported on in the past. Contrary to popular believe, the company's Somerset team — the Texas-based group of engineers responsible for G4 development — has been performing with great success. "They're doing some really cool stuff over there," one source said. "Without going into details, I can say that the team has developed and is working with chips far beyond the speeds featured in Apple's most recent line of systems."

The problem is that these chips aren't being produced in quantity and hence are not available in the open market due to the company's still poor manufacturing process and their fractured relationship with IBM.

Relations between the two microprocessor members shattered a few years back when Motorola decided to go solo on the G4 project and the PowerPC alliance was dissolved. IBM, without the rights to the G4 microprocessor stopped development and production of the chips until January of last year when Apple insisted that Motorola allow IBM, who sport a superior manufacturing technology, to begin producing G4 processors in order to meet overwhelming demand for Power Mac G4s.

After Apple quickly caught up on back orders, IBM once again was told to take a back seat to Power PC G4 production. But rumor has it that Motorola has now informed their partners of their inability to produce the faster G4 processors. Yields of the company's speedier G4s, specifically the 733MHz chip, are said to be extremely poor.

According to sources, the communications giant is once again in negotiations with IBM to resolve the conflict between the two corporations and reside at a conclusion that would allow both companies to begin producing G4 chips at their leisure, making for a happier Apple.

If the bad terms between the two can be put aside, Apple systems will be able to acquire an even more significant boost in the near future and eventually be back on par with the industry within a year's time.