Kasper JadeIn a recent interview with CNet News.com, Freescale Semiconductor chief executive Michel Mayer spoke of his company's evolving business model and revealed that Apple chief Steve Jobs was itching to switch the Mac to Intel processors over five years ago.
"Desktop is a very small piece of our business, and it's going away," said Mayer. "Our only customer is Apple (for laptops), and they are switching to Intel sometime next year."
While Freescale was not happy to lose Apple as a customer, Mayer conceded that "frankly, with all of the growth opportunities that we have in front of us, it was not a good use of our resources to try to defend half a percent market share, which is how much desktop we have against Intel."
"OK, Intel has the PC, that's fine," Mayer said. "There are so many opportunities outside the PC that it's much better using our resources to try to go into spaces where we are really leaders."
Mayer believes innovation is moving away from the PC space, and towards consumer electronics, game consoles, cars, phones and the iPod. "That's where innovation is," said Mayer. "So desktop is not a market that we want to serve."
Asked if he was present five years ago during the discussions when IBM convinced Apple to adopt the G5, Mayer said: "In my previous job, I ran IBM's semiconductor business. So I've seen both sides of the Apple story, because I sold the G5 to Steve (Jobs) the first time he wanted to move to Intel."
Mayer said that he first I told IBM that it should adopt the G5 project with Freescale, and then I sold the chip to Apple. "The G5 was good and it was going to be the follow-on of the PowerPC road map for the desktop. It worked pretty well," he said. "And then IBM decided not to take the G5 into the laptop and decided to really focus its chip business on the game consoles."
Mayer's comments about Apple's transition add fuel to implications that the Mac maker's move to the Intel artchitecture had been planned as early as five years ago. Recent statements by Steve Jobs himself indicated that Apple worked hard to keep its half-decade long Mac OS X for Intel project under wraps.
"So today for the first time, I can confirm the rumors that every release of Mac OS X has been compiled for both PowerPC and Intel," Jobs said in June as he announced Apple's plans to go Intel. "This has been going on for the last five years," he said.?
Looking ahead, Mayer said Freescale will likely revitalize its PowerPC business, but possibly under a different name. "I don't know if it's going to be called PowerPC. A lot of people have questions on the PowerPC architecture and what's going on," Mayer said. "I think IBM and us need to make a very strong statement that, 'Hey, a lot of applications are using that architecture, it's alive, it's there to last, don't get confused because there are many more PowerPC chips than IBM's Power architecture chips sold in the world.'"
Mayer said that most people would be shocked to learn that the PowerPC drives the engine control power train application in some automobiles. He mentioned that there are currently 52 Freescale chips in both the BMW 7 Series and the 5 series. The BMW 7 Series v6 currently uses a 16-bit PowerPC chip and will be moving to a 32-bit chip next year, Mayer said.
The chips control air bag deployment, moving the seats, the power train, Telematics, OnStar, entertainment systems, the transmission, and more.
"Next year, 50 percent of car (models) in the world will have PowerPCs," Mayer said.
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Christine McKee
88 Comments
Well now, this figures, doesn't it?
Now it's clear. IBM didn't want to make a laptop G5. Otherwise we could have had one.
I still think that Apple should have gone x86 when OS X first came out.
Everything had to be rewritten back then anyway. This way they wouldn't have had two transitions to make.
It would have been cheaper and easier for everyone involved.
Well now, this figures, doesn't it?
Now it's clear. IBM didn't want to make a laptop G5. Otherwise we could have had one.
I still think that Apple should have gone x86 when OS X first came out.
Everything had to be rewritten back then anyway. This way they wouldn't have had two transitions to make.
It would have been cheaper and easier for everyone involved.
Maybe. But then OS X originally was something of an extra to run on the existing (PowerPC) architecture, until it really reached active maturity at the release of Jaguar or thereabouts.
Basically Jobs was talked into staying with PPC because of the promise of the G5 which was still far away at the time. It could well have gone to laptops too, but IBM only later changed their mind about that. So I can't say I think Apple made the wrong decision at the time.
However keeping OS X dual platform all that time (what we used to call Marklar) was very cunning and definitely astute!
I like this bit from the article:
Does that mean if you get the traction control busy enough on a slippery surface, you can expect to hear some air cooling fan come on to chill the busy G4's? Poor BMW customers, this PowerBook owner sympathises with their prospective plight!
Maybe. But then OS X originally was something of an extra to run on the existing (PowerPC) architecture, until it really reached active maturity at the release of Jaguar or thereabouts.
Basically Jobs was talked into staying with PPC because of the promise of the G5 which was still far away at the time. It could well have gone to laptops too, but IBM only later changed their mind about that. So I can't say I think Apple made the wrong decision at the time.
However keeping OS X dual platform all that time (what we used to call Marklar) was very cunning and definitely astute!
I like this bit from the article:
Does that mean if you get the traction control busy enough on a slippery surface, you can expect to hear some air cooling fan come on to chill the busy G4's? Poor BMW customers, this PowerBook owner sympathises with their prospective plight!
From the article it doesn't sound like IBM waited very long to decide about a laptop chip. But they didn't have one then, and that should have been enough.
After all, isn't that the main reason why Apple hasn't gone to AMD?
Yes, yes, I know there are others as well.
This is a good move for freescale. The PPC is very well suited to the high-end embedded market, and the 7400 series, which is evolving into interesting dual core SoC's, is really a top-in-class performer. Altivec makes it a wicked DSP.
The thing we know is that Apple is going Intel because it's a better total package, including a wider range of products, and better fab, and, most of all, a much more heavily funded and talented long-term research department than what anyone else in the industry has.
This is a good move for freescale. The PPC is very well suited to the high-end embedded market, and the 7400 series, which is evolving into interesting dual core SoC's, is really a top-in-class performer. Altivec makes it a wicked DSP.The thing we know is that Apple is going Intel because it's a better total package, including a wider range of products, and better fab, and, most of all, a much more heavily funded and talented long-term research department than what anyone else in the industry has.
Sure. But if they didn't have Yonah coming out now, and Merom coming out second half of 2006, and AMD did, the rest wouldn't matter.