"Motorola is acting like a spoiled brat by using contractual obligations to prevent IBM selling fast PowerPC 7400 (aka G4) to Apple just because it can't produce enough of them itself," says Tony Smith, managing editor of The Register. Mr. Smith currently has articles on this topic posted on both The Register and MacWeek, citing that impeccably reliable source of intelligence, MacOS Rumors .

Mr. Smith notes that a bug in Moto's version of the G4 chip currently prevents it running at clock speeds higher than 500MHz, and consequently Apple commissioned IBM late last year as a second source of G4 processors.

IBM has reportedly squashed the G4 bug, and is now capable of producing 600 or 650MHz G4s at a lower price than Moto. However (also reportedly) there are clauses in IBM's deal to license AltiVec ("Velocity Engine") technology from Moto that prevent IBM from selling faster versions of the G4 than Moto itself can deliver.

In his MacWeek piece, Tony Smith provides an interesting overview of the disparate philosophies at IBM and Motorola, with IBM emphasizing a "brute-force approach to computing horsepower -- pure RISC," with Moto leaning more to finesse -- ie: AltiVec, which is more in line with the Intel/AMD K7 approach. Indeed, it is reported that Moto has licensed certain technologies to AMD.

This spat has been of no benefit to Apple, and while Tony Smith notes that "Apple has no choice but to stick with Motorola for now." MacOS X will make a potential move away from PowerPC more feasible, but until then, says Smith "Apple needs Motorola far more than Motorola needs Apple," and is is widely known that Moto still harbors a grudge against Apple for terminating Mac OS clone licensing in '97, which significantly hurt Moto's balance sheets.

Smith points out that if the PowerPC is to survive as a personal computer CPU, the PPC partners must really learn to get along, especially with Intel and AMD already at 1GHz, and in no mood to wait around for IBM and Motorola to catch up.

Charles W. Moore

.

February 09, 2010