Can PowerPC Stay With Intel In The Processor Speedstakes?
MacWeek’s Stephen Beale notes that while the PowerPC G4 still delivers better performance than Intel’s Pentium III at equivalent clock speeds, especially when running applications that take advantage of the G4’s Velocity Engine, the growing gap between Mac and PC hardware has to be cause for concern, especially accompanied by rumors of bad blood between PPC chip suppliers IBM and Motorola.. Mr Beale cites an IBM spokesperson who told him that IBM has not actually licensed Motorola’s AltiVec instruction set, nor does it plan to. Beale notes that “concerns about the future of the AIM alliance led to recent speculation that Apple might be using its open-source Darwin OS as a PowerPC “exit strategy” in case the AIM partners can’t get their act together. This was prompted by an announcement from Apple software developer Wilfredo Sanchez that he had successfully compiled Darwin to run on PowerPC and Pentium hardware.” The article provides a capsule profile of Apple’s current chip supply situ
