Next IBM-Apple chip getting high-end feature

News.com ^ | December 21, 2004 | Stephen Shankland

[antiRepublicrat]

In 2005, IBM plans to bring a significant feature from higher-end servers to the next generation of its PowerPC 970 processor line used in Apple Computer machines and Big Blue's own blade servers.

The next-generation chip will have technology that lets it run multiple operating systems simultaneously, said Karl Freund, vice president of IBM eServer pSeries. Doing so allows a computer to handle more jobs at the same time and to be used more efficiently.

The technology, called partitioning, relies on a concept called virtualization that breaks the hard link between an operating system and the underlying hardware. Partitioning is available today only on servers using IBM's higher-end Power4 and Power5 processors and in competing server designs from Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Intel.

"The goal is to make virtualization capability ubiquitous across the Power line," Freund said in a Tuesday interview. "We want to drive it down to lower price points and make it available on products like BladeCenter as well."

[AZLiberty]

By withholding NT, Microsoft killed the Motorola server business as well. This happened about the time Motorola was producing Mac clones, but only Bill knows if there was a connection.

[ProudVet77]

We can all dislike Bill (and I do as he killed DEC where I worked). But you have to admit the people he knocked off were pretty stupid to let him kill them off. Palmer was a total jerk to wait for NT5.0
What really ticks me off he got some kind of multi-million golden parachute, and I understand he is on the board of directors of another major chip company. Who would hire a failure like him?