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Judging by details revealed in a chip conference agenda, the clock frequency race isn't over yet. IBM's Power6 processor will be able to exceed 5 gigahertz in a high-performance mode, and the second-generation Cell Broadband Engine processor from IBM, Sony and Toshiba will run at 6GHz, according to the program for the International Solid State Circuits Conference that begins February 11 in San Francisco. Chipmakers have run into problems increasing chip clock speed--essentially an electronic heartbeat that synchronizes operations in a processor--because higher frequencies have led to unmanageable power consumption and waste heat. To compensate, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices...

Steve Jobs' much publicised claim of a two-to-three-times speed increase in the new Intel-based iMac is bunkem, according to the latest benchmark tests. The new Intel-based iMac G5 is not much faster than its PowerPC predecessor, Macworld has discovered. Macworld benchmarks show that the iMac G5 running an Intel 2.0 GHz Core Duo gained only between 10 to 25 percent in performance compared to the IBM architecture, far lower than the doubling in throughput widely claimed by Apple. The magazine carried out a series of tasks using two Apple applications, iMovie and iPhoto, discovering that performance boost ranged from worthy...

Does anyone else remember there was a rumor just before the OSX x86 announcement that Steve Jobs was willing to give up a bit of profit for more market share? Well, it looks like that is exactly what is happening and more. If you haven't heard already, the developer kit for OSX on Intel has been leaked and thousands of people all over the world are running OSX on their PCs right now. Now, there are a few different types of people running this pirated version of OSX. The curious type who just want to play with OSX, those who...

About the Mac OS X 10.4.2 Update (Delta) This software updates Mac OS X 10.4.1 to version 10.4.2. Important: Please read before installing You may experience unexpected results if you have third-party system software modifications installed, or if you have modified the operating system through other means. (This does not apply to normal application software installation.)The installation process should not be interrupted. If a power outage or other interruption occurs during installation, use the standalone installer (see below) from Apple Downloads to update.If issues occur during installation--for example, Software Update quits unexpectedly--please see this document. Installation You have two...

IBM Corp. unveiled two new PowerPC chips Thursday at an event in Tokyo, one month after its primary customer for those chips announced plans to switch to Intel Corp.’s processors. The new PowerPC 970MP is a dual-core version of the PowerPC 970FX, which users of Apple’s Power Mac and iMac computers know as the G5 processor. IBM also unveiled a low-power version of the 970FX chip with power consumption statistics that would make it suitable for a notebook. IBM had said little publicly about its PowerPC road map during the last several weeks of speculation, then confirmation, that Apple would...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Apple Computer Inc.'s decision to use PC chips made by Intel Corp. may not have as great an impact on current chip supplier International Business Machines Corp. as some investors might suppose at first glance. That's because IBM (IBM: news, chart, profile) has been shifting its emphasis in recent years away from PC chips to those used to power other types of devices, especially video-game players, several analysts wrote Monday. IBM is supplying the microprocessors that will act as the brains for the next generation of best-selling game consoles, including Microsoft's Xbox 360, (MSFT: news, chart,...

Apple Computer Inc. plans to announce on Monday that it will switch to using Intel Corp's microprocessors and phase out its current chip supplier, International Business Machines Corp., CNET News.com reported late on Friday.

Excerpt, subscription required - SAN FRANCISCO -- Apple Computer Inc. is expected to announce Monday that it will begin shifting its Macintosh computer line next year to Intel Corp. chips, people familiar with the situation said. The move is a major change in strategy by Apple, a high-profile win for Intel, and a potential blow to International Business Machines Corp. and Freescale Semiconductor Inc., suppliers of the PowerPC chips that Apple has long used in its Macintosh systems. [snip]

Apple Computer plans to announce Monday that it's scrapping its partnership with IBM and switching its computers to Intel's microprocessors, CNET News.com has learned. Apple has used IBM's PowerPC processors since 1994, but will begin a phased transition to Intel's chips, sources familiar with the situation said. Apple plans to move lower-end computers such as the Mac Mini to Intel chips in mid-2006 and higher-end models such as the Power Mac in mid-2007, sources said. The announcement is expected Monday at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, at which Chief Executive Steve Jobs is giving the keynote speech. The...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc. has been in talks that could lead to a decision soon to use Intel Corp. chips in its Macintosh computer line, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The report, citing two industry executives with knowledge of recent discussions between the companies, said Apple will agree to use Intel chips. Neither company would confirm the report and an Apple spokeswoman told the Journal she would characterize it as "rumor and speculation." It was unclear whether such a move would signal a large-scale shift away from chips made by IBM, Apple's longtime supplier,...

IBM is well-known within the semiconductor industry for cutting-edge chips. Its PowerPC chips also are used in the Mars rover vehicles, some of the most sophisticated business workstations and Apple machines. But the game consoles will take IBM chips more mainstream.

IBM has one-upped itself. Big Blue has revealed that it has broken through the 100 teraflop mark and developed the world's fastest supercomputer for the United States National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The system is a derivative of IBM's BlueGene/L supercomputer, which won the supercomputing crown back from NEC's Earth Simulator. The NNSA machine is used to simulate nuclear tests as part of an ongoing maintenance program for the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

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...

A US FIRM said that it has delivered two single board computers which are candidates for the US Air Force Research Labs' space science mission. Computers in space are bombarded by particles that can destroy the electronics. But, said Maxwell Technologies, the SCS750 includes component shield technology and system level architecture that indicate an error rate of less than one in 10,000 years. That's a long time. The SCS750 uses three Power PC 750FM chips which simultaneously run the same program and check with each other, "voting" on each operation. If one of the CPUs "disagrees" with the other two,...

While a new iMac has been expected for some time, Cupertino-based Apple Computer Inc. surprised many industry watchers when they announced late last week a shortage of iMacs leading the company to suspend order-taking for the product. Apple called the iMac shortage "less than perfect" planning as it waits for the next generation of consumer desktops to hit the market. Industry analysts see the shortage as a significant problem for the company, but one they feel Apple can recover from if the new iMac follows Apple's tradition blockbuster releases. "It's pretty significant when you consider the iMac's lagging sales...

Though there's long been a relatively stable application for running Windows-based software on Apple hardware, using Mac-centric programs on Microsoft-minded machines has rarely been possible. A duo of enthusiasts is attempting to buck that trend by launching an open-source program called PearPC that lets PCs built around chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices emulate a machine running the Mac's PowerPC chip. The software can also run various flavors of Linux, though most of the interest has focused on its ability to run the Mac OS on a PC. Early testers say the software works but that it runs very...

We've posted similar rumors in the past, but more recently we've begun to gain a clearer picture of what may really be going on behind the considerable delays of PowerPC 970FX-based Macs. Large-scale purchases of Xserve G5s by high profile educational and scientific customers like Virginia Tech are well known to be playing a part in the shipping delays affecting Xserve G5s - particularly the dual-processor model. According to new reports out of Cupertino, Austin, Apple's contractors in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, demand for those publicly acknowledged purchases is definitely strong, stronger than Apple's already optimistic projections. But Apple...

Microsoft and IBM Announce Technology Agreement IBM Technology to Power Future Xbox Products and Services REDMOND, Wash. and EAST FISHKILL, N.Y., Nov. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) today announced that it has entered into a semiconductor technology agreement with IBM Corp. Under the agreement, Microsoft has licensed leading-edge semiconductor processor technology from IBM for use in future Xbox(R) products and services to be announced at a later date. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO ) "Microsoft is already developing the software and services that will drive the Digital Decade," said Robbie Bach, senior vice president of the Home & Entertainment Division...

Apple and IBM Introduce the PowerPC G5 Processor World's First 64-Bit Desktop Processor the Heart of the World's Fastest Personal Computer WWDC 2003, SAN FRANCISCO, June 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Apple and IBM together today introduced the world's first 64-bit desktop processor -- the PowerPC G5. Based on IBM's industry leading POWER architecture, the new PowerPC G5 processor has been optimized for personal computers and is at the heart of Apple's newly announced Power Mac G5, the world's fastest desktop computer. "The PowerPC G5 changes all the rules. This 64-bit race car is the heart of our new Power Mac...

According to a report tonight at MacRumors.com, the Apple website listed the specs (apparently by accident) of the new Macs expected to be introduced on Monday at the Worldwide Developer's Conference. The information was found via the Akamai internet service that Apple uses to accelerate web page downloading. The purported specs are - The world's fastest personal computer. 1.6GHz, 1.8GHz, or Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 Processors Up to 1 GHz processor bus Up to 8GB of DDR SDRAM Fast Serial ATA hard drives AGP 8x Pro3 PCI or PCI-X expansion slots One FW800, two FW400 ports Bluetooth & Airport Extreme...