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It's Just A Matter Of Time (12/11/00)
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You've heard them all before... What goes around comes around. Every dog has its day. What goes up must come down. C'mon, any concept described by so many hackneyed expressions must be true, right? Karma, divine justice, Yin and Yang-- call it what you will, but the idea of the fundamental balance of the universe is central to hundreds of belief systems and resides deep within the human psyche and collective unconscious. Heck, it's probably the only thing that keeps Motorola going these days.
The problem with this whole "everything balances out in the end" idea is that there's no time limit on its application. So while Intel's been reigning supreme for years (at least in the areas of processor clock speed, mind share, chips sales, and dumb but publicly resonant commercials featuring disco-dancing Bunnymen and blue guys on crack), there's no divine buzzer which signals when Motorola gets its turn in the sun and Intel suffers the inevitable decline. The most optimistic of us figured that after so many years in the doghouse, Motorola would begin its meteoric rise to processor perfection beginning as early as late next year. After all, Intel can't possibly keep cranking out faster chips forever, right?
But forever's a very long time, and if you're holding your breath waiting for Intel to run out of steam, you might want to consider inhaling again for at least a few more years. Faithful viewer Simone Bianconcini forwarded us an Associated Press article about Chipzilla's latest breakthrough: transistors that are a mere 0.03 microns wide. Now that transistors have gotten that teeny, Intel figures it can pack about 400 million of 'em into a single processor. That's roughly ten times the number in the currently-shipping (and, arguably, currently-working) Pentium 4. Therefore, Intel may have earned Moore's Law a stay of execution, and the company estimates that it'll be able to create chips "ten times more powerful" than today's crop sometime within the next "five or ten years."
Meanwhile, we hear that Motorola's really close to bringing us Mac users a 600 MHz G4. Any day now. Honestly.
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SceneLink (2733)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 12/11/00 episode: December 11, 2000: Everyone knows that Apple's got a "CubeBook" in the works-- but not everyone agrees on when it'll actually see the light of day. Meanwhile, Intel stomps Motorola further into the dirt with a new 0.03-micron transistor that promises speed increases for years to come, but IBM fights back with its own new technology that may someday yield a PowerPC at 10 GHz...
Other scenes from that episode: 2732: "Hit 'Em With A Chair!" (12/11/00) Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY in the courtyard at One Infinite Loop-- it's the Battle of the Rumors Titans! Don't miss the action as Mac OS Rumors squares off against AppleInsider in a no-holds-barred virtual grudge match over the intro date of Apple's fabled sixth product category... 2734: Now THAT'S A Speed Bump! (12/11/00) When it comes to the clock speed race, you've probably noticed that we generally focus on Motorola when talking about the PowerPC's current standing. That's because Apple decided to flog Motorola's AltiVec technology for all it was worth and market the G4 as a Pentium-killing supercomputer...
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