Speaking of IBM's continuing role as Apple's fairy godmother (fairy chipmaker?), just for giggles, why don't we recap the number of times in the past few years that IBM has pulled a Great Gazoo to hoist Apple's bacon out of a Motorolan fire? Let's see, the most obvious one was when Apple enlisted IBM to license and produce Motorola-designed G4 processors when Motorola fell way behind schedule. (Remember the rumors that IBM managed to increase G4 clock speeds to 600 MHz before Motorola, and Motorola used clauses in IBM's Altivec license to prevent the company from shipping chips faster than Motorola's own?) And of course the G4 would probably never have fit into a non-flaming PowerBook at all if not for IBM's silicon-on-insulator technology. Then there's the recent rumor that Apple might turn to IBM's super-fast, Altivec-enhanced G3s as permanent substitutes for Motorola's no-show G4s.

We've also heard that IBM once posted Apple's bail at 3 AM after Motorola framed it for two counts of indecent exposure, but those reports are still unconfirmed.

In any case, it looks like Apple's about to benefit yet again from IBM's continuing campaign for Mac sainthood: according to The Register, Big Blue just announced that it's made another breakthrough in the chipmaking field-- namely, Strained Silicon Directly on Insulator, known by the shorter but less pronounceable acronym SSDOI. We don't pretend to understand the technical details-- apparently it's got something to do with stretching silicon geraniums with a strainer or something-- but IBM states that when the technology is commercially implemented in a few years' time, it'll boost chip performance by 20-30%.

Now how much would you pay? Don't answer yet, because if you order now, we'll throw in a free bonus gift: in addition to SSDOI, IBM has also slapped something together known as Hybrid Orientation Technique (with the suspiciously serendipitous acronym HOT) which "improves the mobility of positive charges" and therefore offers a further performance boost of 40-65%. Which all simply means that future G5s are going to be so fast they'll melt your eyeballs in your head.

Isn't it interesting that whenever we hear about these chipmaking improvements, such as copper technology, silicon-on-insulator, and now SSDOI and HOT, they seem to come from IBM instead of Motorola? In fact, if we recall correctly, the last time Motorola attempted to improve its semiconductor manufacturing process, all it discovered was that trying to make chips out of Skittles instead of silicon only makes the machines all sticky. But then again, IBM never invented the flip-phone, right? And we all know how much that's helped Apple over the years...