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The G5: Let's Get Small (9/30/03)
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The eternal debate rages on: will Apple ever be able to shoehorn a G5 into a PowerBook that doesn't require its own attached Frigidaire chest freezer, forklift, and really long extension cord? Time alone will tell, but one thing's for sure: it's not happening at .13 microns, buddy. In order to shrink that beast down to a luggable size and reduce its heat output to a level that doesn't vaporize human flesh, IBM's going to have to think small-- 90 nanometers small.
The good news is, Big Blue is apparently doing just that-- and sooner than we expected. MacRumors references an InfoWorld article which is so dry that it's strong enough for a man but pH-balanced for a woman; there's a lot of stuff about complementary metal-oxide and transistor gates and strained geraniums and field programmable gate arrays and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Whoops, sorry! Dozed off there, just for a second. (Aw nurtz, there's drool on our Monchhichi mouse pad.) Anyway, the only vaguely relevant bit of the InfoWorld story is that IBM is "currently sampling 90 nanometer chips using SOI, and plans to ship those chips in the fourth quarter." And this is coming straight from an IBM spokesperson, not some "source close to the company." Granted, there's no mention of what kind of chip IBM plans to 90-nanometrify and ship by the end of the year, but wouldn't it just be oh-so-splefty if it were a G5? Just think: the higher clock speed and lower power consumption made possible by the 90-nanometer process might bring forth 3 GHz Power Macs well in advance of Steve's 12-month promise, and G5 PowerBooks as early as late winter. (Not that we're holding our breath, of course.)
If you want to get really reckless with the 90-nanometer speculation, MacRumors also has an anonymous and unverified report claiming that Apple is already even now playing with sample G5s running as high as 3.2 GHz at a blistering 71 watts, with 90-nanometer 2.0 GHz chips burning 34 watts as opposed to 57 for today's .13-micron version. That is some seriously wicked improvement. Yeeks, after all those years of Motorola development, we're going to wind up with whiplash...
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 9/30/03 episode: September 30, 2003: A bunch of suits rank Apple third in innovation-- behind Microsoft and Dell. Meanwhile, apparently we shouldn't be holding our breath for the iPod to become a more-than-music device, and IBM plans to ship 90-nanometer chips by the end of the year; might some of them be PowerBook-friendly G5s?...
Other scenes from that episode: 4237: Poor, Spinning Dr. Dieter (9/30/03) Revelation time! While AtAT's primary demographic is plenty old enough to understand all this already, we do occasionally get feedback from viewers as young as ten or eleven; if you've been around the block a few times in this crazy ol' world, what we're about to tell you won't come as any particular surprise, but circumstances warrant that we take this time to inform our younger and more fresh-faced viewers about some basic facts of life... 4238: It's All About The Tunes (9/30/03) With the iPod now well into its third generation, scads of Apple-watchers are wondering just what sort of spiffy new features Apple has up its sleeve to keep future versions of the market's leading digital audio player fresh and crispy...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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