As the Apple Turns: Scene 4240: The G5: Let's Get Smaller (10/1/03)

The G5: Let's Get Smaller (10/1/03)

Gotsta Git Fonky! Remember yesterday when we discussed how IBM plans to shrink its processor fabrication process from 130 nanometers down to 90 nanometers by the end of the year, thus unleashing a golden bounty of lower-power, higher-clock-speed G5s that will propel Apple squarely into serious World Domination Mode? The bit about a move to 90 nanometers within three months came from IBM itself, but the idea that the G5 would benefit that quickly was pure speculation tossed lightly with an "anonymous and unverified report," some garlic-and-onion croutons, and a healthy shaking of Bac-Os. (Bits, not Chips.) We repeat, IBM has not publicly stated whether or not G5s will go 90-nanometer by New Year's.

So let's dish about how they're going to go 60-nanometer instead.

That's right, sports fans, news is so slow today that we're plunging even deeper into the realm of the suspiciously unsubstantiated and nigh-unbelievable. Faithful viewer Tom Ritch tipped us off to a month-old blurb over at macosXrumors.com which we apparently missed the first time around: according to them, "very reliable sources" insist that over at Big Blue, a 90 nanometer process is strictly for sissies and mama's boys; being burly manly men who crush beer cans on their foreheads and write their names in the snow, IBM will instead be cannonballing right into the 60-nanometer end of the pool. Yes, 60 nanometers. By the end of this year.

How, you may ask, can IBM be jumping right to 60 nanometers when the rest of the industry is barely set to go to 90? Good question. And evidently one without an answer, other than the aforementioned "IBM is full of burly manly men" thing, which we're already starting to regret because we're sure there are plenty of extremely competent and feminine women in IBM's chip division who are even now planning a road trip to come beat us senseless with tire irons. (It's satire, people, it's satire!) Regardless of the "how," however, rumor has it that IBM's first 60-nanometer production tests were "very encouraging," and thus IBM is thinking about skipping 90 nanometers altogether. The upshot? Apple "will be technically and financially able to go 100% G5 for all its Macs, including laptops and consumer Macs, within a year."

But hey, why stop there? AtAT's own sources have unearthed evidence that IBM's semiconductor division has since decided that 60 nanometers is pretty wussy, too, and now plans to get to a mucho-macho 30 nanometers by Thanksgiving-- unless those jerks over in Storage Technologies start flapping their gums again and dare them to hit 15 nanometers before Halloween. At this rate, we actually think IBM will hit a negative-nanometer process by 9:32 tonight...

SceneLink (4240)

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The above scene was taken from the 10/1/03 episode:

October 1, 2003: Forget 90 nanometers; IBM knows that 60 nanometers is where it's at. Meanwhile, a suspiciously convenient confluence of factors gives Apple an opening into corporate and enterprise sales, and a pair of Apple job postings reveals the company's next big diversification move...

Other scenes from that episode:

4241: "Just A Fluke, Your Honor" (10/1/03) We all know that Apple has been slowly ramping up for a serious push into enterprise computing and corporate sales for, well, years now-- arguably as far back as the 1996 decision to buy enterprise-savvy NeXT and use its operating system as the basis for Mac OS X...
4242: Heck, WE'D Sure Feel Safer (10/1/03) We're going to have to make this quick, because we here at AtAT are all currently mired in various stages of an end-of-summer cold outbreak ranging from "just starting to get a little cranky" to "all the fluid in my body is attempting to flee through my nasal passages."...

Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast...


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