There was a lot of discussion in the IT industry a little while back when Apple announced they were planning on moving to Intel processors for their desktop and laptop machines. It was seen by some as a big blow to IBM, but reports coming from inside IBM were rather indifferent it seemed.

A recent interview published on CNet News.com of Michel Mayer, chief executive of Freescale Semiconductor (a spin-off company from Motorola) goes a little way towards explaining things.

Apparently Freescale are the company who manufacture Apple’s G4 processors used in their current laptops. If I understand correctly, IBM manufactures the G5 processors used in their desktop machines (or at least, IBM “owns” the G5 processor, even if they don’t manufacture it themselves). But apparently, IBM made the decision not to continue development of the G5 to make it suitable for laptops - instead choosing to put their efforts into game console processors.

Here’s the article: Is the PowerPC due for a second wind?

Weren’t you there during the discussions when IBM convinced Apple to adopt the G5?
Mayer: In my previous job, I ran IBM’s semiconductor business. So I’ve seen both sides of the Apple story, because I sold the G5 to Steve (Jobs) the first time he wanted to move to Intel.

Five years ago?
Mayer: Yeah, that’s about right. So I sold the G5. First I told IBM that we needed to do it, and then I sold it to Apple that the G5 was good and it was going to be the follow-on of the PowerPC road map for the desktop. It worked pretty well. And then IBM decided not to take the G5 into the laptop and decided to really focus its chip business on the game consoles.

It’s an interesting read about where some of the development is going and where Freescale processors are to be found (just about everywhere it seems:

So right now, if I tore apart a BMW and took out all the silicon, how many Freescale chips would I find?
Mayer: 52 Freescale chips in both the 7 Series and the 5 series.

Cool!

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