Putting more details to the story:
Quote:
From ABC News Apple to Switch Macs to Intel Chips
In a speech to software developers Monday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs admitted the change will not be fast or easy. The first Intel-based Macs won't appear until 2006, and the full product line won't shift to Intel until the following year, he said.
"This is not going to be a transition that happens overnight," Jobs said. "It's going to happen over a period of a few years."
He said the move was driven by the fact that its current chip suppliers IBM Corp. and Freescale Semiconductor Inc. could not promise the same horsepower and power efficiency as Intel, the world's largest semiconductor company.
Programmers can immediately start developing software in a format that will run natively on both existing and future Mac chips, he said. Apple also will have a technology in place that will translate the code so that older programs will run on the Macs with Intel inside.
Jobs revealed that Apple has been working on the move for at least five years, creating two versions of its Mac OS X operating system for both the current Mac chips and those built by Intel.
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The next generation chips will probably use 45 nm transistors. TI and Tiawan Semiconductors have both publically stated they don't think Hi-K technology will work at this technology. Freescale Semiconductor (formally Motorola) and IBM have both suggested that they will not be able to meet the preformance requirements Apple Computer expects. Most damning is that Intel has gone silent meaning they are committing to the next technology - probably 45 nm transistors, a Hi-K material based upon Hafnium Dioxide, probabilistic simulation tools, and other manufacturing changes. Intel is also talking about Extreme Ultra-violet (EUV) lithography for their 32 nm technology sometime in 2009.
Is Intel simply scaring off the competition? Maybe. Maybe not. But others in the industry are becoming frustrated with these technologies now that CMOS has been taken to such extremes.
Apple has been using Intel technologies for many part of the Mac - ie PCI bus, AGP video, USB. What is known is that Apple has been testing CPU providers simply because both Freescale and IBM cannot provide what Intel has provided and has promised. Symptoms of the approaching a brick wall?