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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc.

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Nov 21 9:30 AM EST

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To: Hippieslayer who wrote (5640)	10/23/1997 6:21:00 PM
From: Eric Yang	Read Replies (2) of 213173

In order for PPC to run programs compiled to run on Intel x86, the PowerPC chip must support the X86 instruction set. To achieve this needs to have the extra circuitry to carry out those instructions or translate the instructions into PowerPC's RISC equivalents. Either approach will make the PPC chip much larger and more expensive to produce. It's been rumored that IBM onced worked on a version of PowerPC chip (PPC 614?) that did exactly that but the project was later abandoned. With .25 micron process the Mach 5 604e chips have shrunk to 1/3 the size of previous 604e, perhaps with further shrinking and cost reduction via copper based technology it might be economical to produce a x86/PPC chip. With the current state of the Mac it's unlikely that such a project will get funded. Let's just hope that Rhapsody kicks butt and in 10 years allow the Mac to regain huge market share. If that were to happen then a x86/ppc chip would be desirable for consumers to run their obsolete Windows/x86 applications. Okay...so I'm dreaming. As for PowerPC running WindowsNT it is a different issue. Operating systems like WindowsNT, Windows95, MacOS, Unix and even Rhapsody (with sufficient effort) can be compiled to run on different platforms. As far as I know version 4.0 of WindowsNT has been ported to run on PowerPC. Microsoft later asked for a few million dollars to keep future version of NT (5.0) portable to PPC. IBM (& I think MOT) refused to pay so further development of WindowsNT on PPC was terminated. It's important to note that just because WindowsNT 4.0 runs on PowerPC doesn't means that all WindowsNT applications can run one PowerPC. Applications still needs to be written and compiled to run on the NT/PPC platform. Eric

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