Jim, I do agree with you that eventually Apple will have to do something to increase growth. Even with the P1 included, Apple may very well still begin to lose worldwide marketshare in percent terms simply because of the arithmetic.
I'm not a big believer that IBM or anyone else will be able to leap far ahead in Mhz. All the chip companies face the same tech hurdles. Intel, AMD and IBM have all demoed 1 Ghz machines with liquid cooling in the last few months. It appears Intel will reach 1 Ghz by 3-4Q 2000. The Intel P6 core appears to be 100-200 Mhz ahead of the PPC core.
Frankly, I wonder if Apple didn't make a mistake adopting MOT Altivec over IBMs faster chips. (I still believe the two are presently incompatible.) A faster Mhz rating would have solved a big marketing problem for Apple.
PC OEMs will have a 700-750 Mhz machine running by Q3-4 this year. Apple will likely have a 500-550 machine running. By all the info I can gather, a PPC is equivalent to an x86 chip that is running 100-150 Mhz faster right now. But in the fall, the 700-750 Mhz Coppermine chip will be running (On the higher end PCs) on a Camino chipset that will enhance front bus to 133 Mhz and incorporate 4X AGP as well as Rambus memory. I would suspect that would narrow the Mhz performance gap to somewhere around 100, so an Apple machine will need to keep within 100 Mhz of an Intel chip to be in rough parity.
By the way, Intel will also starting this fall, release its Geyersville tech which will allow them to use their cutting edge chips in portables for the first time. I think the first release in Sep will be a 600 Mhz portable. The glitch is that it runs at this speed on AC power and run at slower speeds on battery. But both you and I know that in marketing it, only the top speed will be cited. This will be the first time, Intel portables run at speeds equivalent to the PB although obviously performance will be less. Rich |
