A new eWeek article by writer John G. Spooner says that "Appleis worries about watts are unfounded, according to IBM." Mr. Spooner spoke with Rod Adkins, IBMis vice-president of development for systems and technology, and found that the company "begs to differ" on the issue. "[IBM] could build PowerPC chips that satisfy the needs of the entire range of Appleis product lines, including portables such as the PowerBook," Mr. Spooner says Mr. Adkins told him.
Mr. Adkins said that "the nature of Appleis relationship with IBM, including the fact that it had another processor supplier in Freescale Semiconductor Inc., is what limited the IBM chip roadmap available to it." He also insisted that IBM could deliver a mobile PowerPC 970 chip, which is what Apple uses in its Power Mac G5 and G5 iMac computers.
However, Mr. Spooner also spoke with analyst Richard Doherty of The Envisioneering Group, who said: "The presumption is that Jobs was given some disclosure of a future road map thatis not yet been given to any chip analyst. IBMis [Adkins] is being truthful in what [heis] saying. As far as shipping chips, IBMis ahead. And clearly from what jobs said on stage, thereis some turn in the [Intel] roadmap that puts them at par or ahead of IBM."
Mr. Spooner also noted that Appleis relationship with IBM will continue with the use of a dual-core version of the PowerPC 970 in an upcoming refresh of the Power Mac G5 line. He quoted Mr. Adkins as saying "We still have a number of products weire doing with them," but he could not obtain specific information.