Coolness

According to reports in The Register, the folks at Freescale (the former Motorola Semiconductor) are working on at least two new G4-class chips. They'll be announcing them at October's MPF in San Jose.

Why is this cool, you ask, when Apple is already making big noises about the G5 transition? Well, for starters, the current 7447A processor (the G4 that's used in Apple's current PowerBooks) is due for a boost. Using that is an easy decision for Apple in the short-term, because the current chip tops out at 1.5 GHz. It's a good chip, with a big L2 cache and excellent power consumption properties, but 1.5 GHz is a tad pokey now. If they can get it close to 2 GHz with a comparable power budget then I think it's a safe bet Apple will build it into PowerBooks - at least until sometime next year.

The other bit of news is even cooler, though. There is also going to be a dual-core version of the G4 released. If it's got the right power tendencies, then you could see PowerBooks that are effectively dual processor machines. Note to Paul Woike (my former employee who has been begging for a dually laptop for years): if this happens you'll get your dually, but you might have to buy a Mac to do so.

If the chip burns too much juice for Apple, you'll probably just see it in the embedded market. PowerPC chips are real popular in the network infrastructure world - they use less power than Intel chips and give good performance for the dollar.