A Question Of Architecture

Mme. Speaker, there's lately been much controversy, including some in other Houses, concerning the question of Apple's perhaps moving from IBM's PowerPC architecture to one of Intel's architectures, most likely the Itanium.

While it strikes me as entirely plausible that Mr. Jobs would, in a fit of pique, convert Apple wholesale, I remain unconvinced that this is in fact what will be announced to-morrow. As an aside, Mme. Speaker, this House has one of its Members in San Francisco, and we hope to have reports of the Mr. Jobs' speech as it occurs.

Mme. Speaker, I suspect one of two things to happen: either Mr. Jobs will announce that Apple will be using Intel's chips in a new product — by which I mean not a replacement for one of Apple's current computers, but perhaps a Tablet or a video iPod, or second, that Intel will have licensed the PowerPC architecture from IBM and be producing PowerPCs for Apple.

This second prospect, I judge, is rather more likely, given IBM's licensing of the PowerPC architecture as a core. This would give, Mme. Speaker, Apple the best of all worlds: they would have three suppliers (the-spinoff-formerly-known-as Motorola for the low-end G4s, and then IBM and Intel for G5s) providing security of supply and competition amongst each other; there would be no need for a Great Recompilation (although, to be fair, given that XCode is built from GCC, it would not be especially difficult to build both PPC and x86 variants of each program simultaneously); and they would get the benefit of Intel's expertise in mobile processor design and experience with high clock speeds.

Mme. Speaker, this side of the House waits with bated breath for news of what is to come.