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Apple is not simply IBM's sleeping partner and key customer for its PowerPC 97x series of chips. The Apple-IBM relationship is more than merely client and vendor, TechNewsWorld reports. "Certainly, Apple will have a lot of say in the direction of the new chip's development," says Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research, who is quoted in the article. Analysts also believe that it makes good sense for Apple to keep both Motorola and IBM as chip suppliers: Motorola for the 'low-end' G4s and IBM for the G5s. Previously, Apple used both Motorola and IBM G3 CPUs in Macs. Eventually, Apple is expected to move entirely over to IBM. Another analyst argues that Apple will move to a 'single vendor' model for its chip supplies. Also of note is one analyst's opinion that the market and analysts are not sufficiently aware of Apple's other products, such as XServe. Linux may be a viable alternative OS for XServe, as a number of XServes have been delivered to enterprises which intended to run Linux as their OS of choice. Analysis: How much say will Apple get in IBM's chip development? And, more importantly, does Apple get to co-develop roadmaps, deadlines and timetables? Or is it bound, as it is with the G4, by Moto's schedule? It is indeed true that Apple contributed to the development of the G3/G4 chips. Unlike the PPC601, 603 and 604, these were chips specifically designed to take advantage of the MacOS. Equally, the OS was fine-tuned to run on the PowerPC platform (native, multithreaded Finder; gradually more native code for the system; Altivec). It's reasonable to assume that Apple will have some input into the derivatives of the Power4 and Power5, particularly as low-power version are critical to Apple's future portable model lines, as well as XServe.
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