IBM Corp’s new 0.5 micron production line, designed to fabricate 100MHz PowerPC 601s, is producing at least some chips capable of running at 120MHz. The proof came in a demonstration that Apple Computer Inc gave at its World Wide Developers Conference, and again at Comdex. Apple proudly displayed a hacked-together Power Macintosh modified to take […]
IBM Corp’s new 0.5 micron production line, designed to fabricate 100MHz PowerPC 601s, is producing at least some chips capable of running at 120MHz. The proof came in a demonstration that Apple Computer Inc gave at its World Wide Developers Conference, and again at Comdex. Apple proudly displayed a hacked-together Power Macintosh modified to take the processor, running at the faster speed. Apple was taking extreme pains to say the box was an illustration of the technological capabilities of the PowerPC architecture rather than a product announcement. Indeed the machine was obviously a quick fix with a number of components in it that were less that happy to find themselves running at 120MHz. One sceptical observer who passed the Apple stand a couple of times reports seeing it with its lid off while Apple employees waved fans at its over-heated interior. The problem apparently, was not the processor itself, which has an admirably low power consumption, but rather the support chips, which were struggling to keep up.
