A brief history of chip fibs, flops: Intel, IBM, AMD

Updated at 3:45 p.m. PST with correction of Motorola, IBM executives' names.

Even the biggest chip companies churn out their share of flops. But the hype that surrounds these chips is more fascinating than the failures.

It's been almost a year since I posted A brief history of chip hype--and flops (part 1). Consider this Part 2.

Itanium
First, I have to revisit Intel's Itanium. Simply because it's still around and still missing production target dates.

Intel's Itanium has been relegated to obscurity if not practical oblivion

(Credit: Intel)

The hype: "This design philosophy will one day replace RISC and CISC. It is a gateway into the 64-bit future." This copy was, at one time, posted on Hewlett-Packard's Web site. And analysts were drinking the Kool-Aid too. "I expect Itanium to replace Xeon, but not until 2003," one analyst said back in 2001. (Xeon is Intel's successful, lucrative line of server processors that doesn't include Itanium.)

The reality: Yes, Itanium is still warm, still breathing in the rarefied very-high-end server market--where it does have a limited role. But its architecture will never live in a desktop or laptop or even 99 percent of the servers as once thought. And it certainly hasn't remade the computer industry. And it is still chronically late. This time it's Tukwila that's tardy. The quad-core version of Itanium is late because Intel had to make "some engineering enhancements to the Tukwila platform," according to an Intel statement earlier this month. I can only guess that one day Intel will finally let this failed research project go cold and die quietly.

PowerPC
IBM's original PowerPC platform never lived up to the hype. Even when Motorola and IBM processors populated Apple computers.

The hype: "The PowerPC G5 changes all the rules. This 64-bit race car is the heart of our new Power Mac G5, now the world's fastest desktop computer," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs back in 2003. Jobs, a master of hype (also referred to as a Svengali-like reality-distortion field), continued with this precious quote. "IBM offers the most advanced processor design...and this is just the beginning of a long and productive relationship." (Emphasis added.)

The reality: Apple dumped IBM, Motorola, and the PowerPC in 2005 and it was revealed later that the Mac operating system had been leading "a secret double life" for about five years. But the PowerPC platform had really failed long before 2005. Look no further than these comments from an IBM marketing manager in this 1997 Electronic News article: "Many business school case histories will be written about this failure," Jesse Parker, marketing manager at IBM Micro, said at that time. "No one of the three companies involved in PowerPC executed on their plans. IBM didn't. Motorola didn't. And Apple didn't," he said.

The original PowerPC project was conceived by John Sculley, president and CEO of Apple, and Jack Kuehler, vice chairman of IBM. Phil Hester, an IBM manager at the time, and David Mothersole, a Motorola executive, where also instrumental in starting the project, known initially as "Somerset." But as the PowerPC came to market, Mr. Sculley was pushed out of Apple (and) Mr. Kuehler retired. Their replacements did not have the same enthusiasm for the PowerPC alliance, dooming the project.

In short, the PowerPC failed to challenge Intel in the PC market in a big way. (Though it has been reincarnated as IBM's Cell processor that powers Sony's PlayStation and the architecture still powers IBM servers.)

And I have my own vignette to relate that illustrates one reason why Apple eventually dropped the PowerPC. When Apple first began to crow about the dual-processor Power Mac (circa 2003), a neighbor of mine at the time bought into the hype and purchased an Apple Power Mac tower with two IBM G4 processors (this preceded the dual-processor G5 tower that followed soon after). This thing was a furnace. It quite literally raised the temperature in the room it was in, had about five fans too many, and was deafening, to boot. That was the first time I fully understood the magnitude of Apple's fabrications about IBM's "superior" PowerPC designs. (IBM's less-than-impressive--at that time--chip manufacturing process that was used for PowerPC processors also contributed to the problem.)

AMD Puma
Lastly, turning to Advanced Micro Devices, I'll try to look beyond the botched Barcelona launch in September of 2007 (as I've already covered this in Part 1) and focus instead on AMD's mobile "Puma" platform. Though I can't leave Barcelona entirely out of the discussion because there are some disturbing parallels. (Note: AMD's upcoming Yukon and Congo platforms offer some hope for mobile redemption.)

The hype: Like Barcelona, AMD had too much to say about Puma too long before it was real. AMD started pumping Puma back in April 2007 when the company did one of its many (infamous) soft launches (a PR strategy that it has thankfully ditched). This prompted some editorializing from me as well as other publications. "It is questionable whether...Puma will meet the hype AMD is currently trying to generate though these early announcements," according to a rare editorial from DigiTimes in 2007.

Things got even more dicey at the financial analyst day in December 2007 when AMD said Puma would be delayed until the second quarter of 2008.

It's not so much that Puma (aka Turion X2 Ultra coupled with ATI graphics) is a failure of epic proportions like Itanium, it's that the CPU component (separate from the ATI GPU component) fell so far short of the long, ballyhooed build-up it got.

And it is beaten consistently by Intel in the mobile marketplace. Here's an October 2008 CNET review of laptops with AMD's Turion X2 Ultra. "Turning to AMD's 2.0GHz Turion X2 Dual-Core RM-70 CPU might be an option if you're looking to keep costs down and have only basic computing needs," the review said. "The Acer Aspire 5735-4624 costs only $499 and uses a 2.0GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core T3200; it completed our multitasking benchmark test in one-third the time the HP G60 did. The HP G60 wasn't the last-place performer in our mainstream midprice holiday retail laptop roundup. That dubious distinction goes to the Toshiba Satellite L355D-S7825, also an AMD-powered system."

And there are more unfavorable comparisons. This review at Hexus.net of a Toshiba Satellite 300D with AMD Turion X2 Ultra ZM-80 said the Turion X2 Ultra CPU was "found wanting when compared to Centrino 2." The one bright spot was the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 graphics card--but this speaks more about solid ATI technology than AMD's shaky Turion processor.

[kcotham]

I thought the article was going to be more about the technical shortcoming of individual chips. It started out this way. But you lost focus mid-article and went into slamming marketing schemes. The PowerPC article in particular has little to no focus. You didn't even talk about a single chip, but an entire line of chips. PowerPC is/was everything from the 601 to the 970 and dozens of points in between.

I would have rewritten and re-edited this article before I posted it if I were you!

[Jonathan]

Its a sunday...cut him some slack ;)

[Jonathan]

What nothing on the P4 and the "glory days" * stifles a laugh* of netburst and RDRAM.

[pugster]

netburst? There's a difference. Intel managed to make a crappy product yet still makes money and we consumers suffer. That sounds like monopoly....

[pithenumber]

netburst wasn't a complete flop, it still has some value if you're a LHe/LN2 overclocker

[viper396]

@pugster it's time to get over this Monopoly crap and stop accussing every company, person or entity that manages to succeed of being a Monopoly. Consumers didn't suddenly lose free will and go out buying stuff, like Intel processors, because they didn't want. Succeeding and dominating a marketplace is what every business aims for but god forbid they do it for fear of being branded a Monopoly by the losers. You have no clue what a true Monopoly is.

[lightwave300k]

actually G4 was produced by Motorola and G5 was produced by IBM, I still have a dual G4 tower, which i use as a file server and it works perfectly. It is not even close to furnace.

[bnuggs]

Not a furnace, but he is right about one thing: the dual processor MDD G4s *were* loud as hell until Apple fixed the fan problem on them. They didn't call them "the windtunnel" for nothing :)

I'm still running my 2000 Powermac G4, but with a 1.8 Ghz processor upgrade, and OS X Leopard. My 2000 Powermac 450 Mhz G4 Cube is also running Leopard, and with a proper video card, it's almost as fast as Tiger was. Let's see a PC that old run Vista :)

[inscitekjeff]

I know the article was focused on desktop CPU's, but PowerPC was far from a failed attempt at a new processor architecture. IBM to some extent, but mostly Motorola/Freescale has a huge number of shipped PowerPC processors into Embedded applications. The PowerPC instruction set proved to be very efficient from a code generation standpoint from compiled languages like C, and the architecture was also very successful at scaling to all sort of performance points all up and down the price curve.

That is, with PowerPC, Motorola was and still are able to achieve great MIPS/dollar at many different price points and pretty darn good MIPS/watt at all sorts of power dissipation points. In fact, I think ARM is the only architecture that is somewhat advantaged over PowerPC from a power dissipation standpoint....and I don't think anything is really beating them MIPS/dollar at the mid-range to higher performance points of embedded processors.

PowerPC, in general, is still a great 32-bit processing architecture for embedded use.

[sdf0013]

I was kind of thinking the same thing here. He didn't go into the RISC vs x86 instruction set war; which was really the heart of the mater. What Apple was really trying to say was Mac OS + RISC > Windows + Intel (Wintel). If you want to center on marketing tactics, that was the entire point of Apple's campaign ad; that Photoshop ran faster on a Mac than a PC (let's ignore specific filter optimization, naturally).

RISC was supposed to do thinks x86 couldn't. And it did, to a point. It was a new architecture for modern chips. It's actually a pretty big feat that Intel has gotten WAY more life out of x86 than any one could have even dreamed of.

What, no mention of the famous 68000 or 88000 processors? Long live the Amiga!

[mehtars]

I would hardly call the powerpc a failure. All three of the major console systems use some version of the powerpc architecture. Additionally, these consoles have provided IBM a subsidy to develop extremely high end vector processing microprocessor that can be used for FEA simulations, a la lucrative defense department contracts.

[MicroController]

He really seems to have a go at AMD. I don?t want to pay twice the price for 30% better performance. The Puma platform is for people who do every day work including watching HD movies, entertainment stuff, and office work. Not for people who calculate Pi to 50 million, and require an Intel CPU. Or people who calculate 3D Marks every day.

So what if the AMD Turions are 30% slower. The overall platform is faster than a Centrino 2. He seems to fail to mention that fact. Just YouTube "Puma Vs Centrino" and see it for your self.

[pithenumber]

As a Platform, AMD is better than Intel in budget notebooks and ultra budget gaming notebooks b/c the higher end graphics are more useful than the higher end cpu, I don't think they are current gen GMA's but I had an Intel platform notebook that struggled to put powerpoint on my HD TV without lag between frames

[mpitogo]

I like to laugh at this article and writer. I have the original PowerMac G5 and unless something is stuck in your OS the 9 fans run quite slowly based on temperature. If your room was an oven to begin with then it would probably run much faster but never to the point of full blast. On the subject of it being a dud I doubt it. My 2003 era PowerMac was a true 64bit platform with a hyper-transport 1GHz front side bus coupled with 8GB of RAM and a bit later an upgrade to an ATI 850XT video card its still alive and kicking, living well beyond what most PCs of that era would see. And still be running the same OS but and upgraded to Tiger then Leopard. Never once did I have to re-install the OS for failed software or malware. I'd like to see you try running a 2003 machine upgraded to Vista and see how useful it can be. PowerPC is still alive and well in millions of living rooms. Nintendo has long been on PPC and the latest Wii is not there to woo but to be efficient and fun. Sony's almost flop P3 is useful as a Blu-Ray player and good for games too running on PPC derived Cell . Then there is the recent Microsoft convert, xbox 360. Why would anyone migrate to a totally new platform when there developers were well versed in x86 on the original xbox? Moving games from PC x86 to xbox x86 was a no brainer but to develop ports from PC x86 to PPC xbox 360. There's got to be a reason why they shifted? The PowerMac G5 was also Microsoft's development platform when xbox 360 made its initial debut.

With all the success of PPC as an alternative desktop processor why would Apple switch? Simple, performance per watt and economy of scale. For IBM they didn't see the need to invest in a small processor market for Apple and Apple didn't have a portable processor. For Intel luckily they have a very savvy bunch of engineers that can modernize lead plumbing and Apple was willing to jump on that bandwagon since Intel had the roadmap and the capacity to do so. NeXT ran on x86, in fact Rhapsody DR 1 was an x86 release and Rhapsody DR2 was the first PPC release which I ran back in 1998 showed the future of computing. Apple had the foresight to keep both branches moved and fortunately it paid of very well for them.

[ka1axy]

How could you forget the Motorola 88000?

Data General built a whole family of servers and workstations around it in the early 90s.

Apparently, they were the only ones, though...

[basraw]

Don't forget HP was in bed with INTEL on that disastrous chip until they bailed.

[slcagnina]

I agree that the PowerPC architecture was good; it was a fast chip. But Apple needed a next generation portable chip, and IBM had no business interest in making the G5 into a low power, low heat portable chip. Apple was in danger of losing portable sales, and so had to switch. The added bonus of running Windows natively or faster thru emulation by using Intel has been a bonus for Apple.

But the PowerPC chip is sound. I don't think it's a failure unless you measure it against how much desktop space it took from Intel. But Microsoft discontinued Windows NT PowerPC development, so the chip never had a chance to compete in that market. If Microsoft had backed it, who knows what the chip would have done, since it was excellent.

Heck, I am writing on a laptop with a G4 now. They hold up.

[SactoGuy018]

I think if Apple had a larger marketshare during the heyday of the PowerPC it's more than likely that IBM/Motorola would have redesigned the CPU core for smaller size fabrication processes (65 and 45 nm), which would have allowed for lower-powered CPU's and/or much larger L2/L3 cache sizes (just like Intel's current CPU's do currently). This would have resulted in dramatic jumps in PowerPC performance, possibly well beyond that of the Intel Core 2 technology because of PowerPC's far more efficient CPU design.

[ejschlapp]

I heard that Apple had working systems based on the Motorola 88000 which were scrapped in favor of PowerPC. There was nothing wrong with the 88000; there were just too many RISC architectures in the early '90s: MIPS, Sun SPARC, HP PA-RISC, AMD 29K, IBM POWER, Acorn ARM, Intel 960, Fairchild Clipper, DEC Alpha, ...

[fredmenace]

Regarding PowerPC, I don't think it entirely failed. If you look at it, this was the descendant of IBMs very good POWER RISC architecture, one of a bunch of RISC competitors at the time, including DEC's Alpha, Sun's SPARC, MIPS, HP PA-RISC, and Motorola's own 88000 (nice architecture, but nobody ever used it really). The problem was that they were ALL essentially doomed in the face of X86.

PowerPC actually did better than many of the others, but they were never able to broaden the market beyong Apple. so over time IBM and Motorola changed focus and de-emphasized desktop PPC. The market wasn't big enough to invest in, so prices couldn't stay competitive. Intel's radical shift with the Pentium 4 sparked a clock-speed race that PPC architecture couldn't easily stay ahead of (neither could Intel, after a while, but by then it was too late). But the big change came when mobile became more important, and heat/power considerations came to the fore. Intel's then-upcoming Core architecture looked like giving more options and better price/performance with lower heat/power than anything the PPC camp was coming up with. That was probably the big impetus to change, though finally standardizing on the same basic hardware platform as everyone else had a number of advantages as well (besides price).

[bpaskin]

The POWER G5 might be gone, but the POWER architecture is still around and powering IBM's Series p and Series i with POWER6. The Blades that IBM sells use Intel, AMD, POWER6 and Cell processors.

[ronvalencia]

@inscitekjeff
In the embedded space, ARM kills PowerPC in unit sales.

[Ex-Parrot]

As your most important argument against the AMD Puma platform, you're quoting a statement that is blatantly incorrect. "The Acer Aspire 5735-4624 costs only $499 and uses a 2.0GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core T3200; it completed our multitasking benchmark test in one-third the time the HP G60 did." Just look at the Multimedia multitasking test in the same review. The HP G60-125NR does it in 1501 sec, while the Acer Aspire 5735-4624 takes 1091 sec. First, 1000 is not one third of 1500, its two-thirds, or one third LESS. Second, rounding rounding 1091 to 1000 is wrong. Actually, 1091/1501=73% (using correct rounding), which is much closer to 75% (3/4) than to 67% (2/3). The correct statement would be "it completed our multitasking benchmark test in THREE-FOURTH the time the HP G60 did". Furthermore, all costumer reviews for the HP G60 are at great odds with the C|Net review and a lot of them accuse the reviewer of being biased. One bad journalist citing another bad journalist in the same company. Do you C|Net guys ever do your homework before writing an article?

[Ex-Parrot]

To me, the biggest fib in consumer chipmaking was the Pentium 4. Granted, it wasn't so much of a commercial flop as a technical flop and a failure of the free market to eliminate an inferior product. During almost the entirety of its 8-year lifespan, benchmarks showed that AMD's alternatives performed better, used less power and produced less heat. During the last 5 years, the Athlon 64 wiped the floor with the Pentium 4 in practically all benchmarks and lab tests. Contrary to the AMD Opteron and the Pentium M, little or no supercomputers were made based on the Pentium 4 because of the heat issues and the mediocre performance. The few Pentium 4 laptops ever made had a disappointing battery life; instead, Intel touted its Pentium M, which was based on the Pentium III core. To Intel's shame, top of-the line Pentium M's would occasionally beat the Pentium 4, even though near near the end of its lifespan, the Pentium M itself couldn't keep up with the very AMD Turion you're talking about. Finally, the Pentium 4 was put out of its misery by the Core series of processors, which was (you guessed it) based on the Pentium III architecture as found in the Pentium M. From A to Z, the Pentium 4's commercial success was a story of FUD, a blatantly irrational consumer market, and under-the-table agreements with OEM manufacturers, for which AMD has a lawsuit running against Intel. So much for the "a free market favors fair competition" axiom.

[SactoGuy018]

What helped the Pentium M was the fact its on-die cache was gigantic for its day--the first model had 1 MB on-die cache, which dramatically improved the performance of the CPU.

Indeed, the architectural design of the Pentium M was used on the first Intel Core CPU's, which became the basis for the Core, Core 2, Core 2 Duo, Pentium Dual-Core, and Core 2 Quad CPU's.

[jjaser]

Remember the MIPS R4000? "the fastest thing in silicon" . Had lots of promise, even its own binary version of Windows NT....

[jcyuan]

Let's not forget that PowerPC runs all 3 of the major consoles: PS3, X360, and Wii. Yes they lost the Mac platform but some would say that the architecture has gone on to better things and bigger numbers. It seems a bit unrealistic to lump it with Itanium.

Or maybe your definition of failure is just broader than mine?

[pithenumber]

*cough*
that's because the game dev's wanted it