Comments on: Apple hires top IBM chip designer and blade server guru

Mark Papermaster has agreed to join Apple as a high-ranking executive, but his former employer, IBM, is fighting that move.

[Penguinisto]

I'm thinking that there won't be much in the way of trade secrets between a PPC job and an x86 job.

That said, I suspect that things are about to get really interesting if the xServe rumors turn out to be true.

[sciontcya]

I always wondered why IBMs big blade servers could run nicely on PPC and the Apple released Intel Xserves.
I've got all-Intel now, and by the sound of things, 10.6 will be at least a transition to all-Intel code so...
Never a dull moment.

[ltonnews]

When Apple bought P.A. Semi there was much speculation over what Apple was going to do with P.A. Semi's latest product. It turned out it was the general skill set they had and what they had worked on before their last product ( last was a PowerPC based chip. The one before was ARM based. Jobs comment about working on iPhone/iPod most likely means a newer ARM chip).

So going back before blades and servers, this guy seems to have been in charge of getting the Power 3 , Power 5, and to some extent Power 6 generations of chips out the door. If Apple is going to home grow its own chip as a key and core piece of technology for their iPhone/iPod products those chip chips are going to have to come out the door on a regular basis. Apple may need someone who is very skilled at being the buffer between Jobs ( and the snazzy packaging and outer finished product people) and the folks working on hardcore circuit internals. Before this guy got there was there anyone at Apple who was a strong subject matter expert in chips? [ Whatever "management" P.A. Semi had may have jump back to the start-up game or is just better suited for that rather than big monolithic company with conflicting internal goals. ]

Thrown in the fact that Apple punted out of the Xserve RAID buisness earlier this year with little warning to their enterprise customers. Also that the Xserve product has languished with longer and longer renewal cycles. Even the MacPro is on longer and longer cycles. Apple doubling down in the enterprise machine busiiness??? That would be a complete 180 to everything they have done this year so far.

[sciontcya]

@itonnews:

Yeah, we got kinda hosed (win/lose) on the Promise RAIDS for the new XSANs and no more Apple RAIDs for the "old" ones we built last year.
I don't mind having to buy a new iPod or MBP now and then, but servers are a little more serious...
Good points you made above, BTW.

[kgsbca]

It's all about processors for mobile devices. Intel, instead of selling what their customers want, wants to convince their customers to buy what they sell, and Jobs decided long ago that's not acceptable. That's why he is assembling his own low power uP team, not only buying PA Semi, but hiring this guy. They have so much cash, and are easily the best at defining and designing consumer devices, they can ignore the idiot analysts who would normally criticize a system company for getting into chip design.

With the talent they are assembling to design mobile processors, and their unique ability to build things that people want, they will continue to sell very profitable products, and set the pace for the consumer electronics industry. Good luck to all of the other companies that are run by accountants that cater to wall st. analysts.

[aMUSICsite]

"Papermaster's employment by Apple is a violation of his agreement with IBM against working for a competitor should he leave IBM"

I can't believe it's legal to have a clause in someones contract to stop them getting a job after they leave. What are they supposed to change career when they leave the company or stay with the company for life?

Sounds like the law should be changed to disallow contract conditions like this. Maybe if IBM looses the court case to Apple then contracts like this could be a thing of the past.

[B-Ri]

These are pretty standard. It's to keep people from directly harming a former employer by divulging trade secrets. They usually only apply for a certain period of time after leaving the company, 6 months to a year or so. Nothing unreasonable about that to me. If you're leaving the company you would need to work around it anyway. Plus these are not low level employees.

[bmeson]

Steve Jobs had somewhat of a dispute with IBM several years ago when IBM would not deliver the chips that he wanted. So now, he is in the process of bringing RISC architecture designers in house to do it himself, even if he has to steal away IBM's elite to do it. Expect all of Apple's product lines to be powered by novel RISC architectures by Q4 2010.

The switch to Intel was just a stepping stone. Say goodbye to Intel.

[rapier1]

Hey! A great new way of forcing everyone to upgrade their systems!

[ckurowic]

Very interesting, but I don't think that Apple would abandon their current hardware that quickly in favor of putting PPC's back into their computers. After all the fuss about transitioning over to Intel and all the developers who have rewritten their programs for Intel, it just seems unlikely. Interesting concept though.

[Anthony Frausto-Robledo]

Going back to PowerPC-based designs for Macs is pie-in-the-sky speculation. Apple clearly wants to put the iPhone in the top spot for mobile smartphone devices and as good as its App Store is, and as cool as it is to have an "iPod" inside your mobile phone, Apple needs to keep ahead in raw features on the performance and hardware side if it expects to lead the smartphone industry. And it does.

So what better way than to not use Intel's designs -- which every other top-flight smartphone maker could use and would use if they were they were the best. And by differentiating on the silicon utilizing both ARM and PowerPC (both RISC-based) Apple can truly innovate.

Could Jobs have simply lied about what PA Semi was all about? Could Papermaster mean we now see where the Mac is really headed again (back to PPC)? Yes. But Apple's doing great with Mac growth now without having to use unique silicon.

[bmeson]

I'm not saying that the Apple CEO has lied about the intent of the P.A. Semi acquisition, he just has not shown all of his cards yet. This past week Apple filed for patents on some key technologies their engineers have developed with respect to parallel processing, the first implementation of which will appear in 10.6. I truly feel that the real target of this technology is the handhelds, Mac OS is just the staging point to port it ultimately to iPhone OS 3.0 running on the new SoC design. If that transition is successful, scaled up versions of the new chips will work their way into future laptop and desktop solutions that Apple will offer. The chip designs they have on the drawing boards may just blow us away with what they will be capable of doing.

[adam_hartung]

Apple leadership is behaving very smartly to keep its options open as technology shifts loom large on the horizon. Management that bets big on future technology gambles the money of investors and the positions of its employees. Apple is behaving smartly to keep its options open regardless of the future scenario - and that's good news. Read more at http://www.thephoenixprinciple.com