Apple

Apple's decision to hire Mark Papermaster away from IBM could mean that its Xserve lineup is taking on a more prominent role.

(Credit: Apple)

Updated throughout at 4:55 p.m. PT with additional details and comment from IBM.

One of IBM's top chip executives has agreed to join Apple as a senior executive, but he might have to fight off his former employer first.

Mark Papermaster, until recently IBM's vice president of microprocessor technology development, plans to join Apple in early November in a position that will see him working closely with Apple CEO Steve Jobs in what IBM believes is an attempt to expand Apple's presence in the markets for servers and chips for handheld devices, according to the copy of a lawsuit filed by IBM against Papermaster. IBM is suing Papermaster to prevent him from joining Apple and divulging trade secrets related to IBM's Power chips and server products, according to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Papermaster has authored several papers on chip development at IBM, which of course used to make PowerPC processors for Apple before the company switched to Intel's processors in 2005. IBM called Papermaster "IBM's top expert in Power architecture and technology," and his most recent position involved managing IBM's blade server division.

An Apple representative declined to comment on the lawsuit or confirm Papermaster's pending employment with the company. IBM issued this statement: "Mr. Papermaster's employment by Apple is a violation of his agreement with IBM against working for a competitor should he leave IBM. We will vigorously pursue this case in court."

If Papermaster is able to successfully join Apple, he'll be working closely with Apple CEO Steve Jobs "providing to Apple technical and strategic advice on a variety of issues," according to IBM's complaint. But which issues?

Apple's Xserve servers haven't exactly been a high priority over the last couple of years, as Apple has switched the Mac to Intel's processors and rolled out the iPhone. But a spruced-up Xserve blade server could be a nice complement to the Mac if Apple ever gets serious about tackling the enterprise market.

Still, Illuminata analyst (and CNET contributor) Gordon Haff believes that Apple is unlikely to plunge back into the server market headlong after successfully pulling off the transition from a computer company to a consumer electronics company. Apple appeared to be serious about the server market when it launched the Xserve earlier this decade, but has spent less and less time extolling the product over the last two or three years, he said.

Papermaster's hire could signal Apple's intentions to build out a cloud-computing infrastructure to support things like MobileMe, or future services along those lines. Dense-but-powerful blade servers are being eyed by many companies as they build out the data centers of the future, and if Apple ever wants to be a major player in the future of Internet-delivered services, it's going to need a lot of computing power at its disposal. Papermaster's expertise in system design--putting together the entire package of processor, chipset, and the rest of the guts that form a computer--could serve him well at a company that prides itself on soup-to-nuts design.

As an extremely well-respected figure in the clubby world of chip design, Papermaster might also be stepping in to lead Apple's chip design efforts. Apple's acquisition of P.A. Semi earlier this year showed the company is very serious about chip design. Jobs told The New York Times that P.A. Semi would be used to build chips for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Papermaster's expertise lies with the Power architecture, of which Don Dobberpuhl's P.A. Semi team is also well-acquainted. The primary role for the Power architecture these days is in gaming consoles--all three major gaming consoles use a chip based on the Power architecture--but that doesn't necessarily mean Apple has that goal in mind, either.

If Apple wants to continue its strategy of designing and building complete systems, hardware, software, and now chips for iPhone and iPod Touch, it's going to need someone who can predict the future of chip design and advise Jobs and Apple's executive team on how Apple can best take advantage of those trends. Papermaster, with a unique set of skills in the tech industry, might be just that guy. "They probably need somebody with an experience set that doesn't exist at Apple today," Haff said.

It might take a fight in order to bring him on board, however. IBM's decision to sue Papermaster hearkens back to the dispute between Google and Microsoft over Google's decision to hire Kai-Fu Lee away from Microsoft to run Google's research operation in China. The two parties eventually settled out of court.

Noncompete clauses are generally considered worth less than the paper they are printed on in California--Apple's home state--but different states are more strict. Google and Microsoft fought much of their battle over whether the case would be tried in Washington state or California.

In the final reading, Papermaster's hire might wind up as a partial solution to all those questions over what Apple should do with its pile of cash: give a chunk of it to IBM to make this case go away.

Correction 5:30 p.m. PST: This blog initially mischaracterized the nature of the unlimited client license for Mac OS X Server Leopard that comes with a new Apple Xserve. It allows purchasers to connect an unlimited number of clients to that server.

Apple got a little business out of the way before next week's Macworld extravaganza, announcing new versions of the Mac Pro and Xserve to go along with new Intel chips.

These systems are very high-end computers, designed for heavy work rather than organizing photos of your latest trip to St. Louis. Both the Mac Pro and the Xserve are available with two of Intel's Xeon 5400 series quad-core processors, and come with loads of memory and other performance-oriented features, like RAID hard drives.

This is Apple's latest Mac Pro, unveiled Tuesday. Click for more pictures of it and the latest Xserve.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple's Mac business has expanded quite a bit over the past year or so, but creative professionals are still the base of that support and these are two products were designed for them, according to David Moody, vice president of Mac product marketing. Very few businesses have standardized on Mac OS X Server in the server room, and therefore the market for the Xserve is somewhat limited. Still, smaller shops that want to have a Mac OS X environment front to back, as well as educational customers, are key Xserve customers.

The Mac Pro is a little different, as it represents the most powerful computer Apple can put together, and is a favorite of graphics professionals that need tons of horsepower. It's also one of the few Apple products for which there are dozens of configuration options; most other Mac products have just three or four choices for combinations of processor, memory, and storage.

Those choices extend to graphics, where Mac Pro customers can select the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card as the standard option, or add a few weeks to their ship times if they prefer Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GT or Quadro FX 5600. Even though those products are already available, Moody said Apple needed a few more weeks to make them available for the Mac Pro.

The standard price for the Mac Pro is $2,799, and that includes two quad-core Xeon processors, 2GBs of memory, and a 320-GB hard drive. You can add to that very quickly with some of the configure-to-order options; an additional 2GBs of memory will cost you $500.

If you know what you're doing, you can probably save a lot of money by selecting the standard configuration and adding your own components in after the system arrives. The newest Mac Pro uses the same chassis as the previous generation, which makes it very easy to get into the guts of the system and add memory or storage as desired.

A Xserve will set you back $2,999 in the standard configuration, which comes with only a single quad-core Xeon processor and 2GBs of memory. It does come with an unlimited client license for Mac OS X Leopard, meaning that if you buy an Xserve you can upgrade all the Macs in your shop to Leopard for free. Update 5:30 p.m. PST: Wishful thinking, as several readers pointed out below. An Apple representative confirmed the unlimited license allows you to connect as many clients as you like to the Xserve, not to suddenly get a bunch of Macs in the office up and running on Leopard.

So, cross off two rumors from the list of potential Macworld keynote announcements. These products are definitely the kind of thing that would get lost in any potential news about slim new notebooks, iPhones, or movie rentals, some of the early bets on the Macworld announcement schedule, which makes it a little easier to understand why they came out this week.