The History of Chipmaking at IBM.


A neat article about the history of the PowerPC chips at IBM. (The ultrafast G5 computers from Apple are powered by the IBM PowerPC G5 processor. Other macs are powered by PowerPC chips from Motorola. As far as I know, the PowerPC architecture is licensed to many manufacturers including Sony and Motorola. A nice graphical roadmap showing the history of the PowerPC processors is available on Motorola's site.) In New York today, IBM unvieled its plans to build customizable microprocessors which may physically reconfigure themselves to adapt to applications. Interestingly the processor powering the Mars Pathfinder missions is derived from the POWER1 chip.

For more history, check out Apple's History.