PowerPC roadmap gets lost on the road
EXPONENTIAL aims to take PowerPC lead with new superfast chips
BANDAI PIPPIN is delayed to March
FIREPOWER expecting CHRP machines in Jan - Hopes to have MacOS
Taligents future in the balance as partners open debate
Meanwhile Apple is preparing the first developer release of Copland, the next version of Mac OS. This release, due to go out in the next few weeks is going to a strictly limited number of developers, according to Apple; the kind of developers involved in low-level code-hackery such as device drivers and server processes. As with OS/2, there appears to be some internal debate within Apple as to when we should expect to see the pre-emptive, microkernel-based OS. Sources we've spoken to are adamant that the finished thing will ship in the second half of next year, but MacWeek has reported previously that these promises are no-longer being made by the high-ups in the US.
For those who hanker after a version of Unix, IBM Corp and Motorola Inc are said to have now found all their Solaris-on-PowerPC beta sites, each having signed up 30 customers to try the nascent operating system out. However they are using an early version of SunSoft Inc's 2.5 release that still lacks features such as Common Desktop Environment and Wabi. The three companies are preparing a road show to attract independent software vendors later this month.
The closest we seem likely to get is a document circulated by Motorola at Comdex, which mainly re-iterates information previously released:
Motorola says that during 1997 the clock-speeds will be cranked up to 300MHz.
And that appears to be about all that we will get for a little while. One possible debating point is what to do about the guys at Exponential. Exponential's CEO Rick Shriner says that, though his company is unlikely to be involved in the Somerset design labs, its chip may appear at the top of a future roadmap.
Despite early rumours, the company says that it is not involved in building Intel-emulation hardware into its PowerPC clones.
Traditionally, Bipolar silicon technology (as opposed to CMOS), has been the province of mainframe manufacturers - it can switch faster than CMOS, with a consequent improvement in processor clock speeds. Unfortunately bipolar has the reputation of being power-hungry, expensive to manufacture and bulky - CMOS components can be packed more closely on the processor. Consequently, even mainframe manufacturers have switched to CMOS-based processors as these have become faster.
BiCMOS, as used by Intel in its initial Pentium designs, aims to bring the best of both worlds by introducing relatively small amounts of bipolar logic into the speed-critical areas of a CMOS processor. However, according to Exponential, this approach has its draw-backs. Exponential claims that this conventional bipolar-on- CMOS approach results in a "relatively weak form of bipolar logic suitable only for building small-to-medium size logic functions and driving long wires".
An alternative approach - placing small amounts of CMOS onto a predominantly bipolar chip has languished, mainly because of the previously mentioned size and energy draw-backs. This is a shame since a fast bipolar chip with onboard CMOS cache and support circuitry could be a winner.
Exponential claims to have cracked the problem by discovering a way to design bipolar circuitry roughly equivalent to CMOS in size and energy consumption; in particular, it contends, since CMOS elements tend to grow in size anyway as clock speeds increase. The company has applied for 18 patents covering bipolar design methodologies, tools and also chip packaging. So far eight have been granted.
There is no reason why the process shouldn't be applied to build BiCMOS variants of any microprocessor and if the company manages to deliver on its promises its technology will be attractive to a number of chip makers. However, Exponential CEO, Rick Shriner (formerly VP of core technology at Apple) says that there are no plans to license the technology out, and anyway "we've still got to prove it". No, instead Exponential intends to sell its products on the merchant market, in competition with IBM and Motorola at the high end.
The company does not have its own chip fabrication plant, and is unwilling to divulge who will be making them, other than to say that the fab will be off-shore and the company isn't a US one. The smart money has got to be on Hitachi, which already has some ill-defined deal to build PowerPC processors and has also been banging on about its innovative BiCMOS fabrication technology. (PowerPC News 29/1335). Exponential sales direction Ivonne Valdes, Vice President of Sales denies, however that the company is unduly tied to its nameless manufacturing partner - Motorola and IBM, among others have similar manufacturing capabilities already, she suggests.
Exactly how IBM and Motorola will react to the competition will be interesting to watch; as we went to press they had no comment. Rick Shriner says that relations are very good, but acknowledges that if he had the time he could "talk all year" about the negotiations required to get the rights to build the PowerPC variant. Neither IBM nor Motorola are being forthcoming about their thoughts on Exponential. The third partner in the PowerPC triumvirate, Apple, is obviously delighted at the prospect of competition. It was an original investor in the firm when it was founded in the summer of 1994, and came back for second bite of the cherry in a subsequent funding round. "They were looking for someone to put a flag in the ground" in terms of PowerPC performance.
Exponential's financial footing is nearly as hazy as its initial product plans. $14m has been raised in two rounds of funding - the first round saw Apple accompanied by venture capitalists, Venrock Associates and a group of undisclosed private investors. The second round saw the two companies joined by Itochu, Innotech, Nazem and Co and Woodside fund. One investor is Jean Louis Gassee, ex of Apple and now head of Be Inc. But whether Gassee is involved on Be's behalf, privately or through the Innotech venture company, was not clear as we went to press. To date Exponential says it has spent half of its funds and expects to start a second round of funding after tape-out of its first product next spring.
So can they do it? Exponential themselves point out that the technology is untested, however the names behind it are impressive. The company was founded by George Taylor and Jim Blomgren. Taylor was formerly director of experimental architecture at Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Blomgren also worked at Sun Labs on ECL SPARC processor design and at Chips and Technology on 386/486 processors. Exponential's Chairman Gordon Campbell was also at Chips and Technology - as CEO.
Miranker says that the CHRP machines should cost around the same to manufacturer as the existing PReP line and that end user prices will be comparable. The company demo'd a Solaris for PowerPC at Comdex and says that it should be available for its machines "late in the first. there quarter". There are still no definite plans to take AIX - OS/2 is more likely says Miranker.
US publication PC Week has been following the story particularly assiduously, and predicted that an announcement of the company's fate would appear last Friday. In the event, it didn't happen, however Taligent spokespeople did at last admit that the partners were debating its future. They wouldn't expand on the nature of the debate, but Reuter's sources are saying much the same as PC Week's: Taligent will end up within IBM and Apple and HP will get access to any technology produced subsequently. If that's the way the deal turns out, it will make sense - Apple has always appeared clueless about what it intended to do with the fruits of Taligent's labours. HP has not been particularly vociferous either. IBM on the other hand has been eyeing the technology as a way to add value to OS/2, AIX and OS/400.
Taligent's history has been a rocky one; originally it was going to deliver a fully object-based operating system that would compete head-on with Microsoft's Cairo release of Windows NT. This was gradually scaled back until today, Taligent seems relatively happy with producing Object construction kits for corporate developers.