Motorola Inc is developing a version of IBM Corp’s PowerPC RISC designed to be used in handheld devices, the company’s chairman and chief executive George Fisher told a conference organised by Forrester Research. Fisher sees the planned part as a competitor to the ARM RISC used in Apple Computer Inc’s Newton Personal Digital Assistant, describing it as a sort of a cross between an embedded controller and a full board microprocessor. The chip should be ready next year, and Fischer said the PowerPC chip family is currently on its production schedule and that Motorola is in the process of ramping production of the 603 chip.
