With Apple Computer Inc and its tiny accolytes the only significant commodity customers for IBM Corp’s PowerPC, the whole PowerPC strategy has failed so comprehensively that people are beginning to ask whether IBM will even come out ahead once the transition of the AS/400 to PowerPC is complete. The fact that it has ended up with a custom version of the PowerPC seriously limits the cost-savings from having a common processor for AS/400 and RS/6000 – and the transition even of the latter to PowerPC is far from complete, and on the debit side, the time and effort of migrating all the software to the new processor means that about two years’ worth of functionality enhancements that would have been possible had IBM designed a no-compromises 64-bit – or even 96-bit – AS/400 processor have been lost.
