tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11693538.post111808361521016117..comments2024-02-19T05:14:41.739-05:00Comments on The Auto Prophet: Apples and CarsAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12108992620883563299noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11693538.post-1118159718919662202005-06-07T10:55:00.000-05:002005-06-07T10:55:00.000-05:00I don't think this will affect the automotive busi...I don't think this will affect the automotive business much, either, other than maybe hurting Freescale financially. <BR/><BR/>Other companies are pursuing the automotive microcontroller business aggressively, including Infineon, Microchip, and Texas Instruments. What keeps Freescale pretty happy, though, is that there is a large base of legacy software and tools which are stable and mature. It is much easier to upgrade to the next generation of a chip family than to have to port software to a different platform.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12108992620883563299noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11693538.post-1118159435259503342005-06-07T10:50:00.000-05:002005-06-07T10:50:00.000-05:00I would anticipate very little impact at this time...I would anticipate very little impact at this time. While the automotive PowerPC shares its core with the consumer-level stuff, it's a completely different product and I'm guessing it's not even fabbed in the same facility. Just look at Motorola's support for the 68K automotive products (such as the 68332) well after Macs moved away from that core.<BR/><BR/>Longer-term, this might cause a bit of financial pain for Freescale and its customers, as they won't have Apple substidizing the development of the core. But that assuming that future PC cores would still be applicable to automotive tasks, which is by no means guaranteed. Maybe it'll force the auto industry to develop thier own standard core, kinda along the lines of the ARM7. That'd go a long ways towards reducing development costs. It'd just require some foresight.<BR/><BR/>On a seperate note, I can't see this as being a good move for Apple. Why do people buy Macs? Not because they want Wintel machines, that's for sure.The Angry Engineerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10928046249269361604noreply@blogger.com