| Katilian said: From wiki on the G3 range of PowerPC chips: "In particular, IBM has no public plans to produce a 750-based microprocessor with better than 90 nm manufacturing technology, effectively phasing it out as a commodity chip competitive in such markets as networking equipment." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_G3 |
This just means that IBM is not going to continue to pay for R&D for the G3 because it is no longer cost effective for them; it is unlikely that they're going to get any new (large) contracts from companies based off of a 45nm G3 processor.
Nintendo (on the other hand) could pay for IBM to modify their custom CPU to take advantage of the 45nm process because it is cost effective for them. In my opinion, Nintendo would be very smart to make the Gekko/Broadway CPU and the Flipper/Hollywood GPU the core of their next generation handheld, and to base their next generation home console on these processors (or to include these processors in the system); hypothetically speaking, with how little power the Wii uses you would expect a 65nm or 45nm process would allow these processors to be used in a handheld (with a 32nm process allowing for a very small handheld), and if the chips are integrated together would be very inexpensive to include into their next generation system (if necessary).
