Apple to try out Big Blue copper chips

IBM has made its first shipment of copper chips and interconnect technology in a 750 PowerPC processor, with Apple as its first customer.

The processor uses IBM-developed technology to speed up connections on the chip using copper rather than conventional aluminium. The material will increase on aluminium's clock speeds from 300MHz to 400MHz.

The first machines likely to use the revamped processor will be a number of Apple Mac machines including the latest models and also in upgrade cards.

But other chip manufacturers, including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), will also use the copper interconnect process. AMD already has a deal with IBM partner Motorola, which also has access to the technology.

Intel is also working on copper interconnects, but lags behind Big Blue and is unlikely to deploy copper until the next century.