Hey everyone,
Around the time that Apple changed to the Intel based Macs, I started hearing rumors from some of my friends that there was actually another G series processor in development, and with that, another new PowerPC Mac, that in effect never materialized. Did anyone else hear this at that time? - Is there even a grain of truth to the rumors I heard at the time?
I'm sure there was. I don't really know much about what was going on, but my understanding is that IBM was pressured by Apple to make another that would work in laptops, they were already more than maxing out the G5s capabilities with the liquid cooled g5s and it ran far to hot to run in a laptop.
When they couldn't deliver they switched to Intel. Since I've always heard they didn't know about the switch it would only make sense they were still working with Apple on the processor. The powerpc line is not dead, I'm sure the G6, or what it would have been based on is out there in some old servers, maybe even your xbox.
PA Semi was working on their unique PowerPC implementation, which emerged later as the PA6T. That was going to be, allegedly, the next step for the PowerBooks before Apple went Intel.
Amusingly, after Apple bought out PA Semi, the military demanded as a condition of acquisition they continue to produce the PA6T because it's still used in certain defense designs. So Apple, to this day, is still indirectly cranking out PowerPC chips. The PA6T is also used in the AmigaOne X1000.
I won't pretend to know where the PowerPC architecture was heading for Apple (apparently nowhere given the switch to Intel), but the instruction set and architecture is still very much alive. For instance, you might find it interesting to know that among the highest performing spacecraft processors are some based on PowerPC including BAE's RAD750 (a PowerPC 750 including L2 cache in a special radiation hardened implementation), Broadreach's BRE440 (PPC 440), and gear from SEAKR based on the PowerPC 8500. Awesome stuff.
PowerPC is a pretty good choice for low power, high performance embedded implementations such as you might find in networking equipment, too.