IBM would benefit greatly if they could make the PPC architecture a viable cost-effective alternative to the Intel x86 architecture at the lower end of the market. It seems to me that it will be very difficult for IBM to keep PPC competitive on the server high end if it doesn't have revenues from sales for the lower level machines to help fund processor research and development. This new chip has got to be aimed at the Macintosh and I would be very surprised if there was not already a secret business deal between IBM and Apple to use it for that purpose. However, given Macintosh's small market share it would help IBM even more if Linux developed a larger desktop and low-end server presence. In order to make that happen IBM needs to arrange for the manufacture of cheap motherboards for PPC to support this forthcoming chip. The question in my mind is whether this chip will be used to allow building of desktop machines as cheaply as can be done with x86 CPUs:

International Business Machines Corp. Monday announced a microchip for personal computers that will crunch data in chunks twice as big as the current standard and is expected by industry watchers to be used by Apple Computer Inc.

Another question: will this chip deliver competitive performance with less power use?