Some doomsayers are reading too much into this report.
IBM microprocessor is trying to explain away last quarter losses by saying that they had
both lower yields and less demands. Since IBM closed a lot of its smaller fabs in order to "bet the farm" on this one, it sounds to me like they got lucky.
Imagine if they had higher yields and less demand? Excess capacity. Or worse, imagine if they had poorer yields and more demand? Expect delays on your pretty dual-G5.
Imagine if Fishkill had just come online and they were just finding out now how bad their yields are instead of last quarter? You'd see some royally pissed-off Mac fanatics then! Remember four years ago when some poor slobs paid more $ for less megahertz for their PowerMac G4?
You're talking about an area (12") where only DRAM manufacturers (and Sony) dare to tread and plan on matching DRAM in process shrink (130nm to 90nm). What do you expect? Or are all these DIMM boards that I have to return as defective aberrations?
IBM produces chips for many companies at this plant (the PPC 970/G5 and Apple's ASIC are just two of them) including themselves. When they commissioned this plant
three years ago, it was after the boom and many questioned whether IBM, a company known for their services and intellectual property, should be moving into the cutthroat world of manufacturing.
Now that demand is soft and yield is low and all the naysayers are coming out of the woodwork and saying crap like
In contrast to IBM, advanced chip equipment is easing the way for Intel Corp.
Hello? All Intel chips come out of 8" fabs and they're having serious yield issues with their 12" conversion in Arizona. What's so "advanced" about that? But I guess its not Reuters job to do
real analysis.
Then again, they're no different
than Tom's Hardware which claims that somehow that Intel manufacturing with a 90nm process on 300mm wafers in a fab that isn't even up and running yet on a chip that doesn't exist yet is somehow magically come out like gangbusters on yield.
The G5 uses a
9-layer copper damascene process. Intel's P4 uses 6 layers (AMD Athlon XP uses 9). BTW, yield is inversely related to the number of layers. How do you think Intel turns a profit and
AMD consistently turns in a loss? This chip
needs a state-of-the-art facility 3 year in the making if we expect this thing in quantity at a reasonable price. What is Motorola fabing at?
MOTO
Yeah right next you'll be telling me,`` IBM's been punked!'' That'll be worth the laugh.
IBM produced an expensive fab that went operational when demand for silicon is really low. Hopefully companies like Apple (who needs 3 chips for every 2x2 G5 from that plant) and AMD (Dresden is starting to look a little long in the tooth, rumors are that AMD's R&D is already in Fishkill) will change the demand equation. Time allows IBM and others to deal with yield issues. 300 mm is the future, and, unlike their competition, IBM has a plant today.
If demand is so low, what incentive do others have of
finishing refits for a 12" fab now? Oh wait, it's too late, they've already sunk in the money and their future designs on it. Or are we going to claim, like Reuters implied, that the fall of 2003 looks better economically than that of 2000 and IBM Fishkill was a big mistake.
Hah!
