IBM's chip business booms

A FEW YEARS ago, pundits were set to write off Biggish's blue's chip programme which was haemorrhaging nearly $252 million in 2003.

But according to Business Week , it seems that IBM has managed to turn that all around. Seven years ago, IBM's chip fabrication plant in New York's Hudson Valley was in mothballs now it is churning out chips.

Apparently it is all due to IBM's John Kelly, who then ran the semiconductor division, deciding to share its most advanced semiconductor research with a few key allies.

That developed into what Big Blue called an "open ecosystem" of chip R&D with nine partners, including AMD, Sony, Toshiba, Freescale Semiconductor, and Albany Nanontech.

The five stumped up a billion to help in the research and helped Big Blue boffins come up with wizard wheezes for their products.

Even though the bottom dropped out of the chip market IBM's chip division is still making cash, according to Business Week.

The article said that it was jolly hard to get the stuffed shirts at Big Glue to think about sharing their technology. Kelly had to throw his toys out of the pram to make people listen. But it turned out he was right. µ