IBM scores Xilinx for high end foundry business

WHILE A FEW MAY have noticed that the Big Blue restructuring earlier in June has hidden implications for TSMC and UMC, the news today that Xilinx will use its Fishkill fab to build cutting edge network chips should not go unnoticed.

Sources close to the firm claim that its entry into the high end foundry business will cause shivers to timber out there in the Far East and if Big Blue manages to execute on this strategy, then it really will be one to watch.

Of course IBM could have really messed up Intel a long time ago but that's history, water under the bridge and light years of nanometers ago.

IBM has got 130 nanometer, 90 nanometer and even smaller sizes sitting in its fabs and of course does pretty well on the old copper interconnect, silicon on insulator and low-k dialectrics front too.

Nintendo, Sony, Xilinx and some unnamed companies have started to use Big Blue fabs for some of their leading edge products, according to sources a whisker away from Fishkill.

Early production 300 millimeter (12-inch wafers) are already rolling off its new fab in Fishkill and we believe that someone (Sir Blue Gerstner, perhaps), may shimmy along in his famous boots to cut the ribbon at the opening in late July or August.

If IBM manages this move successfully, it could really give TSMC and UMC a run for their money. µ

* IBM USED TO "fab" chips for Cyrix as was, and the deal meant that it got half the chips produced. It sold these IBM branded and they were more expensive than the Cyrix chips. One crazy from IBM Micro even went so far to say once that its packaging was better than Cyrix', so that's why there were more expensive. We're surprised AMD doesn't cut another deal with Big Blue, pronto...