Re: Is it not possible that IBM had the solution to one very important AMD problem, and that AMD has developed other areas of SOI which IBM wants?
The biggest problem of AMD's that IBM seems to be solving is where to get a 300mm FAB and how to pay for it. It's interesting that AMD's current production/development 200mm FAB is apparently (given their pricing) providing overcapacity in supplying about 20% of the market. Given that a 300mm FAB has about 2.5 times the capacity of AMD's current facility, that FAB IBMs outfitting would be able to supply about 50% of total CPU demand.
Add in the existing FAB, which is certanly good enough to keep producing chips (if not leading edge chips) even several years from now, and AMD could supply 70% of the market.
So the stakes are pretty high for Intel regarding the Opteron vs. Itanium battle to see what replaces today's dominant 32-bit X86 installed base.
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