Replies to post #142646 on Intel Corp (INTC)

[chipguy]

Chipguy, what do you think the implications of IBM selling its fabs to Global Foundries will be?

Part of the agreement (and a big reason for the price IBM had to pay) was
that GF agreed to support low volume manufacturing in IBM's boutique SOI/
eDRAM high performance process technologies for years into the future. It is
more a bookkeeping exercise than a change in basic underlying (un)economics.

I don't think this change is much more than a signpost along the inexorable
journey in the disappearance of low volume high performance non-x86 MPUs.

Market forces and economies of scale have been shrinking their market
share since the Pentium Pro appeared 20 years ago while the cost of
bringing to market high end processors and systems keep rising.

Also keep in mind that platforms are more resilient than silicon. I expect
system z platforms will be sold long after IBM exits processor development
altogether. It will simply be an extremely expensive software compatibility
layer sitting on top of Xeon hardware. Unisys has already gone down this
path with its mainframes and HP is heading there with NonSTOP and VMS.
OTOH there is really little reason for Power/UNIX to exist when there is
x86/Linux available.

[Dmcq]

I think this is closely-related to the low volume issue

Yes that is your answer. If Global Foundries can sell the process to others then volume will go up and IBM will get cheaper chips. Overall there's no loss side of the deal just the possibility of making no gain. There does seem to be a market for SOI in IoT, that isn't exactly a high performance but it may give the possibility of using the same machines production line.