New IBM Plant Will Mass Produce .1 Micron Chips

Ruger writes "AP News is carrying this story about IBM opening a new plant in upstate New York. What's most interesting about the story is that IBM will be producing .1 Micron Chips rather than the usual .25 or .18 produced by Intel and other chip makers, or .13 Micron chips they currently make for their PowerPC chips."

Comments

Supertiny G4's

[JBMcB]

Waiting for G4 Newtons with the new process :)
This should give the MHz deprived (But MIPS/FLOPS enriched) PowerPC line a boost in the PR speed department.

Re:Supertiny G4's

[ivan256]

IBM does not make G4s. They don't have a license for Altivec. They already make quite speedy G3s, but you don't see them in consumer products that are marketed based on Mhz.

Re:Supertiny G4's

[Duck_Taffy]

Interestingly, their roadmap for the G4 and G5 don't include AltiVec, but rather smaller transistors and and multiple cores on a single chip. It's kind of a shame, because AltiVec optimizations are really worthwhile, but I think it would be very cool to have a .1 G5 with dual/quad cores. Very space-efficient, and very fast, not to mention the parallel multi-processing.

Re:Supertiny G4's

[MADCOWbeserk]

IBM doesn't make G4's, for the Altivec licensing issue, which I believe they lost in a tiff with Motorola and Apple with the first gen G4's. IBM will like use this new process to make the next gen Power server chip and rule the RISC roost. I think HP's latest PA-Risc chip, kinda scares them. IBM also uses its fabs to etch chips for other companies, so a much faster Transmeta or AMD chip is possible, or maybe even a GPU.

Whatever they do use this new fab for, Apple will probly be the last to benefit.

Re:Supertiny G4's

[davechen]

Your mostly right, although I think at one point IBM was fabbing G4's when Motorola was having production problems.

On the other hand rumors are floating around that future Mac processors will come from IBM. Perhaps Apple bought out the Altivec rights from Motorola? Motorola is in such bad shape that maybe they wanted to money or wanted to get out of high end microprocessors.

Re:Supertiny G4's

[Aqua OS X]

IBM's G3's are in Apple's iBooks.

Re:Supertiny G4's

[Henriok]

The did. They have manufactured G4s for Apple in the past, and there's really nothing that would prevent something similar in the future.

And.. The G3-processor 750FX constructed by IBM and manufacured in a .13 micron meter-fab has beed the core of the Apple iBook since this spring.

Re:Supertiny G4's

[rakslice]

AMD has its own fabs, and fabs all of its own chips, right?

I'm not sure who Transmeta contracts with, though.

Re:Supertiny G4's

[MADCOWbeserk]

A little late to reply to this but. You are correct on AMD, but they have contracted work out in the past. Transmeta used IBM initially, but has switched to TMSC in Taiwan.

Why .1 micron?

[3.5 stripes]

And not .10?

I know it's a stupid question, but I prefer a little consistency, .14 .13 .12 .11 .1 just doesn't seem right.

Re:Why .1 micron?

[BigASS]

I thought the exact same thing when I read the article summary. More numbers after a decimal place inuitively make the number look smaller to most. I have the feeling that the marketing department will see that extra digit added on for consistency.

Of course I never claimed to be a math major.

Re:Why .1 micron?

[haystor]

Either that, or the marketing department figured out that by dropping 1 significant digit they could round .13 to .1 and there is no real news at all.

Re:Why .1 micron?

[GutBomb]

because "point one" looks smaller than "point ten" at first glance

Re:Why .1 micron?

[EvilBudMan]

Actually that should be 0.1!

Re:Why .1 micron?

[zeno_2]

It really shouldn't matter at all. If you can't tell the difference between .1 and .10, then the story is probably not going to interest you that much anyway. Why don't we write .130, or .1300000000... its because the 0's are useless information that just takes up space.. kinda like these posts =P

Re:Why .1 micron?

[togofspookware]

Oh, hah! I say .1 compared to .13 and .25 and thought .01. Weird.

Re:Why .1 micron?

[3.5 stripes]

I can tell the difference, but to me dropping the second decimal place says that the second decimal place wasn't necessary in the first place. Which isn't true.

Re:Why .1 micron?

[duck_prime]

Probably because someone entered the number in Excel ... it "fixes" .10 to .1; you don't even have to ask!

Re:Why .1 micron?

[imperator_mundi]

.1 = .10 = .100 = .100000000000

ciao ;)

Re:Why .1 micron?

[arrogance]

What happened to the quantum electron tunneling limit? I thought they weren't planning on going past .13 microns because of uncertainty tunneling. Is that no longer a factor at these widths and with these materials? Are they adding error correcting features?

Now i see that they're talking about a 0.003 micron process. Let's hope IBM actually knows what they're doing and doesn't find out later that "Oops, Schrödinger was right after all...."

Returning to the fold.

[GodInHell]

'Bout time IBM got back into upstate NY.

I remember when I was just leaving the area, the last of the local plants finally scaled back to just a matinance group, the whole area died. IBM was the heart and soul of quite a few towns in New York, and they didn't do very well when it left.

-GiH

Re:Returning to the fold.

[dbrutus]

One company dominated towns are a horrible idea, always have been. IBM is a public company and if it benefits the stockholders to leave a town, they are legally obligated to do it.

If you don't have a diverse economy that can take an IBM or a GM leaving, you have to fight like hell in the good times to grow one because if you don't the towns will shrivel up and die when they inevitably leave.

Re:Returning to the fold.

[scott1853]

You could live in Rochester, NY and then you could be dominated by three failing companies - Bausch & Lomb, Xerox, and Kodak.

Re:Returning to the fold.

[SmurfSlayer]

IBM Just layed off thousands (?) here in upstate NY (Binghamton). Sold off their entire campus, now they are going to re-open another plant somewhere else?

Their hard drive market share is gone, so they are going to try and push their PowerPC's into a market dominated by Intel and AMD?

What is IBM doing?

Re:Returning to the fold.

[Anonvmous Coward]

"60 miles north of NYC is hardly upstate. You gotta be north of, or west of Albany to be upstate."

Wow, what a crushing blow to his comment.

Re:Returning to the fold.

[pr0nbot]

I remember when I was just leaving the area, the last of the local plants finally scaled back to just a matinance group, the whole area died.

I can recommend Michael Moore's book "Downsize This!" for a good argument as to why it should be illegal for profitable companies to up and move to whichever city offers them the most money.

As it happens, Moore has put (part or all of - I haven't re-read it) the relevant chapter online: http://www.dogeatdogfilms.com/letsal.html

Re:Returning to the fold.

[snilloc]

It always amazed me how many of the locals owned those stocks anyway...

(U of R, 2001)

Re:Returning to the fold.

[kopper187]

Not too amazing when you consider former local employee base. Kodak was had an, overly bloated, 120,000+ workers. With 30k at KO, 60k at KP and a nother 30k at Elmgrove, wouldn't you expect to find a lot of people onwning the stock? Now, factor in the insentives used to get employees to buy the stock....
now there is something like 45k local employees of Kodak: where did the other 75k go? Most were laid off during the 80's and 90's, with the final trimming done in the first years of the 90's. Let's not forget who they got rid of. 2 principal groups: the early retirenment's and skilled blue-collar workers. Skilled workers were left with few options outside of moving to a new city. The retirenment group, well, they wer're too sad.

Re:Returning to the fold.

[lucabrasi999]

A little geography:

1) Upstate begins just North of Harlem.

2) Long Island begins where the Queensborough Bridge ends.

3) and Staten Island? Fahgettabbaahttit! It's in Jersey.

Of course, I come from Pittsburgh, so I am obviously an expert.

Re:Returning to the fold.

[Plutor]

'Bout time IBM got back into upstate NY.

Actually, this isn't a new plant opening up. It's just a new assembly line in the existing East Fishkill plant. My mom works for the Microelectronics division there, and she points out that the line is referred to as the "300mm line", not the "0.1 micron line".

Re:Returning to the fold.

[BitGeek]

Yes, we need the government deciding what companies can and can't do-- after all the government owns them!

Did you know that facism is not "government controlling people" its "government controlling companies"-- thats its distinction with communism which is "no companies allowed".

It should be illegal to propose that you restrict companies- profitable or not-- from exercising human rights.

If you own property, it is yours. Attempting to liberate it for "public good" is a violation of human rights-- whether that property is a banana or a microelectronics plant.

Mike Moore has made a career out of selling his failure as a human being as proof that companies are evil -- because there are lots of other human failures who want to believe that their own lives are not their own responsibility. And if it requires trampling on others human rights, so be it.

Get a job.

Re:Returning to the fold.

[SmurfSlayer]

Thanks for the clarification. I wasn't sure what the numbers or reasoning was.

Re:Returning to the fold.

[GodInHell]

It should be illegal to propose that you restrict companies- profitable or not-- from exercising human rights.

Why? Companies aren't humans. They don't have the full list of human rights either. Each different flavor of Corporation comes with a different set of rights, but none grant a corporation the full bill of rights, and no-where is it set to law that corporate entites have garunteed human rights. Incorporation is a trade-off, the owner loses the personal freedom to do as he would, up to and including the sale of stock and other holdings. In return, the individual founders are sheltered by the corporate entity from any law suits that the corporation should suffer, and the finacial issues attatched to the company.

This leaves only negligance and incompetance, in nearly all other ways, the owners and the board are protected from private suit by the corporate umbrella.

Get a job.

That's a very shallow strike sir, even if it applies to the individual to whom you are replying it dosen't change the validity of his suggestion, in fact perhaps it enfroces it. The corporate system is failing to care for itself, let alone those who support it. When corporations focus on profits NOW and turn a blind eye to success in the future, everyone pays.

-GiH

Re:Returning to the fold.

[warnerpr]

No, that is the north country, Upstate does start like right after NYC, before Albany at least.

And on top of that, Potsdam is far enough north it is better just to count it as part of Canada.

Re:Returning to the fold.

[coastwalker]

"Yes, we need the government deciding what companies can and can't do-- after all the government owns them!"

The gov certainly doesnt own companies which is a good thing - but maybe you should be a little concerned that the companies own the government.

The shareholders rightly demand the maximum return from a business which means that the company will be forced to do socialy unaceptable things if there were no checks and balances

The people vote for a government which creates the checks and balances which restrict the behaviour of business where appropriate. If the restrictions on business are wrong then the people can change the government - this is called democracy.

It is an idiotic suggestion to propose that the shareholders should be able to override the power of government - since the majority of shares are owned by institutions this would then put the behaviour of business totaly under the control of unelected executives running financial institutions. You cannot seriously be suggesting that you want your whole country run by Enron Executives?

If your government is as bad as you suggest then I begin to wonder whether the ranting lunatics in the "Axis of evil" may have a point when they claim that Western civilisation is bankrupt and about to collapse from within. On the other hand you could just be wrong.

Re:Returning to the fold.

[BitGeek]

Companies aren't humans.

No, but their Owners are, and their owners deserve human rights. Even if you don't like it because you want what they've got and they don't want to give it to you and so you want to take it by force.

I will not let you say that taking it by force is "human rights" when it is, in fact, a violation of human rights.

The corporate system is failing to care for itself, let alone those who support it.

Garbage. There is absolutely no evidence to support that. This is pure, unmitigated, bigotry.

You say Enron! I say "Bill Clinton!" You say Arthur Anderson! I say "Wilie Horton".

Neither of those guys prove that all liberals are lying rapists, and neither of those companies are even EVIDENCE, let alone proof, that the corporate system is failing to take care of its own.

It has been, continues to be, and probably always will be, BY FAR, the most successful, freedom oriented, economic system on this planet.

Unless you lost money in Enron, et. al. you have no right to cry.

And you certainly have no right to demand that others give you money just because you want it.

Which is why I said "get a job". Liberals who want restrictions on corporations either are unemployed and don't know what corporations do, or are so jealous of actual competence that they want to destroy it.

If you're an anti-corporation person, you are anti-human rights. Every company is run by, employes, and provides services to, humans, who have the divine RIGHT to freely enter into the association with that entity. This right is part of the bill of rights, and when you want to take it away, you are violating human rights.

Any company that chooses to move its location is exercising a right given under the Bill of Rights.

Re:Returning to the fold.

[BitGeek]

The people vote for a government which creates the checks and balances which restrict the behaviour of business where appropriate.

BZZT. Sorry. That is not the proper role of government. Not in no way.

The proper role of government is to protect human rights.

If they start doing that, then we can talk about extending their role into other areas.

But as it is now, EVERYTHING done by the government is done very poorly, and at absurd expense. It is competent at NOTHING. This has been proven time and again.

That you think that companies control the government just shows the delusion you are under-- you advocate FASCISM because you don't like the idea of having to live in a world where human rights are defended.

Companies operate- completely and totally- by free choice of exchange and association. All employees are free to resign, all customers are free to not buy, all shareholders are free to sell the stock. They are beholden to these three groups.

The government in contrast, operates b¥ use of brutal force and oppression-- you cannot resign if you're in the military. You cannot choose not to pay taxes because yuo think the money is being wasted, and %99 of the people who work for the government were not elected by you, and you can't choose not to vote for them (voting your shares) or to sell your shares.

These checks and balances you talk of would be a great idea-- where is the right to sue the government? It certainly sues individuals. But when the coast guard drilled 80,000 holes in a yacht because they thought the fiberglass (Which produces a white powder during manufacture) was *compressed cocaine* (a boat made of such would melt in water an sink immediately!) the owner was unable to recover the boat or any money because the government is immune from prosecution.

The BIGGEST polluter in the US is the government (specifically the military, followed by the BLM).

The BIGGEST cause of unemployment is the governemtns anti-scientific economics policies.

The BIGGEST drain on the economy and the standard of living of everyone is the regressive, oppressive, > %50 in my case-- taxes we pay... and the fact that we get almost no value for those taxes.

You think corporations are out of control? Then sell their stock.

If you don't own the stock, aren't an employee or customer, and haven't had your rights violated, then you have NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN.

Lets enforce human rights, and stop advocating the oppression you advocate.

Re:Returning to the fold.

[The Dobber]

Ouch, thats gonna leave a mark.

Re:Returning to the fold.

[zevans]

What is IBM doing? Well, they're not competing with Intel in the desktop processor market, that's for sure. They're building a 0.1u fab so that they can :

a) provide fab services to other players (Sony et al)
b) Manufacture their own kick-ass POWER series processors.

It will be a long time before Intel systems can compete with the 690, with the SuperDome, and with the 15k.

Zack

Re:Returning to the fold.

[coastwalker]

You make some interesting points about the lack of accountability of government under the law - whether the details of the examples you quote are accurate or not I believe that you are correct that in general it is far more difficult to hold agents of the government to account under the law.

This is not a good thing of course as you point out it, means that oppressive and unjust behaviour can occur. In this case the ballot box is not enough.

You cite human rights as enshrined in law as an appropriate arbiter of actions of institutions (and business). This I admit has some validity in your country as your legal system has some initial laws set down by the constitution which have evolved by case law into a set of rules which could be described as human rights. I come from the UK and we have no such set of rules with a defined root, merely accumulated case law and new law brought in by politicians. - If I dont like the law I have to vote for a politician who will change the law, in your case you would have to take your complaint to the courts and hope that your cause can be aligned to "human rights" as initialy set out in the constitiution.

Your American system does have the advantage that if you have enough money you can get things done as an individual, the political route has the advantage that it reflects the majority interest. Neither system is perfect and a continious struggle to refine or improve them is inevitable.

This raises another point about the treatment of minorities by any democracy - they tend to get trampled by the majority interest. This is as far as I know an unsolved political problem which no system of government has managed to deal with adequately. You seem to be advocating for the primacy of the individuals rights on the basis of how much personal power they have accrued in the form money to engage in court action, this does not seem to me to be any better way of guarding minority interest than normal politics, as it only empowers one specific minority group - those with money. I have sympathy for the cause of individuals who are discriminated against by the majority because of their money, why indeed should punitive taxation be applied to the rich - its just another form of discrimination.

However lets suppose for a momment that your analysis is correct - government is reduced in power and we can rely on recourse to the law to control behaviour in the human sphere. You then advocate the company as the major actor because

"Companies operate- completely and totally- by free choice of exchange and association. All employees are free to resign, all customers are free to not buy, all shareholders are free to sell the stock. They are beholden to these three groups".

This is true enough and in classic anarchic fashion we will get exactly what we want because of freedom of personal choice. However there are some pitfalls that the theory runs into. Every business would like to be a monopoly because they can control their market and get the best profits by so doing. If you are a large sucessfull business then you can achieve this - take for example Microsoft and its removal of competing businesses like Netscape from the new market of Internet clients - Microsoft won that battle and despite legal disputes have become a monopoly. In this case the business has taken control of part of the market and the law failed to protect the customer. Microsoft is in an odd situation in that the government is not particularly interested in getting involved either as the monopoly extends outside the home market and therefore there are considerations of worldwide competitiveness to consider also - a typical example where the business controls the government.

On balance I prefer the flaws in the system we have currently to any improvement brought about by giving more power to large corporations.

I may be wrong, it could be that we live in a time of change (where just as when the church was removed from power by the invention of the secular state)that it is now the time that power was taken substantialy away from democratic institutions and invested in the process of law driven by a contestable menue of human rights.

I await developments with interest, theres certainly a great deal of scepticism about the current system - which is only going to grow as the tide of work flows from the west to developing countries.

Re:Returning to the fold.

[BitGeek]

Since I was responding on a specific issue, I didn't lay out the broadness of my position.

So, let me clarify: Any Just society, must take as its primacy- its original principle for organization-- the defense of human rights.

By this statement, the UK is not a Just society, and the US has lost its way (as the bill of rights is no longer consistently enforced.)

In both cases politics have swayed the government away form enforcing human rights. This is an example of majority rule hurting the minorities by taking away their human rights.

Therefore you must not only have a constitution (As we have and you don't) but must have it be strong enough that it cannot be diluted (as it has for us, while you may be going the other way.)

So, the "american experiment" has not been a complete success.

It also seems to me that these rights have to be enshrined at the beginning-- if they are not, then corporations and politicians will find them inconvenient and work to dismantle them. ... which eventually leads to bloody revolution when they have been dismantled too much. (Which is why gun ownership is one of the human rights-- without it, you cannot defend yourself against a dictatorial government.)

What if there were a major scandle in your House of Commons, and the monarchy re-asserted itself? And then said monarchy had a king who was a tyrant, in control of the armed forces and moving to a dictatorship. How would you revolt, if you have no guns? I'm sure this seems farfetched, because the monarchy is weak right now and y'all are not want to go back to one, but in 50 years, a lot could change.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Both corporations may act evilly and governments may as well. In the US clearly the government is the group acting wiht impunity-- corporations are destroyed if the act illegally and people discover it. But the government is getting away with bloody murder (quite literally in fact.)

Lightning?

[EvilBudMan]

I wonder how easy it would be for lightning to fry these chips?

Re:Lightning?

[Lao-Tzu]

Do you know what happens to a toad when it gets hit by lightning? Same thing that happens to everything else.

Re:Lightning?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would imagine it would be very difficult. A .10 micron by .10 micron square is very small and the probability of a lightning strike into such a small square is infintesimal.

To the naysayers...

[colmore]

Weren't we supposed to hit some sort of quantum limit before .1 Micron? What are the current guesses on how much smaller we can get?

I wan't to be reading my email and playing nethack on a petaflop machine by the time this decade is out!

Re:To the naysayers...

[schmink182]

I wouldn't have done it if it weren't for your .sig, but come on man, wan't? What were you thinking?

Re:To the naysayers...

[Hacker'sEdict]

Actually .1 is the smallest we are supposed to be able to go. Any smaller and the info will overflow.

Re:To the naysayers...

[jmv]

What are the current guesses on how much smaller we can get?

Usually, the current guesses are about twice smaller than current technilogy :-)

Seriously, there are two (in fact more) limits: there's the smallest transistor possible that works correctly and there's the smallest features size we can mass-produce with reasonnable (well, it's already unreasonnable...) cost.

Right now, the most limiting factor is the second. The visible light is already much too big (wavelength) for lithography so they're using (AFAIK) ultra-violet, but one of the problems is that the smaller the wavelength, the harder it is to find a transparent material at that wavelength (glass doesn't work past a certain wavelength).

Re:To the naysayers...

[Jucius Maximus]

"Weren't we supposed to hit some sort of quantum limit before .1 Micron? What are the current guesses on how much smaller we can get?"

'They' always come up with some reason as to why a certain limit will be reached. Hard drives were never supposed to reach over 120 GB but there are new methods researched to bend the Laws of Physics. With this 0.1 micron process, I am no semiconductor expert but I suspect they have come up with some new way of doping the silicon to make more 'pure' boundaries between N and P areas or something else at least as tricky.

Re:To the naysayers...

[Anonvmous Coward]

I thought the limit was that to reach .1 microns you had to use UV lithography instead of more traditional means.

Re:To the naysayers...

[Jucius Maximus]

"First, the logical limit on an IDE drive was 137 GB, not 120. Second, it's not the laws of physics restricting the size of a hard drive-- it was that only 137 GB could be addressed logically per the ATA standard (it may have been a different standard, I don't remember which)."

I'm talking about the paramagnetic effect, not addressing limits.

Re:To the naysayers...

[imnoteddy]

There is a reasonably well researched report published each year called "International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors", homepage is here.

The executive summary of the 2001 edition predicts that in 2016 the drawn gate length for microprocessors will be 13 nanometers (0.013 microns).

Now that we're on the verge of 0.1 micron transistors it is time to dump the microns unit and start using nanometers. The tables in the "International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors" all use nanometers.

Re:To the naysayers...

[colmore]

What were you thinking?

Let's see... I posted that before noon, so it was probably "Why the hell hasn't the caffeine kicked in yet."

I'm perfectly aware that wan't isn't correct. It's a bizarre mistake that I catch myself making all the time, and I can't explain it. And otherwise, I'm pretty good with apostrophes; I don't put them on plural's like a lot of people do around here. But for some reason "wan't" is a really really stupid mistake that I've been making for a long long time.

Re:To the naysayers...

[sunspot55]

Well, since the atomic radii is on the order of 1nm I would guess we'll probably bottom out around 10nm within 20 years.

Re:To the naysayers...

[spinozaq]

Maybe he has a Dell or Microsoft natural keyboard. Mine puts tick marks in at random spots when I'm typing.

Re:To the naysayers...

[JPriest]

Accept for Intels .09 prescot that will be out next year right?

Re:To the naysayers...

[YourGarbageMan]

The limit is more economical in nature than technological. We can already make chips with features much smaller than 0.1um. We just can't manufacture them economically today. The cost for 0.1um processing becomes cheaper with time, and at some point it becomes economically viable. The same is true for any process, ie. 0.25um, 0.18um etc. They all get cheaper with time as technology advances.

What's important is the rate at which the cost declines versus the rate of improvement in chip performance. At some point the cost of making smaller chips outweighs the perfomance benefits the chips provide. At that point the industry will fail to uphold Moore's Law, and Moore's Law will buckle.

There are also fundamental limits at which quantum effects take over, but I am not an expert in that area.

Re:To the naysayers...

[Arjuna Theban]

No, UV lithography is what's been used to expose the photoresist, and it has been for a looooong long time. E-beam lithography is probably what you're thinking.

Re:To the naysayers...

[colmore]

it was a joke son, a joke.

Re:To the naysayers...

[zevans]

...unless you base your designs on the spin states of leptons, instead of their drift velocities...

Re:To the naysayers...

[InadequateCamel]

Atomic radius is much smaller, though it all depends on the atom and whether or not it is carrying a charge. Bond lengths are on the order of a couple of Angstroms (1 Angstrom = 0.1nm); ie. C-H bonds are usually 1.6A, or 0.16nm. So we have quite a ways to go before we approach the size of atoms.

impressive

[tps12]

If this is true, it looks like Moore's Law could have a few years left in it, after all. In a few years, we may end up living in the future!

Imagine a computer small enough to fit in your pocket. Imagine a computer in your car. Imagine a computer in your glasses! It sounds like science fiction, but it looks like IBM is actually seizing the bull by the horns and making it a reality.

It's also interesting that they are doing this in New York. I thought all chip manufacturing was done overseas, where labor is cheaper. Perhaps IBM is getting some sort of government subsidy for creating American jobs. Or maybe New York has a good supply of chipmakers already, so they can find more skilled workers.

Whatever the reason, it's good to see innovation marching along. This is the kind of activity that will get us out of the current recession. Good luck, IBM!

Re:impressive

[BigASS]

Imagine a computer small enough to fit in your pocket. Imagine a computer in your car. Imagine a computer in your glasses! It sounds like science fiction, but it looks like IBM is actually seizing the bull by the horns and making it a reality.

Um.. To summarize,
Computer in your pocket: PocketPCs/Palms
Computer in the car: The volvo story that was run a week back
Computer in glasses: oh so many stories posted about the wearable computers at MIT.

Re:impressive

[maxume]

I just walked out to my car(circa 1990), and looked at its computer. It was very pretty. (actually, I did no such thing, but I don't really have to imagine a computer in my car, do I?)

But that probably isn't really what you meant. Such as it is.

Re:impressive

[ivan256]

That's funny, I could have sworn I've seen people going to work everyday at the intel fab down the street from my appartment (Hudson, MA). In fact, rumor has it that this fab was the worlds first to churn out working parts on the .13 micron process.

There are still plenty of fabs in the US. It's probably because the people who can make these tiny technologies actually work aren't cheap anywhere.

Re:impressive

[leibnizme]

I was present at the ribbon-cutting ceremony yesterday and saw the CEO of IBM dedicate the building. Governor George Pataki had lobbied vigorously to get this new fab in New York, and he spoke at the dedication as well. It's anybody's guess as to what went on in planning sessions, but I would bet the government made IBM an attractive offer to build the plant!

Re:impressive

[ReelOddeeo]

Imagine a computer small enough to fit in your pocket. Imagine a computer in your car. Imagine a computer in your glasses! It sounds like science fiction...

I no longer have the exact quote, but it goes something like this...

While computers today have over 18,000 vaccum tubes and weigh 1 ton, in the future computers may have as few as 1,000 vaccum tubes and weigh only 1/2 ton. --Popular Mechanics 1949

Re:impressive

[YanceyAI]

In a few years, we may end up living in the future!

Heh.

I hope to be living in the future in the next nanosecond, or at least by the time I post this.

Re:impressive

[mshiltonj]

In a few years, we may end up living in the future.

Rest assured. We will.

Re:impressive

[TTop]

I appreciate your sentiment, but really -- I have a computer in my pocket! It's called a PDA. Most modern cars have computers in them, too! Maybe not the kind you're thinking of, though.

I guess what I want to know is what's impressive about this advance? What will it actually mean as far as technology advances go? Faster chips? "Better?" Just smaller? What? How will this improve our lives? It's not immediately obvious to me, and I'd like to know!

Re:impressive

[Hayzeus]

It's also interesting that they are doing this in New York. I thought all chip manufacturing was done overseas, where labor is cheaper. Perhaps IBM is getting some sort of government subsidy for creating American jobs. Or maybe New York has a good supply of chipmakers already, so they can find more skilled workers.

There are sub - .13 fabs all over the US -- they're just too small to see.

Re:impressive

[archen]

I donno about that. I'm pretty happy with living in the present. Been doing it all my life after all.

Re:impressive

[CoyoteGuy]

I appreciate your sentiment, but really -- I have a computer in my pocket! It's called a PDA. Most modern cars have computers in them, too! Maybe not the kind you're thinking of, though.
I guess what I want to know is what's impressive about this advance? What will it actually mean as far as technology advances go? Faster chips? "Better?" Just smaller? What? How will this improve our lives? It's not immediately obvious to me, and I'd like to know!


Perhaps you don't think on a large enough scale.. What about submarine technology? The more technology we can fit in cramped quarters, the better. Or how about those cool star trek tri-quarters? I would like to see something similar come along in my lifetime. In the big picture, every advance we make to improve technology is a VERY important step. Without the small steps, we would have no big steps.

Re:impressive

[powerlinekid]

Or it could be that we already have plenty of talented employees here at the east fishkill plant who know 200mm fine so converting to 300 won't be that bad.
Disclaimer: I work at the east fishkill plant as a programmer for the 300mm testing systems.

Re:impressive

[Hoser McMoose]

I did a few quick calculations about this sort of thing a while back.

The first thing I figured was that your typical microprocess fab plant had depreciation measured at over a million dollars per day (figure that the plants cost 2 - 3 billion USD to build, and then need to be majorly overhauled about every 3 years or so). So if you figure that there are 1,000 people working there, at a average salary of $50,000, you're paying out only about $136,000 a day in pay.

Long story short, the price of workers is an order of magnitude less expensive then the cost of the fab, so it really doesn't make that much difference how much it costs to pay the workers.

So where do you put the fab? Easy, wherever you get a sweet package from the local government for cheap land and good financing/tax breaks. That's how NY managed to win this fab, that's how Taiwan got started, and that's how China is hoping to build up their fab industry.

Re:impressive

[maxume]

Which just furthers my point. Very small computers can already do lots of crazy, ridiculously useful stuff...

Re:impressive

[babaliong]

we will indeed .. been doing that every nanosecond after this very nanosecond we call present leading up to every second that is a thousand nanosecond afterwards to infinity .. (+1) :) enough with that .. now .. if only someone would tell me how to get back to the nanosecond before this nanosecond we call present .. anybody ?

Re:impressive

[xinu]

It's also interesting that they are doing this in New York. I thought all chip manufacturing was done overseas, where labor is cheaper. Perhaps IBM is getting some sort of government subsidy for creating American jobs. Or maybe New York has a good supply of chipmakers already, so they can find more skilled workers.

Not all of it is done overseas. Check out Fairchild Semiconductor's Manufacturing or National Semiconductor or Motorola to name just a couple off the top of my head. I know some of them at least do the manufacturing over here, but assemble them over seas. I know both National and Fairchild only becuase I use to support the Suns and VAXen for production in the fabs.

Market Recovery/Demand?

[Vengie]

Midly offtopic/funny.... EAST FISHKILL, NY? Anyway. First we got all this buzz about IBM buying PWC. Now, this about .1 micron chips. Upstate NY isn't exactly the center of the electronic world, but the goal was to do something _new_ & slightly daring. (and hey, they are selling/sold the plant in which IBM was born) They're taking a chance with the automated wafer production. (IANA Quality Control Specialist) -- But wonder about the types of problems they may run into. If they pull this off, they could make a nice comeback. Only question is...how strong is the demand for these chips *right now*, instead of "when the economy recovers" ?

Re:Market Recovery/Demand?

[dbrutus]

It's an anglicization of the original dutch which has nothing to do with killing. There are a bunch of places called kill in metro NY and unless you know something of the history of the area you'll jump to the wrong conclusion.

Re:Market Recovery/Demand?

[42sd]

If IBM were to wait for the market to recover they'd already be a couple of steps behind. They want to have the technology in place so that when the economy recovers they can make a killing. hmm Fishkill.. think they renamed it in honor of the factory?

Re:Market Recovery/Demand?

[aldopignotti]

That area used to be the center of the main frame world. The building in Kingston was huge. Snail mail was delivered by a robot!

I wonder...

[Apocalypse111]

What will overclocking chips made with this new wire size do to their heat output? No matter, it still can't outperform my current Athlon/space-heater.

Intel at .13?

[timwhit]

Isn't the northwood P4 produced at .13 micron? And the AMD Throughbred is also at .13? The header says that other chip manufacturers produce chips at .25 or .18 when this simply isn't true.

Re:Intel at .13?

[crow]

Right, but it depends on what type of chip IBM is going to produce. I expect many other chips are still being produced at .25 microns. So while the article was at best worded poorly, it may be an indication of the market IBM is planning on competing in.

Re:Intel at .13?

[farfolen]

isn't that the core, not the actual chip size?

Re:Intel at .13?

[megalomang]

No, it is neither. The "micron" dimension associated with a particular fabrication technology is the average width of a transistor. The smaller transistor, coupled with better design resulting in redundant circuitry and better fabrication processes resulting in fewer faults, allows more transistors to fit on a chip. causing Moore's law to continue to tick forward.

There is another dimension generally provided, which is the wafer size. Recently, Intel became the first to start high-volume production of a 300mm (aka 12") wafer size, versus the previous 200mm (8") wafers that most of the industry still uses. Combined with the .13 micron process that most new P4s are fabricated with, this results in an extremely high die count (number of chips that can be masked onto a single wafer) which is of course offset by the enormous Northwood die size!

The entire digital chip is generally masked using the same process, including the core, L1 memories, L2 memories, and sometimes (e.g. Itanium) even the enormous L3 memories.

Re:Intel at .13?

[ahfoo]

Hmm, it seems not too many people read Digitimes. TSMC and UMC have both been at .13 for a long time and I was under the impression they were doing .90nm already. That's what all the talk about SOC bottlenecks on EETimes is about. Check out the TSMC home page for more on 90nm SOC plans.
For more fun, according to Digitimes, TSMC and a German company have already begun work on a .60nm foundry in Singapore that is supposed to be in operation by 2Q 2003.
To answer an earlier question about ultimate CMOS limits, IBM says 45nm is the limit for gates at 1V and below that you lose speed in data processing applications. Of course GaAs and InP might extend that limit, but then you introduce process issues. The lithography challenges while expensive are not the primary technologcical issues. This latter point is intriguing because it leaves the door open for applications where minute dimensions are more important than processing speed such as biochips. Check out the Univeristy of Michigan for some awesome preliminary work on production level implanted bionetworks.

Re:Intel at .13?

[umm qasr]

I may be feeding a Troll, but here goes...

It is true, some manufacture does currently occur at .25 micron. Obviously there is advantages to .13 micron such as, less heat production, smaller die size etc. and this is what the latest chip fabrication plants use.

The older fabs still use much larger processes, e.g. .18 and .25 micron. I know that the P3's still being produced (pre Tualatin 733, 800 Mhz etc.) are on .18 micron processes, and I would guess that the K6-2's that AMD still produces are at least a .25 micron process, maybe larger.

Upstate, eh?

[Glove d'OJ]

East Fishkill is *so* no Upstate NY. Albany? That's upstate. Syracuse? Definitely upstate? Fishkill? No freaking way.

East Fishkill is 1/2 way between NYC and the extension of the horizontal line that divides most of NY and PA.

Dude, get your geography straight, or at least *look* at a map.

(sheesh)

WWJD? JWRTFM!

Re:Upstate, eh?

[dbrutus]

For somebody from Long Island, everything north of the Bronx is upstate.

Re:Upstate, eh?

[doppleganger871]

True, but for those of use that actually live up here... we can separate the vast amount of land into Western, Central, Southern Tier, Northern, and Damn-Near-Canuk.

Re:Upstate, eh?

[asv108]

For most people, especially those who don't live in NY, anything not in NYC is "upstate NY."

Re:Upstate, eh?

[King Gabey]

So upstate also depends on the new yorker you're talking to. Someone from from ossining will say they're from the city whereas someone from manhattan will say that person's from upstate. i especially like how people tell me they're from the city and in the same breath tell me about the deer who hang out in their backyard...

Re:Upstate, eh?

[Quill_28]

It gets worse, I lived little north of Albany awhile and my friend who lived 20 miles south of the Canadian line claims that I was not upstate.

Not that I cared but I thought it was funny.

Re:Upstate, eh?

[alienmole]

Hey, try reading the articles one of these days...

EAST FISHKILL, N.Y. (AP) - IBM Corp. unveiled what was believed to be the world's most advanced chip-making plant Wednesday, promising 1,000 new jobs and a boost to the upstate economy.

The $2.5 billion, 140,000-square-foot facility currently makes the prototype cutting-edge chips and was expected to reach full production by February 2003

The chips produced at the Fishkill plant, 60 miles north of New York City, will be the first IBM chips to be made on 300mm wafers of silicon, instead of the current 200mm wafers.

Not only that, but Intel will be the first at .1

[megalomang]

Not only are Intel already at .13 micron, but they are also at 300mm. They already have a .1 micron facility in progress, so IBM will be playing catch-up. Luckily for IBM, Intel facility seems delayed.

This is an excerpt from http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/8205.html:

Intel vice-president of communications Chuck Molloy told the Irish Times that "the current economic climate is a contributing factor" in the company's decision to postpone construction. But Molloy called the delay "normal," noting that the Leixlip plant, once completed, would be the first facility to use the new 0.1-micron technology.

Re:Why .1 micron? -sig figs?

[Insightfill]

Maybe they can't really be sure it's .10 micron, and that it may be .14>x>.06 or something.

(Of course, I'm only joking.)

Scott

100 nanometers

[bill_mcgonigle]

Once we get to .10 microns, we've reached another power of ten. So, 100 nanometers would be a better description, and we can ditch the decimal places. Next year we can talk about 99nm and 98nm parts.

Re:100 nanometers

[bill_mcgonigle]

Next year we can talk about 99nm and 98nm parts.

Doh, I should have said "90 and 80nm parts". That would be slightly more interesting.

Of course, this would also give the marketing droids a heck of alot of fun. They'd advertise that they have a 99nm process while their competion has a whopping 100nm process.

Re:100 nanometers

[Warped-Reality]

I thought that microns were different from millimeters? (if .1 microns = 100nm and .1mm = 100nm then microns=mm)

Re:100 nanometers

[timeOday]

More likely they'd advertise their 100nm process against the competition's "measly" 80nm process using a bar graph whose origin is at 80nm.

"Now with 25% more nanometers!"

Re:100 nanometers

[bill_mcgonigle]

.1mm = 100nm

You missed 3 orders of magnitude there. I tried to explain it here, but Slash doesn't allow me to use properly expressive HTML (can't use mu or superscripts).

Check out Readings on Powers of Ten for a decent explanation.

Re:100 nanometers

[Fweeky]

Um, not quite.

Microns are micrometers - 1/1000th of a mm, so transistors on a modern chip are somewhere of the region of 1/10,000th of a mm.

Nanometers are 1/1000th of a micrometer, hence 0.1 micron = 100 nanometer, 1 micron = 1000 nanometer, 0.1mm = 100 micron, 1mm = 1000 micron.

If transistors really were 0.13mm or so your newfangled GF4 or Athlon XP would be a few metres across :)

I'll be damned...

[powerlinekid]

"Look ma, I'm on slashdot"... well not exactly but I actually work there. I program the testing systems so that the engineers can run test on the wafers. The ribbon cutting was pretty cool, CEO Sam was here and so was George Pataki. Nothing like sitting in the conourse for lunch and seeing a massive black helicopter fly overhead. Got a free hat out of it... to be entirely honest this is a big deal but business here really isn't going to change. We've been porting our testing system from the old design to the 300mm for awhile now and theres been alot of restructuring of the departments such as moving people to the new 300mm ones etc.

Re:I'll be damned...

[SuperKendall]

The black helicopter was dropping free hats?

I sure hope you line that sucker with tinfoil before you put it on... :-)

I was wrong, Intel will be the first .09

[megalomang]

It says here that Intel's Fab 24 is now slated to support a .09um/300mm process by end of 2003. Although no dates were indicated for IBM, they may indeed beat Intel to 0.1um. So why is IBM going for .1um when Intel is going to .09um?

http://www.siliconstrategies.com/story/OEG20020118 S0081

What will they make? PowerPC?

[crow]

The real demand for using the smaller feature size is in two areas--low power and high performance. In the low-power market, you have all sorts of consumer electronics like cell phones. In the high performance, you're talking CPUs. Personally, I would love to see them build PowerPC chips.

From the article, it sounds like they'll be operating the plan under contract from other companies, so it will most likely be making chipsets for pagers and cell phones.

Of course, the market can be expected to change significantly between now and when the plant is actually ready to build chips.

Re:impressive - but Bad for Linux?

[tps12]

That's an interesting point. While Linux is historically a little "late" to latch on to bleeding-edge technologies (although DVD support is almost there), due to exactly these types of issues, this is usually pretty acceptable within the target market. Linux exists primarily as a server OS, and the newest flashy hardware is often eschewed in the enterprise in favor of more dependable, proven technologies. Also, in this case, remember that IBM has a big stake in Linux. They will not be likely to abondon Linux.

What I think we can look forward to is a project wherein IBM ports Linux to the BSD license. They could call it "Unlinux," for "Unlinux's Not Linux." I can't even predict what good things we'd see come out of an OS based in Linux technology but with the flexibility of a BSD license.

Wavelength issues

[HubertFarnswoth]

There is a problem regarding microchip architecture which basically boils down to the fact that you can't use electric elements that are smaller than the wavelength of an electron. Maybe a stupid but imaginatively helpful comparison is when you have a garden hose and try to squeeze a football through it just isn't gonna work out...

Re:Not only that, but Intel will be the first at .

[max cohen]

Hah, competitors hardly need to "catch up." Seimconductor companies almost never want to be the first to build a fab supporting the largest wafer size, unless your design a chip that no one is buying and have to dedicate 420+ mm2 per die just to get decent performance. ;) Being first sounds good on paper, but it also means you get to debug all of the new tools from vendors. If you thought beta software builds were costly, try running your expensive wafers though a $4M+ Endura from Applied Materials and having the robot shatter them. Not only have you lost your test vehicles, you wasted expensive chemicals and have to clean up the vacuum chamber. Not fun or cheap by any means.

The running joke in the biz is that every company wants to be in second place in the race.

Christ

[Ungulate]

Are this many people on Slashdot ignorant of basic mathematics? .1 is not much smaller than the current .13, people. Intel's next gen P4, Prescott is .09, as is AMD's secend generation of Hammers.

Tenths, hundreths, thousandths.

Re:Christ

[Kusand]

Um, here's some basic math for ya:

from .18 to .13 is a 27.8% drop.

from .13 to .1(0, lets pretend) is a 23.1% drop.

therefore, this is a significant change.

thank you for visiting, please drive through.

Re:Christ

[Ungulate]

Yeah, I should have been a bit more clear. It's about as significant as any die shrink, but people were making posts about this shattering Moore's law and quantum computing. And THAT is what was ridiculous.

IBM vaporchip

[mapmaker]

AP Reporter: Wow! 0.1 microns! How small is that?

IBM marketroid: That's almost as small as some gas molecules. In fact, you could say these new chips are just VAPOR.

How long

[anonymousman77]

How long will this one be open before they realize they can open one in China and have $.50/hour labor???

Re:How long

[silas_moeckel]

Probably never I doubt the DOD would be very happy with them exporting that tech to china most high end CPU gear needs a waiver before it can be shipped to hostile countries just like you cant ship a PS2 to IRAQ so they dont use them to run crypto or run there radar.

Re:How long

[anonymousman77]

Doesn't intel make most of their stuff in Tiawan? Won't be long until they are part of China! I agree with you that they SHOULDN'T, but will they?

Re:Not only that, but Intel will be the first at .

[Jucius Maximus]

"Not only are Intel already at .13 micron, but they are also at 300mm. They already have a .1 micron facility in progress, so IBM will be playing catch-up. Luckily for IBM, Intel facility seems delayed."

Just to clarify, that's a 300 mm wafer using an 0.1 micron process.

Fishkill plant

[PierceLabs]

Too bad they couldn't find some other city to do this. With a name like that I'm sure environmentalist will always be checking the water around the plant :)

Bah!

[eyepeepackets]

I'll wager that before too long instead of buying manufacturered processors, we'll be growing our own to spec in tubs of organic chemicals much like we brew beer. If I'm esta-guessing correctly, there's more processing power potential in a cup of tea than all the world's current processing power combined.

There are those who speculate that the goo in the tub will _be_ the processor. Beats the hell out of me as to how you connect wires to such a mess. Perhaps that's where the wireless tech will really prove to be invaluable.

So you need a new processor? Break out the blender and the crockpot and get crackin;!

Why is micron capitalized?

[incog8723]

Did a micron suddenly become a trademark?

Re:Why is micron capitalized?

[Malc]

I was about to ask the same question! I read it as IBM will be making chips using as 0.1 micron process for a company called Micron Chips. Come on guys, only proper nouns qualify for capitalisation.

Re:Why is micron capitalized?

[Durrik]

Ummm, not to defend the editors, but its a title.

From my english classes, every word in a title but a few are always capitalized. It was one of the few lessons that was beat into me in grade 2 when I didn't capitalize properly. From my memory only words like as, and, & the in a title don't get capitalized unless they are at the beginning of the title.

So while capitalizing micron in the title can be confusing, it is proper english, even if the rest of the story and this comment aren't, (or is that ain't?).

Re:Why is micron capitalized?

[Malc]

You're right. I guess I wasn't clear enough though: I was referring to the body of the story, where it shouldn't be capitalised.

Re:Why is micron capitalized?

[InadequateCamel]

Well, they weren't going to write micron/Micron but the company 100nm sued them.

Intel's already at 0.13 micron

[DominiqueChanet]

AFAIK Intel's at 0.13 micron for quite a while now, and even AMD has recently joined the fray: Thoroughbred cores have a feature size of 0.13 micron as well.

I wouldn't be surprised if Intel were cranking out 0.10 chips at about the same time IBM finished building their new fab...

Re:Haven't you heard of the micron myth?

[CreatorOfSmallTruths]

quantom state particle don't matter also.. think about it...

Additional Coverage

[leibnizme]

If you want to have more details about this fab, check out:

IBM's news

Yahoo Story

NY Times (free reg, blah)

Slowdown

[Draoi]

From the last line in the article

Worldwide sales of all chips are expected to total $143 billion in 2002, $177 billion in 2003 and $213 billion - a 20.9 percent increase - in 2004. Another slowdown is expected by 2005.

Can they *really* predict this stuff so far ahead??

Re:Slowdown

[afidel]

Can they *really* predict this stuff so far ahead??

No, and if they could they would work on wallstreet, not for IBM or any other non financials company =)

Re:Slowdown

[Surt]

They can't really predict so far ahead, but the cycle has been so reliable that it is sort of a self fulfilling prophecy.

Re:I hate to burst your bubble

[avalys]

Hate to burst your bubble, but .1 micron refers to the size of the components on the chip, not the chip itself.

Chips have been referred to in that manner for a while now.

Newtons?

[nurb432]

Like that would ever happen again.

0.1 == 0.10 Not 0.01, Its not that big a leap..

[christophercook]

0.10 Microns is nice but it's not 0.01 (which everyone reading this seems to think they mean).

Wake up people! ;)

Yeah, that is a joke

[megalomang]

Intel's mantra is to gain a generation on the competition. They seem to be doing just that. It would be impossible without spending a lot of time and money to debug vendor tools.

But then again, it would be impossible to spend those resources to debug vendor tools if you weren't a generation ahead and making a huge margin on your products.

Tell your joke to AMD -- I'm sure they would think it was a hoot. ;)

Re:Yeah, that is a joke

[max cohen]

I'm sure they know it. If you can say one thing about the semiconductor biz, it's a small world.

Good luck to Intel. Had they not created such a huge die size for Itanium 2, I seriously doubt they would've gone to 300mm so soon especially when you consider how bad the recent semiconductor recession has been.

OK, let me see...

[Greger47]

So they have their headquarters in Armonk, now a new plant in Fishkill...

I don't even want to know what comes nrext...

Doubling fab costs

[michael_cain]

One of the Laws related to Moore's asserts that the cost of a state-of-the-art fab line doubles every three years. The article says that this line is costing $2.5B. IIRC, new lines in 1999 cost about $800M, so this would appear to be pretty close to the prediction. The potentially bad news in this is that by 2011, a new fab line will cost $20B, which is probably more than anyone except large governments (or Microsoft) can afford. By simple calculation, 100M working devices produced over the lifetime of a $20B fab line must cost $200 each just to cover the initial cost of the fab.

I don't really care about Moore's Law itself (transister count doubles every 18 months), but do care about the corollary that says instructions per second per dollar doubles every 18 months. Can we keep that corollary going without Moore's Law itself (and the attendant economic fab limitations)? Asynchronous circuit designs? Parallel processing? Alternate cheaper fabrication for a 1B op/second processor?

Re:Doubling fab costs

[Hoser McMoose]

Umm.. I don't know where you got those numbers from, but fabs have been REALLY expensive for quite some time. Obviously a big fab is more expensive then a small fab, but their cost hasn't really changed relative to inflation by all that much.

FWIW AMD's Fab 35 in Germany opened in 1999 at a cost of over $2.0B. Now in 2003, this new fab is up to $2.5B, but it's using 300mm wafers vs. AMD's fab which uses 200mm wafers.

ARGH!

[shepd]

"While companies like Intel Corp. and Samsung Electronic Co. already manufacture 12-inch wafers..."

"...will be the first IBM chips to be made on 300mm wafers of silicon"

Don't mix metric and imperial measuring systems.

Doing this is like SHOUTING. Well, maybe not. Its more like a cellphone ringing in a theater.

Re:ARGH!

[joew]

Ok is this a improvement ?

One uses .060606 Rods Technology where as the other is stuck using a wimpy 0.059652 rods

Abe Simpson: I think the metric system is the tool of the Devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I liked it!

Re:ARGH!

[shepd]

>Ok is this a improvement ?

Maybe, but I rather this:

0.66 cubits vs. 0.67 cubits. ;-)

Re:ARGH!

[joew]

Ok I will meet you 1/2 way

0.059652 rods vs. 0.67 cubits

Re:Not only that, but Intel will be the first at .

[megalomang]

Just to clarify, that will be a 300mm wafer. Intel is already well into mass production of 300mm wafers, and to my knowledge, they are still the only one.

Why for is this post a troll?

[3.5 stripes]

Maybe it's not super technical or ultra geeky, but sheesh, getting lumped in with the fp guys and the crap flooders isn't particularly fair.

Re:Returning to the fold. [OT]

[Seanasy]

IBM is a public company and if it benefits the stockholders to leave a town, they are legally obligated to do it. [emphasis mine]

I hear this argument a lot. That publicly held companies have a legal obligation to "benefit sotckholders" or "maximize profits." Is there really a legal basis for this? Are there civil statutes that say companies must do whatever it takes to make money for stockholders? Or is this legal obligation based in contract law where the stockholder will/can sue if the company makes decisions that appear to adversley affect them?

I have a hard time believing that the DA, SEC, or FTC would go after a company that made unprofitable business decisions. Anybody know?

telling of /. crowd?

[mildness]

Of 143 comments none are of level 4? Now 144. Bill

Re:telling of /. crowd?

[nomadic]

Because most are either generic "wow that's cool" posts, or snide little comments about how .1 isn't THAT small and why isn't anyone else as good as me in math well no I'm not a semiconductor engineer but I know more about it than anyone else on earth.

Re:I hate to burst your bubble

[LMCBoy]

I guess all of those 130 nm process chips currently on the market are just imaginary as well, eh? Damn, I guess I should throw out my box!

There's a type of electromagnetic radiation called "ultraviolet" that extends to wavelengths as low as 10 nm. Maybe you've heard of it. This is the kind of light they use in modern CPU photolithography.

Seriously, man, it's time to think of a new nick.

Not necessarily - significant digits

[David Price]

The number of digits indicated expresses the precision of the measurement. If I say that it's 80 degrees outside, I'm probably using my own human perception of the temperature, and if it's really 77.2 or 82.4, then I still gave a correct - if somewhat imprecise - reading. I only had one significant figure, and if you round these values to have just one significant digit, they come out to the same thing. If I declare the temperature to be 80.0 degrees, and you don't think I used a thermometer, you're rightly going to tell me that I'm a moron, because I don't have the ability to sense temperature with that sort of precision. If I did have an accurate thermometer which read 80.0, then I narrow the range of reasonable possible temperatures greatly.

There are all sorts of rules that nobody learns anymore about how to propagate error by doing your math with significant figures - the result gives you an order-of-magnitude idea of how wrong your result might be. It's the old scientist's version of garbage-in, garbage-out. Likely, Intel's marketroids don't understand this distinction - the process is probably closer to .10 micron than .1; maybe even .100 is a better measurement (I know nothing about chip fabrication, of course.)

*ponders the irony of using Farenheit degrees to explain scientific measurement*

Re:Not necessarily - significant digits

[zeno_2]

But in all reality, .1 and .10 are the same.

Re:Not necessarily - significant digits

[Mirus Nex]

It was stated that it depends on the accuracy of your measurement. Hence, .1 could be anywhere between .100 and .199 with a more accurate measurement. But, .100 IS .100 (or .1000 to .1009, or .10000 to .10099, etc...).

To put this in better perspective, if you wanted a 3.725' shelf and only had a ruler available with inch markings you would have to estimate half way between 3' 8" and 3 9". But, if your ruler was marked every 1/16th of an inch (as most (American) rulers/tape measures are) your shelf would be more accurate (within 1/16th of an inch rather than within an inch).

So, technically speaking, .10 micron is a more accurate description than .1 micron. This doesn't, necessarily, mean that .10 is smaller than .1 but it could be.

Re:Not necessarily - significant digits

[martyn s]

Mathematically, yes, but to me it's a matter of consistency. .25, .18, .13, .10, these are more easilycomparable than to each other than ".25, .18, .13, .1". Let's put it this way: Imagine I'm comparing distances. "A is 2*10^3 meters away, B is 4.5*10^3 meters away, C is 5.6*10^3 meters away, and D is 0.8*10^4 meters away". 'D' doesn't really fit in, and just throws you off. I know the analogy is quite right, mathematically, but as far as human perception of numbers it works.

I might understand the mathematics behind adding feet and inches, quarts and pints and cups and gallons, which have mixed number bases, but just because I *understand* it, that doesn't mean it's easy. It's better to keep things simpler in general, and not waste cycles on stuff like this.

Re:Not necessarily - significant digits

[martyn s]

That should be "I know the analogy isn't quite right."

Pentium 4s are .13 (130nm) now and going 100nm

[Glasswire]

Intel hasn't made chips on .25m (250nm) in ages and the only .18m(180nm) stuff is legacy Pentium III and Celeron dies.
BTW, get with the trend and start talking namometers....

Re:Returning to the fold. [OT]

[jellybear]

it's a principle of corporate law that those who control a company must do so in the best interests of the company. This is usually taken to mean the best interests of the shareholders.You can get away with not maximizing profits if you can show that you believed in good faith that your decision was in the best interests of the company (i.e. not in order to benefit you or your friend)

Re:Upstate?, was Re:Returning to the fold.

[nevets]

Ok I had to respond to this since you mention my home town (Endicott). Endicott was where IBM started and the reason I grew up here (my father was an IBM manager). IBM is all but gone here, not only did they layoff over 500 employees here, but they sold what was left to a local business. Their only presence here after this deal is finished is leasing a few buildings.

As for what Upstate New York is defined as, well that is pretty much anything north of the Bronx. I live 10 miles from the Pennsylvania border and I'm still upstate! A friend of mine from Queens was shocked to here that the it's over 280 miles from Albany to Buffalo. He didn't realize how big New York is. But then again half the population in New York is south of and including the Bronx.

Re:Returning to the fold. [OT]

[mbyte]

I think the stockholders are the law ... if they are not satisfied they'll vote agaist the current C*O's, and they loose their jobs ;)

get used to 90nm, 70nm and 60nm

[phsdv]

A lot of people are discussing about the .1 or 0.1um of the new IBM plan. But the article said clearly that the new plant will be below 0.1 um. This means 90nm and smaller (70nm, 60nm). Get used to these new numbers! And IBM is not alone there, many of the top semiconductor companies are working on those processes. What the article did not say is when IBM will start volume production in 90nm, that would be interesting news. Paul

so what?

[truesaer]

AMD and Intel both have .9 in their near future plans. That production should be occuring within a year or so, I think. I don't really see what the point of this story is, companies build plants all the time.

Re:so what?

[truesaer]

My bad, that should be .09.

Re:Returning to the fold. [OT]

[JamesKPolk]

The SEC or the FTC won't go after them; the shareholders themselves can sue.

Living in the past

[yerricde]

As opposed to [living in] which of the alternatives: the past or the present

The entertainment industry is living in the past by trying to implement 19th century business models in 21st century technology.

Me? I'll just live in the now.

Micron vs. micron

[red_gnom]

...IBM will be producing .1 Micron Chips...

Mr. Hemos, I would like to point out that Micron is a company, while micron is a length unit: 1/1,000,000 of a meter.

My computer has one vacuum tube

[yerricde]

in the future computers may have as few as 1,000 vacuum tubes

PM's 1949 prediction was off by about three orders of magnitude. Most entry-level computer workstations have one vacuum tube.

It's in the display.

Some high-end computers have additional vacuum tubes sitting outside the case, which serve to amplify the output of the external DACs.

Re:My computer has one vacuum tube

[dthable]

Artists like the sound that a vacuum tube produces, so high end sound cards have started to add a handful of tubes for sound output. So not only do our computers today act as thin clients to huge servers (the web), but they also contain vacuum tubes. Doesn't look like we got very far.

Itanium wasn't the driver for 300mm

[megalomang]

Itanium wasn't the driver for 300mm. Why would Intel care that much about the cost of production of a low-volume, high-cost processor like Itanium2? Not only that, but there is no way Itanium2 could economically support that transition.

Besides, it's better to worry about the very high-volume low(er)-cost processor such as the 2.4 and 2.53 and soon to be 2.8 and 3.0 GHz P4s. Intel has been worried about their shrinking margins, and 300mm brings them back up nicely. 300mm was not created as a consequence of Itanium, but rather Itanium was aggressively featured as a consequence of needing to compete and having the luxury of a 300mm wafer to help lower costs. With the enormous L3 memories and the resources that Sun dreams of having, Intel can properly push an Itanium out the door that will have no problem outperforming even the fastest competition. (see this press release )

Given the amount of capital and planning involved, 300mm must have been a decision long in process -- and consequently it was completely independent of the recession which gave a much shorter advance warning. However, it was extremely convenient that they had it in the pipeline when the recession hit so they could better tolerate the lower demand, the shrinking number of big players in the PC business and therefore the very high downward pressure on pricing.

Re:Itanium wasn't the driver for 300mm

[roca]

Everyone knows usparc is slow. Let's see how Itanium stacks up against a chip that's actually fast, like a Power4 or even a Hammer or Xeon. I don't see anything about them in Intel's press release.

Re:Itanium wasn't the driver for 300mm

[megalomang]

It's a bit tedious, but you can head over to the SPEC website and browse through all their processors here

Running a search on the processor 'itanium' or 'power4' will provide some pretty interesting marks. The Itanium 2 platforms are very significantly better than the Itanium. The Power4 does have very high specint2k scores, but as you guessed, it's the xeon that takes the trophy.

Also, I don't think AMD has gotten Hammer to a point where they are ready to publish benchmarks, so there won't be any comparisons. (Also, I don't think I've ever seen Intel compare itself to AMD!)

CINT2000
Comp Base Processor
Dell 824 Intel Xeon (400 MHz system bus)
HP 807 Intel Itanium 2
IBM 804 Power44
Sun 537 UltraSPARC III Cu
HP 379 Intel Itanium

CFP2000
HP 1356 Intel Itanium 2
IBM 1202 POWER4
Dell 803 Intel Xeon (400 MHz system bus)
Sun 701 UltraSPARC III Cu
HP 701 Intel Itanium

Re:Itanium wasn't the driver for 300mm

[ces]

For the curious, some benchmarks for other processors:

CINT2000
Comp Base Processor
Dell 864 Intel Pentium 4 (533 MHz system bus)
AMD 738 AMD Athlon (TM) XP 2200+
Dell 648 Intel Pentium III
Compaq 621 Alpha 21264C
HP 569 PA-8700

CFP2000
Dell 878 Intel Pentium 4 (533 MHz system bus)
Compaq 776 Alpha 21264C
AMD 624 AMD Athlon (TM) XP 2200+
HP 526 PA-8700
Dell 437 Intel Pentium III

Overall winner in CINT200 and SpecInt2k is 2.53GHz P4. Overall winner for SpecFP2k is POWER (Itanium 2 wasn't tested for specfp). P3 (1.4GHz) does supprisingly well on the integer marks. Athlon XP 2200+ does about the same as 2.0 GHz P4 (northwood) on the integer marks and about the same as 1.6GHz P4 on FP.

BTW the OS field for the CFP2000 Itanium 2 tests is: "Linux64 Debian 3.0 with 2.4.18 kernel for Itanium2/zx1". I suspect it did better on the floating point benchmarks than HP-UX 11 since HP-UX was used for the integer benchmarks.

The link again...

[megalomang]

the press release

speed about the square of the width

[peter303]

So this technology allows speed ups of about 70%, all other factors being equal. Will bring chips to around 3.5 GHz or so.

Re:impressive - but Bad for Linux?

[Dehumanizer]

I can't even predict what good things we'd see come out of an OS based in Linux technology but with the flexibility of a BSD license.

That's a bit absurd... why not simply use FreeBSD?

IBM is an icon but ....

[Knightfall]

AMD and Intel are right there. Consider ...

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInforma tion/0,,30_118_608,00.html

and

http://www.intel.com/ebusiness/products/roadmap.ht m

Both of these show .09 in the next year. I'm all for giving a company its due, but lets not leave the other players out. Maybe even, *gasp* go for a complete story.

"usual" .25??

[Anonymous Freak]

...rather than the usual .25 or .18 produced by Intel and other chip makers.

Uh... Intel hasn't used .25 for microprocessors since 1999, and is about to phase .18 out, now that all their major processors are on .13. (Yes, Itanium 2 is on .18 still. My point exactly.) So how are .25 and .18 'usual'? Heck, even AMD is finally going to .13! Let's see, Motorola is still at .18 with the PPC7550 (aka G4), but UMC and TSMC (the foundrys that make chips for pretty much every one else) are both at .13 now, although .18 is still their volume production.

In fact, I don't know of a single major microprocessor manufacturer that still uses a .25 micron process. Sparc is at .15, but I couldn't find what process HP-PA or MIPS use.

Re:Not only that, but Intel will be the first at .

[kopper187]

that's a cheap endura!

to further the point of beta software builds, AMAT is the worst in the industry. consider having a multi-million dollar tool that needs a new rev of controller software every figgin' week. I have yet to see an AMAT tool running in production with NON-beta software!

To further the point, 300mm wafers are around 1500 dollars each (more even?) and having to clean the chamber is not only downtime, which backs up all other product waiting for that tool's process, it costs you 5-15 service hours.

On a further note, there are some other factors to why this fab is in NY, is 300mm, and is 'copper'. IBM is a cornerstone of the Copper Alliance. The Cu folks are developing for 300mm, smartly. IBM owes NY for some, shall we say, lenientcy over a few waste sites so building it in NY may have been a nice payback.

To add a personal note: yes, emiconductor is a small, small world. and, yes, i am thankful to have left it.

PlayStation 3

[RailGunner]

GamePro Magazine has an article in it's latest issue speculating that these .1 micron chips IBM is producing will be cell based and will form the basis of the PlayStation 3.

Re:PlayStation 3

[guacamolefoo]

> GamePro Magazine has an article in it's latest
> issue speculating that these .1 micron chips
> IBM is producing will be cell based and will
> form the basis of the PlayStation 3.

Sweet! I can finally get me a cellular gaming console! Made out of meat and I can put it in my pocket! w00t!

Re:Returning to the fold. [OT]

[Dambiel]

>The SEC or the FTC won't go after them; the shareholders themselves can sue.

The shareholders can sue the company, but that probably not be for the best. They own the company so the suit would be against themselves.

OTOH they could sue/oust the C*O responsible (for negligence maybe?), but then we're back to two parents ago in the thread.

Huh

[Junky191]

"What's most interesting about the story is that IBM will be producing .1 Micron Chips rather than the usual .25 or .18 produced by Intel and other chip makers, or .13 Micron chips they currently make for their PowerPC chips." Um, Intel and AMD have been on .13 micron for months, .18 and .25 are the equivalent of British museum ancient history at this point. And by the time this plant opens, Intel will have completed the transition to .09 micron (now starting to be called 90 nanometers). So the die size of this plant is somewhat obsolete at best.

The true meaning of "upstate"

[alienmole]

Since New York City is usually referred to as simply "New York", the term "upstate New York" is a convenient and concise way of saying "the part of New York State (other than eastern Long Island) outside the only city that matters."

BTW, if anyone objects to the habit New York City residents have of acting as though the world revolves around their city - welcome to the way much of the rest of the world feels about the U.S. Parochialism is never pretty from the outside.

Re:Upstate?, was Re:Returning to the fold.

[smudge]

There's NYC;

Upstate (just after the welcome to the big apple sign on the Deegon, aka Rt87)

Jersey

and the rest of the world!

"New" IBM Plant

[wilsonjd]

Just for the record, I work at IBM in East Fishkill, NY (but not in Chip manufacturing.) I do NOT speak for IBM.

IBM has been in East Fishkill since the early 60s, manufacturing chips and packaging (MCMs, etc.) for mainframes. IBM employs over 10,000 people in Poughkeepsie (10 miles away) and East Fishkill. The "New" plant is a new chip fabrication line in an old building (building 323) that used to be used to make bipolar chips for mainframes. They have been working on this new plant for over two years, and it is already producing sample chips. Normal production is scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter (btw, the current production from this plant is 0.13 micron, but in the future, it will move to sub 0.1 micron processes.)

IBM is using this plant as a high-end foundry. In other words, customers will design high performance chips that will be manufactured here. They are already working with some high-volume customers (Nintendo, Sony, etc.) Customers will also include IBM chip designers (mostly IBM servers.)

Oh, and on the whole upstate, downstate issue: People who live in upstate New York consider us downstate. People who live in downstate New York consider us upstate.

And, as Gov. Pataki said yesterday, the Hudson Valley is much nicer than Silicon Valley. We have trees.

Re:"New" IBM Plant

[Fear the Clam]

...used to be used to make bipolar chips for mainframes.

Bipolar chips for mainframes. My God, that explains so much!

Re:"New" IBM Plant

[UnanimousCoward]

And, as Gov. Pataki said yesterday, the Hudson Valley is much nicer than Silicon Valley. We have trees.

I'll be sure to send the Guv an ax for Christmas so he can cut down a few of those trees to warm himself up during those sub-zero-Upstate-NY winters while we put more sunscreen on and, BTW, take shelter under our own trees here if it gets a tad too hot...

IBM vs. M$Intel?

[Steve Franklin]

Do you get the feeling somebody at IBM has decided to go after the M$Intel axis and bomb them back into the Stone Age? If anybody has the resources, it's them.

Re:IBM vs. M$Intel?

[binaryDigit]

Keep in mind that IBM is in a funny spot in regards to Intel. On the one hand, they'd like nothing better than to have PPC get more market share, plus they're none to happy about Intel continually pushing into the server/workstation space. BUT, they are also a seller of Wintel boxes, so it behooves them to keep in Intel's good graces as IBM needs Wintel more than Wintel needs them.

This is nothing new however as they have been in this position for years (ever since they started the whole PPC thing with MOT and APL).

Re:IBM vs. M$Intel?

[Steve Franklin]

"as IBM needs Wintel more than Wintel needs them."

I'm beginning to think that this is precisely why they are doing what they are doing. There's the whole Power PC business, and now they're building huge plants to produce state of the art chips that could conceivably include processors?

I'm not pushing conspiracy theories here. I just have this general impression that IBM has spent years trying to fix their original blunder vis-s-vis MS DOS and the introduction of the "IBM compatible" PC.

Re:IBM vs. M$Intel?

[binaryDigit]

now they're building huge plants to produce state of the art chips that could conceivably include processors

Right, but remember that IBM has always been a third party fab too. So their current moves are nothing new. After all, as a semiconductor manufacturer, they've come out with several innovations (SOI, cooper interconnects, etc) that other makers of chips (including cpu's) can take advantage of by having IBM do the fabbing.

I have no doubt that IBM would love to stick it to Intel, but I think that this news is really no news since it really does fit into their current product line. That and even if they came up with a PPC that clocked at 3GHz with two cores, they'd still will push more Intel processors out the door than PPC's (at least in the short-medium term).

Re:IBM vs. M$Intel?

[GlobalMind]

Short-medium turn is probably correct since the PC server market has more action at the moment.

However, IBM is doing a few things with both the iSeries and pSeries lines (they use the same CPUs) that will likely change that.

K.

Re:IBM vs. M$Intel?

[binaryDigit]

Short-medium turn is probably correct since the PC server market has more action at the moment. However, IBM is doing a few things with both the iSeries and pSeries lines (they use the same CPUs) that will likely change that.

Right, but my original statement was that even if PPC was made to be awesome, then they'd still ship fewer total units compared to the number of Intel boxes they ship out the door. IBM will never sell as manyu P/I series as they do peecees. Plus, the P/I series for the most part use POWER chips, is there something that you know about a new PPC that they're planning replacing the POWER3/RS64III (I assume that the POWER4 isn't going anywhere since it's fairly new)????

Re:IBM vs. M$Intel?

[0x0d0a]

In just about any war in the computer world, IBM has some sort of ties to both sides. They're just too big and too diverse not to.

Re:IBM vs. M$Intel?

[ivan256]

then they'd still ship fewer total units compared to the number of Intel boxes they ship out the door

IBM doesn't manufacture intel boxes anymore. They rebrand third party equipment (well, actually they purchase it already branded as IBM). The margins on hardware sales for their intel based workstations are probably near zero. They make their money on the big iron (Power based), and mostly on services and software. IBM certainly does NOT need intel in the sense you are implying.

Re:IBM vs. M$Intel?

[binaryDigit]

Everything you say is true, until your final statement. If IBM is making next to nothing on their peecee, then why do they continue to sell them? Why have they branded/rebranded (Ambra anyone?) their pc lineup? They continue to sink major dollars into pushing them. Why do they do this, well they do it so they can have across the board solutions to push into their accounts. They realize that it's easier to get into a place if they can sell them top to bottom and then provide service. And in the end, it's the service that's the _real_ money maker (margins on the big iron isn't that great either, the competition in the market is very strong and _nobody_ pays retail on those things).

The pc isn't the ends to IBM (like it is to Dell/Gateway/etc), but it is a very critical part of the means. And in that fashion, they need Intel more than Intel needs them.

Re:IBM vs. M$Intel?

[ivan256]

And in that fashion, they need Intel more than Intel needs them.

I agree with this statement, but only because Intel doesn't need IBM at all. Yes, IBM sells x86 boxes as a means of gaining more of their core business, but if PowerPC made by IBM replaced x86, IBM would be better off, not worse off.

It's not going to happen, so this discussion is moot.

Links about IBM East Fishkill

[CSG_SurferDude]

(Karma Whoring at it's best)

Fromt page story in the Poughkeepsie Journal about the plant.

A virtual tour of the new plant.

A BUNCH of other local stories about the plant.

Re:Returning to the fold. [OT]

[bastion_xx]

I have a hard time believing that the DA, SEC, or FTC would go after a company that made unprofitable business decisions. Anybody know?

Shareholder lawsuits. Happen all the time, normally for stupid stuff.

1' processor?

[Jhan]

Excuse my stupidity but isn't one foot rather a large die size even for an Itanium? Perhaps that's supposed to be 300 mm^2? Which is rather petite.

</anal>

Re:1' processor?

[Jhan]

About .1 microseconds after hitting that send button I realised 300mm probably refered to a complete silicon wafer, with many chips on it. Doh!

I'm an idiot.
+4 Insightful

Hey, good idea for a new sig!

IBM 601 PPC

[sandman2036]

How many people rember the IBM 601 that apple used in those damned pizza box computers. And the IBM Lightning Blue 486 dx2 25Mhz that yoy needed a heat sink for. Or those damed Cyrix chips. All of which are proof that IBM cant make processors.

Re:IBM 601 PPC

[zevans]

That would be can't make -desktop- processors.

Re:Returning to the fold. [OT]

[aallan]

That publicly held companies have a legal obligation to "benefit sotckholders" or "maximize profits." Is there really a legal basis for this? Are there civil statutes that say companies must do whatever it takes to make money for stockholders? Or is this legal obligation based in contract law where the stockholder will/can sue if the company makes decisions that appear to adversley affect them?

IANAL, however my understanding is, yes, stock holders can sue the Board/CEO if they believe that that they are not working to maximise profits, and therefore stockholder value.

Al.

Re:I hate to burst your bubble

[LMCBoy]

How about UYFB (use your fine brain)?

Fact #1: The Visible range of the EM spectrum ends around 450 nm.

Fact #2: Existing chips are manufactured with processes at 250, 180 and even 130 nm. Each of these requires photolithography with light at a wavelength that is invisible to humans.

I was pointing out that the move from 130 nm to 100 nm cannot possibly have anything to do with the limit of human visibility, since the former length was already well below the limits of what wavelength humans can see. I thought this was obvious, but I guess you missed it.

CPUs aren't hand-crafted, so they don't require someone to actually *look* at the chip when it's manufactured. I'm a bit stunned that there are at least two slashdot readers who actually think that someone sits at a desk with a tiny needle and scratches out CPUs...the mind boggles.

Re:impressive - but Bad for Linux?

[polarkittycat]

No, it probably won't hurt the linux community. Look inside a lot of devices these days, from Tivo's, to cash register systems, and many other things. Lots of them run linux. Not all the software has to be GPL'd.

Fishkill?

[sneakerfish]

The plant is located in Fishkill, NY. Is this an omen of what's to come?

Re:Fishkill?

[Derleth]

The plant is located in Fishkill, NY. Is this an omen of what's to come?

BFK (Branch to FishKill) opcode executes in .001 nanoseconds! Coders rejoice!

You are right.

[repetty]

I think that you are right. Apple isn't on Motorola's roadmap anymore - they're only interested in the embedded market.

Even if they were, Motorola's so absolutely fucked up it woundn't be good news for Apple.

--Richard

Re:What!? Re:Upstate?, was Re:Returning to the fol

[nevets]

WRONG!

Endicott was where it all began!

Re:Why .1 micron and not .09?

[jmichaelg]

I wasn't so much suprised by the missing 0 as much as the .10 target. Intel and AMD are aiming at .09 for their next generation so why is IBM not doing the same?

Stockholder obligations.

[GodInHell]

Croporations have an obligation not to make bad decisions for their stockholders. Often this is interpreted as Corporations having a requirement to make money no matter what is nessecary, or the stock holders will eat them. Generally, this is not the case.

The idea behind stock is that I as an investor am purchasing my share in the future of your company. I believe your company is doing so well, that I hearby grant you a temporary loan, and recieve a garuntee of stock, a portion of the company. I am stating that I have assurance in the company, or it's ability to generate wealth over time. The majority of stock holdings are not day traders, they are long term investments in a given corporation.

What happens when stock holders start clamoring for cash, now?

Well, the first thing you do is cut all risk aka 'growth' ventures. The decrease head-count as ruthlessly as possible, setting the corporation up to continue as it is indefinately. Once this is done, aquire smaller companies that can similarly be downsized and with minimal changes to production, streamlined in.

The result is VERY profitable, for a few years anyway. Then their product begins to slip, and unless they can find some reason why new customers should be attracted to them (see harley davidson), are doomed to slip slowly downward.

This isn't even about corporate wealth, it's just the slowly unrolling aftershocks of the 1980's. Greed is Still good; until that changes people aren't going to check themseleves in the name of the common good. Without Morals, there is this.

If you want to stop it, start your own little company, produce something mildly profitable, and pay your employees what you can.

also, see; My Journal

-GiH

An entire plant for just...

[davemabe]

An entire plant for just 1/10th of a chip? And we wonder why tech companies are dropping like flies. They are really gonna take a hit on the bottom line for this.

Wrong photo

[Feynman]

Anybody else notice the photo included with the article is the CEO of IBM with the CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers? It has nothing to do with this article.

Way to go Excite! "Um . . . here's an AP photo that has something to do with IBM. Use that!"

Re:impressive - but Bad for Linux?

[greenhide]

Actually, I can't see how it wouldn't be *great* for Linux.

Consider this.

Each computer has to be running some kind of operating system in order to work. And it has to be flexible and easy to program for.

It doesn't make sense for a company to write an OS from scratch -- way to costly for a single device, so they're going to use a pre-existing one. If they choose Linux, they get two great benefits:

1) It's open source, so the kernel can be modified to suit the device.
2) There are no licensing fees, so they don't have to swallow that cost or pass it on to the consumer, making their product more available, price-wise.

I don't know a hell of a lot about embedded Linux systems, but I do know that they've worked on a variety of devices with great results.

While the drivers that control the hardware may not be open source, I don't think that will affect the choice of Linux as an OS.

Actually the article said...

[Ruger]

"The plant also will be the first to mass produce circuits thinner than 0.1 micron..." I think the key here is "mass produce."

It also states, [the]"140,000-square-foot facility currently makes the prototype cutting-edge chips and was expected to reach full production by February 2003." I take that to mean producing chips "=>.1" at that time.

Intel P4 chips are still produced at both .13 & .18.

Intel and others at 0.13 um

[geekee]

...the usual .25 or .18 produced by Intel and other chip makers... Intel and AMD both use 0.13 um technologies.

Re:Not only that, but Intel will be the first at .

[UranusReallyHertz]

Seeing how there already in the 400MHz range, I think we will see a 1GHz gpu in 2004 or 2005. But NVIDEA is complicating things because they are going to seperate the T&L as a seperate chip and run it a 3/2 times the speed of the GPU.

PlayStation 3??

[AndySid]

I'm guessing that this is where the PS3 chips will be fabbed, judging by this press release.

Re:Returning to the fold. [OT]

[cduffy]

Not corporate law specifically, but all agency relationships (roughly, places where someone is working for or on behalf of someone else). That's a bit overbroad of a definition -- but roughly, if someone (or some company) could be sued because of something you did on their behalf, you were acting in an agency relationship at that time.

However, the law in question (wrt breach of such relationships) isn't really as broad as most folks paint it to be. The real purpose of that part of common law is basically to stop folks who are doing work for someone else from trying to abuse the goodwill of their employer; someone who works for an electricity company but sells oil generators on the side to folks met via their employer is a classic example of a breach of agency relationship.

The same principal applies to corporate law -- someone who knowingly harms the company in pursuance of their own interests is certainly in breach. This is sometimes relevant for cases of inaction, but not usually -- it's much more relevant for cases where (for instance) a CEO decides to outsource some function to a friend's company when another option was clearly the better option. Nobody is going to be succesfully sued just for being less than entirely competant, though -- they pretty much have to be clearly negligent in their actions to open themselves up to a lawsuit on such grounds.

IANAL, btw, just a coder with some business law classes -- and it's been a while since I took those. Nonetheless, I hope this info is of some value to someone.

...addendum...

[cduffy]

okay, more than just "negligent" -- more like knowingly acting in a harmful manner. Negligence alone, unless it's knowing, isn't likely to fly.

Also, wipe that word "certainly". I'm not competant to speak in difinitives wrt law; there are certainly exceptions and conditions of which I'm not aware.

Thinner than 0.1 micron

[Compuser]

The article says "thinner than 0.1 micron".
The industry was working for a while on
90 nm (0.09 micron) tech so I guess this is
what they have there.

Re:I hate to burst your bubble

[Arjuna Theban]

"I was pointing out that the move from 130 nm to 100 nm cannot possibly have anything to do with the limit of human visibility, since the former length was already well below the limits of what wavelength humans can see."

Right, that's where the beautiful purple glow comes from when I'm exposing a wafer right?

Re:I hate to burst your bubble

[waferbuster]

I guess those chips made by the gnomes are produced on Keebler wafers, eh?

And of course those processors would not efficiently run KDE, as they are optimized for Gnome...

I crack myself up sometimes... which is good, as others sometimes fail to appreciate my humor.

Re:Not only that, but Intel will be the first at .

[waferbuster]

I think TSMC is also doing 300mm, but they are a foundry.

TSMC and UMC are both way ahead of IBM

[coli2]

TSMC is starting risk production of .09 micron process later this year. With mass production, in Feb 2003. They are planing .063 micron in 2003. Both TSMC and UMC's fabs are automated.

Re:Don't think this was mentioned yet, but...

[waferbuster]

Bad idea, unless they are using this fab for Research. For production, this process is not at all ready for prime time. It's a cool lab trick, though.

Please Get Facts Straight

[RhettLivingston]

We have some responsibility when making responses to try to be correct factually, but there is even greater responsibility at the level of those posting an article. This seemed more like a gossip than a thoughtful post.

Everybody who is anybody is making chips at .13 today. Everybody who is anybody is at roughly the same stage as IBM in bringing up .09-.10 technology. So why the bolstering of IBM who has anything but a pristine past and the bashing of others who are just as good and bad? Instead, why don't we here who is making progress on .07 and who might be leaping forward to the early use of .01 features (by thinking out of the box).

Funny...

[oaclz]

The day this story is released, Slashdot bans the Austin IBM site from accessing the website. Thanks!

Re:Returning to the fold. [OT]

[G-funk]

It's not a law as such, but the stockholders can sue the board if they feel that all possible steps weren't taken in the best interests of shareprices / earnings.

all of the above

[cabbey]

It's a fab plant, it can make anything they are sent the masks for. This week it maybe the new Power 4 chips for high end servers, next week it might be small embeded chips for a cell phone. maybe in between they'll run an engineering test batch of some cool new, as yet unnamed, next generation chip for the chip developers to trial.

Re:Returning to the fold. [OT]

[jellybear]

I didn't want to get into the details, but I'll add to the above that under corporate law certain positions carry with them a fiduciary duty towards the company. If you are a CEO or director, you have special obligations above and beyond the contractual ties. I think the concept of fiduciary duty is relevant to the parent comment.

Re:Returning to the fold. [OT]

[cduffy]

Yup, you caught something I missed there. IIRC, there are two branches to this -- the duty of remaining loyal to the corporation's interests, and the duty of exercising due care.

With regard to the former, I agree with you in that failing to take the single optimal course is not cause for a breach -- the duty is one of loyalty, not perfection. With regard to the latter, you caught something I missed -- there is indeed potential for negligence to be grounds for a shareholder lawsuit, if a reasonable person of the same profession (as opposed to just a reasonable person, as when fiduciary duties don't apply) would not have made that error.

That's how I remember it, at least. Once again, IANAL and all that.

Re:Returning to the fold. [OT]

[SEE]

The sharholders are the owners of the corpoiration. Accordingly, the law states that memebers of the Board and corporate officers have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the shareholders. They may be sued by the shareholders for failure to do so, and moderately frequently are.

IANAL