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IBM Looking To Sell Its Semiconductor Business
jfruh writes "Having already gotten out of the low-end server market, IBM appears to be trying to get out of the chip business as well. The company currently manufactures Power Architecture chips for its own use and for other customers. Big Blue wants to sell off its manufacturing operations, but will continue to design its own chips."
I thought IBM was able to leverage their detailed knowledge of their semiconductor processes to squeeze every bit of performance they can out of their Power architecture designs, and even tweak the processes to aid them. I doubt they will have enough volume for another company to do much of that unless they are willing to pay.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Nobody buys Playboy for the articles. They do it for the hot, nude women (sadly, sans grits). It just so happens that /. is exactly the same. No one reads /. for the articles. The articles were news two days ago. And no one reads /. for the summaries. The summaries are almost always wrong.
Everyone reads /. for the comments. The comments are the /. equivalent of Playboy's naked chicks, with one crucial difference. Without the gentlemen at Playboy, there will be no naked chicks to look at. The service they provide is, for the most part, finding women that will agree to pose nude for pictures, which they most graciously distribute to their readers.
But as for Slashdot -- the good people at Dice and their "editorial" team do diddly squat around here to generate content. The articles, old as they may be, are submitted by the users. The summaries, mistaken as they may be, are provided by the users, not by Timothy, Soulskill, et al. The comments, trollish as they may be, are written by the users.
/. is of the users, by the users, for the users. The only people at Dice who deserve their paycheck are the IT people. The rest of you -- what is it that you do for our benefit? Why the hell do we need you clowns? Your music's bad and you should feel bad!
Beta delenda est!
I know of IBM as a:
- Desktop PC manufacturer
- Server manufacturer
- Chip manufacturer
If they don't have those 3 things any more, then what are they? To my knowledge, IBM has some of the best fabs in the world. It's amazing to me that this is not part of their core business. This is... wow... just wow.
Dice already said they need to redesign the beta. What more do you want from them, blood? So lay off with the immature "Waaaahhh...they aren't doing what I want them to."
Sad really, IBM once stood for innovation and industry leadership. Now they're all about maximizing shareholder equity and other buzzwords that have nothing to do with being a leader. The board needs to fire most of the C level MBA shit-for-brains and hire some tech talent from within to re-motivate the company before it's too late.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Manufacturing left America because China et al are cheaper. They are cheaper because they have minimal environmental regulations, a huge pool of labor willing to work for starvation wages, no workers' rights and no health-and-safety.
The only way you're bringing manufacturing back is either blatant protectionism (which would be a diplomatic mess and likely result in retaliatory action in kind) or to beat China at their own game by returning to the days when many employees worked sixteen-hour days just to cover the rent, occasionally losing a hand in the machines was an acceptable risk and major cities were often covered by lethal levels of smog.
They should make beta opt-in, instead of opt-out. For ALL users.
Plus, Dice thinks they can reach a broader audience.
It isn't going to happen this way...
We like slashdot because of the audience. Change the audience, and slashdot is over.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
How is semiconductors not a core business for a company that still makes huge profits off mainframes and midranges?? Sure, keep design in house, but you'll lose the flexibility you have. Imagine your research division came up with an amazing new chip design they wanted to work on right away, but were told "Nope, it'll take 6 months to ramp up GlobalFoundries, TSMC, or whatever. Sorry."
The thing I really don't get (in general) is the way businesses feel like they can have no assets on their books and just run everything with a massive tower of multi-layer outsourcing. It doesn't make sense -- outsourcing something is never cheaper than doing it yourself. As soon as you do that ,you add in a layer of middlemen who need to get paid for doing a task which was previously cheap or "free with purchase of inhouse labor." It never works out. I guess I'll never be an MBA, because I don't get the accounting tricks that make a company appear profitable when they're wasting money on things they could do cheaper and better themselves.
For IBM's case, I do see what they're trying to do. Software is more profitable than hardware. But the problem is that IBM is/was a huge innovator in hardware and chips. They're one of the last US companies massive enough to support basic research that can improve those hardware innovations. IBM's software may be profitable, but I haven't seen anyone singing the praises of WebSphere or their Rational products lately. IBM also has a massive "services" division. I've had extremely good luck with the services people who service IBM hardware, but that's going away. So, we're left with the legendary crap outsourcing and offshoring stuff they do for large companies, and of course, "consulting." My experience with outsourced IT run by IBM is an ITIL nightmare of endless support tickets, revolving door engineers, meetings to plan meetings to plan the strategy for changes, etc.
It's kind of a shame if you ask me. I am just old enough to remember when IBM was as powerful as Microsoft was and as Apple is right now. They were able to command huge margins on everything they sold because it was backed up by a really good services team. People I know who worked for IBM "back in the day" tell me the corporate culture was weird, but employees never wanted for anything because they made so much money. (I also know people who worked for Sun and Digital who say the same thing.) In some ways, it would have been much nicer to work in the computer field during this "golden age of computing." I guess my main question is where the new hardware innovations will come from when you don't have a massive company and research group driving them.
Manufacturing left America because China et al are cheaper
Completely off topic and completely wrong. Manufacturing is very strong in America to the tune of about $2 Trillion per year and for every dollar spend in US manufacturing it results in an additional $1.32 to the economy. The US manufacturing sector by itself would be one of the ten largest economies in the world - approximately the same size as the entire GDP of Russia even without considering the multiplier effects. The US presently has about 1/5 of global manufacturing activity. Some products are not manufactured in the US anymore (mostly high labor content low margin products) but any claim that "manufacturing left America" is completely false.
The only way you're bringing manufacturing back...
Manufacturing never left. If you think it did then you have no idea what you are talking about.
01 Apr 2014: IBM (NYSE:IBM) International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) has changed back to it's original name, Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) and will be selling off all post 1930 technology units to focus on it's core business of dial recorders, electric tabulating machines and time clocks.
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posts are makes it annoying to read here in the last few days its gonna be quite nice to not see you here for 7 days.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
But will 1000 Watsons chained together and tossed into the ocean be as easily defined as a "good start" ..?
" We have work to do on four big areas: feature parity (especially for commenting); the overall UI, especially in terms of information density and headline scanning; plain old bugs; and, lastly, the need for a better framework for communicating about the How and the Why of this process. "
What is it about feature parity is it that you do not get? At least give them credit for trying. There is another way for Slashdot to die, it could die through doing the same old same old for the same old visitors.
And for a group of people who claim to be the voice of the industry in the trenches, a lot of carping seems to ignore plain business sense. If this site doesn't hold its own in a marketplace, it will go away just like every other product that fails to capture a decent return. You might not like putting it in those terms but you know it's true. Sites rarely exist for the mere enjoyment of its visitors. In the end, someone has to pay for it. The Slashdot crowd is the same crowd that will crucify government waste along the lines of, there's too few served to justify the expense.
Sell all your product lines in order to raise profits to the maximum?
But Miata is the answer to everything! Just ask Jalopnik, who like Slashdot is owned by idiots (Gawker in this case) that insist on repeatedly pissing off their users by changing the site layout and commenting system.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
IBM knew precisely what Hollerith was doing
Hollerith wasn't involved in that - he died in 1929. Otherwise you're spot on. Hollerith worked on punch cards and tabulating machines, and his stuff was used in the 1890 US census. The Hollerith code bore his name though, and that's what was tattooed on death camp prisoners.
DEC used to make everything they sold: the chips, drives, displays, circuit boards, software, you name it. Eventually, for the sake of raising profits, they sold it all off part by part. Then they were absorbed by Compaq, which in turn was absorbed by HP. Today they're nothing but a memory. So who will ultimately buy IBM and when will they do it? It's now just a matter of time...
to beat China at their own game by returning to the days when many employees worked sixteen-hour days just to cover the rent, occasionally losing a hand in the machines was an acceptable risk and major cities were often covered by lethal levels of smog.
In other words, the Republican Party's economic plan.
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.