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."

Comments

That's a surprise move

[cold fjord]

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.

Re:That's a surprise move

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It also seems a bit weird because the merchant foundry business isn't exactly facing a worldwide shortage of fabless companies, or demand for their designs burned into silicon(and, unlike AMD, IBM isn't having its face held underwater and being allowed to flop around just enough to satisfy the FTC, so they presumably aren't facing an impossible capital crunch). I'd also assume that IBM would be better placed than many to grab the (probably low volume; but nice margin) Must Be Red, White, and Blue and More American Than Mom's Apple Pie fab jobs. They've got domestic facilities, and have been doing assorted DoD and fed work longer than most of us have been alive.

Have they recently acquired new executives that are hellbent on selling absolutely everything that isn't mainframes and $$$$$/hour consultants?

Re:That's a surprise move

[afidel]

Have they recently acquired new executives that are hellbent on selling absolutely everything that isn't mainframes and $$$$$/hour consultants?

Yes, their previous CEO made a stupid goal of $20 operating EPS by 2015 and the new CEO seems to be hell bent on hitting that target, whether that's from an incentive program or ego talking I'm not sure.

Re:That's a surprise move

[mlts]

I just don't get IBM's motive. In the past, they were a one stop shop for a business. Yes, expensive, but no matter what broke, be it software, hardware, or the application, the IBM CE either could fix, or could get someone on the line who would be able to deal with the problem.

Then they sold most everything.

Other than becoming a new EDS with mainframes, what is IBM going to gain by this long-term strategy? Each market they hand over is one that could end up a bonanza should a trend change in the IT world. Storage and SSD come to mind.

Going to just mainframes won't help much -- zSeries machines are still the best hardware out there, but not everyone needs Parallel Sysplex, and a lot of companies are moving to Facebook's model of running with a craptastic generic hardware stack, with all the redundancy in the backend application programming.

PS: #insert grumble about beta here.

Re:That's a surprise move

[unixisc]

This is sad. I remember when IBM came out w/ some great innovations like the copper process. It's also disappointing to see even fewer, rather than more fabs. Yeah, I know that the costs are astronomical, but converting such a market into an Intel monopoly is a cause for concern

Also, once that's gone, it will be the end of the road for Power as well: as it is, Freescale has all but abandoned it, the console guys have abandoned it and now it's IBM itself. An independent fab won't free up space for IBM's Power if there are more lucrative chips available - particularly in volume. Only reason SPARC is alive is really Fujitsu, and Itanic is almost dead. Power being gone would leave only MIPS for the embedded space, and Xeon/Opteron for the server space. I doubt that ARM8 will have a significant role there.

Beta delenda est!

[emmagsachs]

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!

Re:What's left?

[DougOtto]

IBM is primarily a professional services company. They've been evolving into that for years.

Re:What's left?

[Third Position]

Kind of like watching fingers fall off of a leper, isn't it?

Re:Slashcott - don't visit this site from 2/10 - 2

[gtall]

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."

that's what I was thinking too.

[Virtucon]

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.

Manufacturing is alive and well in the US

[sjbe]

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.

Actually because your hate beta

[future assassin]

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.