PowerPC 970 "Not Yet in Production" at IBM Plant


IBM's gleaming new fabrication facility in Fishkill, NY, is the product of $2.5 billion in new investment - but Apple's G5 chips aren't rolling off the assembly lines yet.

But there's little to worry about: it takes "no time" to get the chip on the production line, Tom Yager at InfoWorld says.

IBM can also get 2.5 times as many chips out of its 300mm wafers than other manufacturers can obtain from 200mm wafers.

As other manufacturers get out of the US in search of cheaper production facilities, IBM has found it less expensive to put Made in the USA on its chips, due largely to lower interest rates and cheaper real estate.

Columnist Tom Yager likens Fishkill to the "Death Star of the semiconductor industry".

Analysis: We like the analogy. But look what happened to the Death Star. At least we can hope it blows up Planet Intel.

On a more serious note, IBM has recently declared it will seek to cut workers in the US, and seek employees in lower-cost markets. Their competitors are doing it and so must IBM, one company executive declared recently.

But this is nothing new. Although much of Apple's pre-1997 manufacturing was done in the US, subcontracting is not simply a feature of the Jobs era, but an economic reality for tech firms. Whether it's hardware or software, there are lower-cost facilities in Taiwan, Mexico and India. On the plus side, Apple wouldn't be remotely price competitive if its PowerBooks, iBooks and iMacs weren't Made in Taiwan. The same goes for the G5's motherboard. Even Quark, reportedly, shifted its development of v.6.0 to India.