[G4] IBM chip fabs (was: Apple's New G5 Marketing Approach)

[Joseph B. Gurman]

     jgvp, my new pen-pal, wrote:

At 05:09 -0700 2003/08/20, Power Macintosh G4 List wrote:
>As stated previously, not being one to accept what corporations have to
>say as gospel, I wonder whether the news item that appeared in the New
>York Times this morning re: IBM chip production, specifically at their
>East Fishkill, NY., facility, and the lay-offs, could be the real
>reason behind the "beating the bushes" by the hired agency despite
>claims that 100,000 orders have already been received. Probably could
>also account for the ten weeks back-order delays too.
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/19/business/19CHIP.html?th

     All of the layoffs were at the older plant in Vermont. 
Unfortunately, chip fabs, which cost upwards of US$2B to build, are 
pretty much obsolete after a few years. Unless you locate your new 
fab next to the old one (think Taiwan or Korea), that means layoffs. 
(US companies use the promise of a new fab to suck tax and amenities 
concessions out of state and local governments, which is a hard sell 
the second time around, so they tend to build fabs all over the 
place.) Also, keeping old fabs open tends to mean red ink, even after 
the layoffs. As the article points out, there's a new man running 
IBM's fab operations, and his job is obviously to turn the red ink 
into black, no matter how many workers he has to relocate or lay off. 
(The new fab, by the way, is far more automated, so there probably 
aren't many job openings there for the affected folks in Vermont.) 
The best news for us is that it's in the new guy's interest to 
produce lots of chips for Apple.

     Posts I've seen elsewhere from people who work at East Fishkill 
hint (they aren't supposed to say outright) that production is way up 
from the "disappointing yields" earlier. Some comments on MacNN (I 
think) about the plant's generator-powered, graceful slowdown during 
the NE blackout last week indicate the plant might have a raw yield 
(i.e., not counting bad pieces) of ~ 40,000 a week. I don't think 
100,000 G5 orders are going to be a big deal for IBM. Even if half of 
the orders are for dual-processor machines, that's still only 150,000 
pieces, or (figuring a really low yield) a few months' worth of the 
earlier, lower yields.... and they've had a few months. In all 
honesty, I have no solid idea how many usable G5 CPU's come out of 
the doors of the fab weekly, but if Apple claims it's filling orders 
on or ahead of schedule, we'll know very soon whether they're lying.

     While I don't trust Apple or any other US corporate entity 
farther than I can throw their board, if they keep claiming 100K 
orders, the number will be checkable against what they have to 
report, by US law, in their next quarterly financial statement for 
the Securities and Exchange Commission. And Mr. Jobs had to sign his 
name to a document last year stating that he personally knows that 
all the information in those statements is true and complete. You 
doubt Steve? ;-)
-- 
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by."
                                                             - Douglas 
Adams, 1952 - 2001

Joseph B. Gurman, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Solar Physics
Branch, Greenbelt MD 20771 USA