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IBM confirms PowerPC G5 CPU yield problems

updated 12:45 pm EDT, Fri April 16, 2004

PowerPC yield problems

IBM has confirmed its : "One of the problems is ongoing yield issues within the company's 300-mm fab in East Fishkill, N.Y. For months, IBM has been struggling with yields in the fab, a 130- and 90-nm plant. 'We do see demand, but we need to make the products,' Joyce said. 'We need to improve our yields in our 300-mm plant. Our yields did see some improvement, but not as fast (as the company had hoped).'"

by MacNN Staff

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MacnTX
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Apr 2004

0

04/16, 01:06pm | report spam | close Reply |
Deja Vu

Wasn't this the same problem with Moto?

jaisun
Forum Regular

Joined: Feb 2000

0

04/16, 01:09pm | report spam | close Reply |
Well...

...I doubt IBM will go the way of Moto in ragards to PPC production (as IBM obviously has a vested interest in its success), but it goes to show that even Big Blue can be affected by the fab goblins.

PBG4 User
Senior User

Joined: Feb 2001

0

04/16, 01:16pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Well . . .

Maybe they need the fab 5 to come over and help them out! :-)

JeffHarris
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Oct 1999

0

04/16, 01:35pm | report spam | close Reply |
yeah, right

Surely the Fab 5 will get everything greased. ;^)

This DOES feel like time warp back to the Motorola G4 delays!
It IS IBM, but, DAMN, we NEED faster G5s... in QUANTITY! NOW!

koolkid1976
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Joined: May 2003

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04/16, 01:51pm | report spam | close Reply |
Not MOTO.

Unlike Motorola, IBM is not cutting funding or moving engineers away from the PPC.

Makosuke
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Joined: Aug 2001

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04/16, 02:12pm | report spam | close Reply |
Wasn't Apple's Fault

Well, those people who seemed to think that Apple was delaying the next-gen G5s (and G5 powerbooks) just out of some personal spite of their own users can officially shut up now.

I don't think this qualifies as Motorola-like yet; IBM has several large clients (MS XBox anybody?) for these chips, and unlike Moto no doubt care whether they scale.

kupan787
Senior User

Joined: Jun 1999

0

04/16, 03:00pm | report spam | close Reply |
Not MOT like

The G4 was stuck at 500 MHz for 18 months. We have only been "stuck" at 2GHz since June (10 months) or September (7 months) depending on how you like to look at it.

slider
Mac Elite

Joined: Oct 1999

0

04/16, 03:32pm | report spam | close Reply |
I'm confused????

I don't get what 300mm has to do with 130nm and 90nm production. I understand there is a problem, but I don't get it. A nm is way smaller than a mm or a um as far as that goes. What am I missing?

Stephane
Forum Regular

Joined: Sep 2001

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04/16, 03:49pm | report spam | close Reply |
hope yields now better

300 mm is the size of the waffers produced in Fishkills. On a 300 mm waffer, you put 2,5 more PPC 970FX (aka G5) than on the 200 mm waffer as those produced in the IBM Burlington fab which had good yields beyond IBM estimations. But I don't know if this latter fab plant is working on 90 nm process... ;)

SpiffyGuyC
Dedicated MacNNer

Joined: Mar 2000

0

04/16, 03:52pm | report spam | close Reply |
3GHz

If Apple can't meet its 3GHz summer deadline, the press is going to have a field day. You see what they do with a few problematic iPod Minis, as it is...

pdot
Senior User

Joined: Aug 2000

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04/16, 04:26pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: 3GHz

I was thinking about this as well. Apple will prolly have to announce one model as available in September and say the faster models will come later in the year.

Ron Goodman
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Joined: Sep 2000

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04/16, 05:30pm | report spam | close Reply |
3 GHz

It's obvious--Apple is doomed!

beeble
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Joined: Mar 2004

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04/16, 06:21pm | report spam | close Reply |
IBM made the promise

IBM made the 3GHz by next summer promise not Apple. Steve Jobs brought the IBM guy out to talk about the G5 during MWSF and he said just before leaving the stage that they would be at 3GHz within a year. No doubt the incredibly ignorant "IT press" will ignore this little fact and say that Apple made the promise but that deadline was imposed by IBM on IBM and has nothing to do with Apple.

That said, I really, really, really hope they can get yields up soon because we need a significant speed bump very soon. The longer they wait, the bigger the speed bump will have to be to not be thought of as "well at least it's something". With the XBox 2 using G5s, IBM is really going to have to get on top of this and quickly.

slider
Mac Elite

Joined: Oct 1999

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04/16, 07:34pm | report spam | close Reply |
Not a big deal

I don't think it's such a big deal if Apple does not make it's target date on the 3Ghz thing, I would like to see it, but only geeks are going to care, not joe blow mac buyer.

clash
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

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04/16, 10:30pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: 3GHz

Doomed I say!

Eug Wanker
Posting Junkie

Joined: Jun 2003

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04/16, 11:30pm | report spam | close Reply |
Apple made the promise

"IBM made the 3GHz by next summer promise not Apple."

No, the IBM guy said nothing about future clock speeds, except that they have a nice roadmap, without actually telling us what that roadmap was.

It was Jobs that said 3 GHz. You can check the QuickTime stream yourself.

robguz
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 2002

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04/17, 01:35pm | report spam | close Reply |
Very very bad

Once again Apple is fscked! You'd think IBM could at least be making 2.2GHz of the original G5 after almost a year. This bodes terribly for Apple if IBM can't even produce the 90nm G5 in quantity for the slow 2GHz chip designed for the Xserve. 2.4GHz by the end of August may be the best we can hope for now. This is now as long as Apple has even gone without a speedbump in the Tower line since the PPC came out 10 years ago. Even in the worst Motorola times, the G4 (at least shipping models) went from SP 450 to DP 500 in 10 months. A gain of 10% in raw SP speed and of course far faster given the second processor although it didn't do much pre-OSX. We haven't even gotten 50MHz in that time from IBM!

runenfool
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Oct 2001

0

04/18, 03:54am | report spam | close Reply |
robguz relax!

The problem is that they didn't intend to crank up the clock speed until they brought the process down .. well, the smaller process is giving them some troubles. This isn't abnormal, the only mistake was not having a backup plan (like bringing the original PPC up to a faster speed - but perhaps they just didn't have the volume with just one machine running on the G5 to do that yet).

Im expecting that we will see a pretty significant leap once the clock issues are worked out. The speed of the G5 is still pretty top notch, how much has the P4 improved since then? You pretty much can only get a 3.2 Ghz chip right now, with the 3.4 supposedly shipping. Thats not much more than the .. what .. 3.0 Ghz you could get when the G5 was shipping? Im more anxious for the new CPUs so we could have a G5 powerbook FINALLY.

One thing that bothers me is that Apple COULD have already released a lower clock speed PB G5. I think they want a huge leap, but a 1.2 Ghz G5 CPU running at 20 watts is quite doable in a Powerbook chassis.

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IBM confirms PowerPC G5 CPU yield problems

updated 12:45 pm EDT, Fri April 16, 2004

PowerPC yield problems

Deja Vu

Well...

Re: Well . . .

yeah, right

Not MOTO.

Wasn't Apple's Fault

Not MOT like

I'm confused????

hope yields now better

3GHz

Re: 3GHz

3 GHz

IBM made the promise

Not a big deal

Re: 3GHz

Apple made the promise

Very very bad

robguz relax!

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IBM confirms PowerPC G5 CPU yield problems

updated 12:45 pm EDT, Fri April 16, 2004

PowerPC yield problems

Related Articles

Recent Articles

Deja Vu

Well...

Re: Well . . .

yeah, right

Not MOTO.

Wasn't Apple's Fault

Not MOT like

I'm confused????

hope yields now better

3GHz

Re: 3GHz

3 GHz

IBM made the promise

Not a big deal

Re: 3GHz

Apple made the promise

Very very bad

robguz relax!

Login Here

Register for our weekly email newsletter:

Connect tools:

Subscribe

to our RSS

Follow us

on Twitter

10 Most Read

10 Most Discussed

MacNN Marketplace