04/16/2004, 12:45pm, EDT

Friday, April 16th

IBM confirms PowerPC G5 CPU yield problems

IBM has confirmed its PowerPC G5 CPU yield problems, noted in this week's conference as the reason for the delays in the Xserve G5s: "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).'"

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MacnTX

Deja Vu

04/16, 1:06pm, EDT

Wasn't this the same problem with Moto?

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jaisun

Well...

04/16, 1:09pm, EDT

...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.

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PBG4 User

Re: Well . . .

04/16, 1:16pm, EDT

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

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JeffHarris

yeah, right

04/16, 1:35pm, EDT

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!

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koolkid1976

Not MOTO.

04/16, 1:51pm, EDT

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

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Makosuke

Wasn't Apple's Fault

04/16, 2:12pm, EDT

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.

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kupan787

Not MOT like

04/16, 3:00pm, EDT

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.

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slider

I'm confused????

04/16, 3:32pm, EDT

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?

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Stephane

hope yields now better

04/16, 3:49pm, EDT

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... ;)

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SpiffyGuyC

3GHz

04/16, 3:52pm, EDT

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...

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