(ibm)
Doing some digging on the issue of how does IBM stack up against
LSI.
From a business point of view, its hard to get IBM's numbers
for their microelectonics, so revenue is unknown. LSI's are
readily available... IBM does state they are currently doing
75 design projects using +1M gate asics. Dataquest estimates
them doing 115 designs this year. Again not sure how this
stacks to lsi design starts...
Mentioned in the 10K, it is also a lower margin biz vs their
system & storage products (which seems reasonable). A
revenue increase last year of 22.9% in OEM (ASIC, DRAM, HDD)
didnt seem to have much positive effect on their overall
h/w sales. It would seem ASIC is the smallest contributor to
OEM sales.
One of the reasons, IBM has a disadvantage, is that it uses
its own chips internally (ala systems, workstation (PowerPC),
etc...)to compete with propective customers of their asic
biz. Thus if Sun where to use IBM to supply it chips, Sun
is funding/offsetting the cost for IBM to further develop
the PowerPC to compete against Sun in the workstation biz.
Also, you have to look at distribution, marketing, sales, etc...
This is what LSI does for cash.... This is not ibm's main
thrust. If ibm went into tough times, they would cut this
part of the distribution in a heart beat, before touching
their systems sales.
On technology and IP, IBM does seem to compete well with LSI.
Both LSI & IBM offer the hot ARM core processor. LSI also
has the MIPS line of risc cores, and IBM the PowerPC cores.
I think the mips core is doing well, and is prefered over
the powerpc. The mips processor has been used pretty extensively
in workstations (SGI, NEC, ..), its also been used in the
networking & telecom (Siemens for one). Of course apple/ibm
use the powerpc.
DSPs are hot, and both IBM and LSI have offerings... the ti
chip is the hottest, and if ibm has truely cloned it, they
may have a technlogy advantage here.
Here is some reference pages...
eetimes.com
techweb.com
chips.ibm.com
I will do some more research next week at the design automation
conference. both lsi and ibm asic along with the rest of the
group will be there. See what their marketing hype is...
should have some good success stories to share...
Sid |
