Increasingly technology and consumer electronic product makers are turning to IBM for chips. Big Blue has been investing billions in research and development to speed up its processors and to manufacture chips with greater transistor density.

Is IBM eclipsing Intel in the chip market?

Sansumg is joining Infineon in a chip partnership with IBM. This is just the latest indicator IBM’s R&D and patent depth may be setting the stage for the return of Big Blue as the world’s chip technology leader.

IMHO Big Blue is oversold at under $100 per share. As the manufacturer of Apple’s G5 chips, IBM will only see its chip division’s revenue grow as Apple increases its sales and other product maker come to the party.

They have a long ways to go to eclipse Intel for chip manufacture.  The number of chips Apple alone uses is miniscule compared to the P4 chips being distributed.  And IBM isn’t even making the 970 for Apple, they are making it for themselves and Apple formed a partnership to work them into the G5’s.  But make no mistake, those chips were intended for IBM’s server platform.

My worry is that servers don’t need huge processor speeds, nor do they need frequent speed bumps.  Since IBM is more interested in a processor for their low-end servers, do they really have an incentive to constantly increase the PPC speed?

It does bode well that other companies are looking to using the 970 besides Apple, which may be enough fuel to keep pushing the 9xx chips’ R&D on an Intel-like chip progression schedule.

SWFan, I agree with you that Big Blue has a long way to go to eclipse Intel on volume, but on technology I see IBM emerging as the chip technology leader.

IBM recently won the contract for the chip for the next generation Xbox from Microsoft beating out Intel and the Apple deal provides the division with R&D dollars for further development.

IBM made a huge investment in chip development and manufacture resources and the company’s patent depth will give Intel a run for the money.

AMD is already squeezing Intel and IBM’s activity changes the economics of the industry.

IMHO IBM is a $120 stock trading in the mid 90’s.

Well, I definitely feel we’re at closing on a chip juncture in history here.  I think the x86 architecture is nearing the end of its life, so does Intel have the forethought to do something to depart from the x86 architecture?  Obviously with game developers looking at non-x86 chips its an indication of the market demanding something different.  AMD for the first time that I can ever remember is actually ahead of the curve with the Athlon 64, even to the point that Intel has pseudo-copied one of their chip tech implementations.

It very well may be that if Intel drags its feet, companies such as IBM and AMD will take significant chunks of their marketshare.

At some point though, for IBM’s chips to get the marketshare we’re talking about, Windows will have to be ported to it.  We already know that the core NT kernel has been ported to some game development Apple G5’s.  We also know that MS had previously ported NT to other chips, including RISC chips in the past, but were dropped due to a lack of demand.

This is really the first time in the last 10 years where there really has started to be some good chip competition.  I just hope it keeps up.