IBM To Expand Custom Chip Business
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EAST FISHKILL, N.Y (June 10, 1998) – IBM today announced it will spend more than $100 million on several major new initiatives to help fuel its rapid rise in the fast-growing custom microchip business.
The investment centers on the addition of more than two dozen chip “cores” to IBM’s portfolio. “Cores” are the “bricks and mortar” of custom chip making — building blocks that can be assembled in unique combinations to create new chip designs. The new cores will allow IBM to build chips for use in a variety of products from everyday goods such as digital cameras and set-top-boxes, to high-end computing systems.
Particularly significant is a new core that provides full compatibility with a Texas Instruments digital signal processor (the TMS320C54X DSP) — a component used in millions of cell phones and other communications devices. As the first alternative to the Texas Instruments product, this core allows electronics designers to incorporate IBM’s state-of-the-art chip making technology, support and worldwide resources.
Other custom chip investments by IBM include an expansion of the company’s Burlington, Vt. facility for making “masks” — stencils used to transfer circuit designs onto actual chips. In addition, the company is both adding design engineers and expanding support for popular design software to help manufacturers integrate IBM custom chip technology into a broader variety of electronic products.
Custom chips are being used in an increasing array of digital gear, driving today’s $21 billion custom chip industry to an estimated $52 billion by the year 2002. In recent months, IBM’s manufacturing technology has helped propel it from number five to number two in worldwide sales of ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits), the most prevalent form of custom chips.
“IBM’s custom chip business grew by more than 70 percent in 1997, based largely on our ability to handle complex designs,” said Mike Attardo, general manager of the IBM Microelectronics Division. “With the drive to integrate more components on a single chip, however, complex designs are becoming the norm. The investments we’re announcing today will make that expertise and technology available to more customers in a wider variety of applications.”
For complex designs, IBM’s copper technology has introduced new possibilities for product designers. At present, IBM is engaged in more than a dozen copper ASIC designs with customers, including several multi-million gate products that are establishing new records in ASIC complexity. With this announcement, IBM is bringing its expertise and technology to bear on more mainstream products.
IBM’s addition of more than 25 new cores to its core-plus-ASIC program will place it among the leading ASIC suppliers in terms of numbers of core options. A wide library of cores allows IBM to help electronics manufacturers integrate functions from multiple components onto a single device, helping reduce product cost, size and power consumption. Roughly half of these new cores were purchased from third-parties, demonstrating IBM’s commitment to deliver the technology customers need, whether from IBM or outside sources. A complete core catalogue listing is available through the IBM Microelectronics web site at http://www.chips.ibm.com.
This announcement comes on the heels of other recent additions to IBM Blue Logic technology, including the picoJava core for building Java-capable chips, as well as the ARM7TDMI core, used widely in communications devices. The addition of CommQuest as an IBM company has also enhanced IBM’s ability to provide solutions for wireless communications applications.
Source: IBM