Five IC makers join $3B 'capex club'

eetimes.com

4 points·NonEUCitizen··3 comments

It is very interesting to see TI scaling back 25%, particularly with their OMAP 4 processors being in demand. I wonder what the reason is?

TI may be scaling back due to the costs of keeping up. It would not be unexpected for them to go fabless. The thinking is that 3 organizations will continue manufacturing logic chips: Intel, TSMC, and GlobalFoundries.

Oddly enough my PandaBoard (TI OMAP 4) arrived today... but it was ordered back at the start of November. I actually called the manufacturer that supplies Digi-Key to figure out what was going on after two successive 1 month delivery slips from Digi-Key.

For all intents and purposes, the PandaBoard is basically the prototype for the OMAP 4 chip, save for the obvious fact TI did not build it. It seems TI has no interest in providing an "official" development platform, and most likely because others were willing to build them for free (to TI).

Even with this outside help, TI has had problems keeping component delivery dates with the folks building the PandaBoards. Though I haven't heard any "verifiable rumors" (assuming there is such a thing), my guess is TI is having fab process and yield problems on the OMAP lines. The really troubling thing is, those kind of problems are usually solved by more fab investment, rather than less.

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