[rescue] Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

On Sun, Jun 19, 2005 at 08:00:24AM -0400, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> From: "Patrick Giagnocavo" <patrick at mail.zill.net>
> > On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 07:48:20AM +0300, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
> >> Which may be the reason Apple droppped it. If Microsoft buys two of them
> >> for each XBOX 2, and they sell 10 million the first year, how many chips
> >> are left over for Apple?
> >
> > But wouldn't it be logical that the price would drop as volume
> > increased?  Surely they would be able to afford to bring up another
> > fab, or run the fabs they have at 110% for a while, if it meant
> > selling 3 million or more chips to Apple?
PatrickG ^^^^^^^^
 
> How do you run a 24x7x365 fab at 110%? On a leap year you get an extra what, 
> .25% from the extra day (29 Feb)...
Lionel ^^^^^^^

Overtime/extra shifts.  Yes it seems like a funny way to represent it,
but that is how semiconductor manufacturers represent it, as a %-age
greater than 100.

Remember too that the manufacturer needs to have some excess capacity
around to keep MS happy.

--Patrick