IBM’s Cell Processor Yields Looking Dismal

Tom Krazit:

IBM Vice President of Semiconductor and Technology Services Tom Reeves was quoted in an article on Electronic News last week saying that initial yields for the Cell chip are somewhere between 10 percent to 20 percent. The company thinks it can improve that with logic redundancy techniques, but even 20 percent to 40 percent is still a shocking number in the world of high-volume chip manufacturing.

Via MDJ 2006.07.14; MDJ points out that IBM’s track record producing PowerPC chips has been dismal overall — rememember the “3.0 GHz next year” promise regarding G5s?

★ Friday, 14 July 2006