jvd... Sony already has enough fabs in Japan already capable of PlayStation 2 production, but in probable need of upgrading them they have "moved" their PlayStation 2 manufacturing to other countries ( mainly China ).
I suspect this new Oita fab will be set-up with 65 nm technology ( libraries and tools for thsi technology have been ready for ~half a year now ) and probably you will see also the upgrade of its sister fab ( which is really close by
).
Toshiba and Sony designers stated in other occasions that they are quite positive they can start manufacturing 65 nm chips with their new process by March 2004 ( prediction made when they had the conference with the unveilment of this new process in December 2002... so they have been working in implementing it in fabs for a while ).
If the new Oita fabs with probably 300 mm Wafers and 65 nm technology starts manufacturing final Play:Station 3 chips by May or early June 2004 with "decent" yelds then they are well on track as it will be able to meet ( together with the other fabs used ) Japanese launch demand and the new Nagasaki plant wilkl start manufacturing by 2005 ( mid 2005 ) in order to fully supplement the efforts of the Oita fabs and the current Nagasaki plant to provide launch uints for the North American launch of PlayStation 3.
If the Visualizer is the PlayStation 3's GPU this should help as there should not be much change between lines that fab the Broadband Engine and the one that fab the Visualizer ( I am assuming they keep those names... ) there is not much work ( well, ok relatively... ) involved in changing a Broadband Engine into a Visualizer... in each PE you replace 4 APUs with a "graphics" building block ( Pixel Engine, Image Cache, CRTC, etc... ) and regulate the clock frequency and you are basically all-set
