Yeah. I remember when Vince and a few others were steadfastly arguing that Sony would be this great leader in Semis and it just hasn't materialized. They're WAY behind schedule in Semis, Blu-Ray Diodes, the Cell-based GPU didnt' pan out, dev tools are lacking etc... The PS3 has been a pretty big fiasco so far. I do think they can turn it around, but they really dropped the ball and this is just one more example IMO.
They are behind schedule... but no more so than IBM themselves in a manner. So what does that ultimately mean? The entire industry has had a sort of speedbump on the 65nm node - Intel is simply in a different league when it comes to process advancement, but they always have been. Blu-ray diodes are indeed another place where Sony was 'behind schedule,' but today they are the volume leader in production and utilization. Just because you're behind on your
own schedule, doesn't mean you're not ahead of the other guys schedule... and *that's* what's important.
Anyway, it would be interesting to see what a Kutaragi-run company would have resembled. I don't think an in-house fabrication capacity is a negative in any way save for cash-flow and capital expenditure reasons. The economics *do* favor it so long as the capacity demand is there; thus I wouldn't be surprised if Sony eventually were to build out a 45nm line anyway, but we'll see. It will certainly be hugely expensive, and if they feel that their cash can be utilized somewhere where the returns might be both quicker and larger, that's likely where they will leverage themselves.
In terms of R&D for Cell, however, that's already underway for both the 45nm and 32nm nodes... so I think for those interpreting this article as indicating a pull-back from the Cell architecture, it should be emphasized that the pullback is on fab capacity.
Didn't SONY build fabs specifically for CELL production? So if they outsource CELL what are they going to do with those fabs?
Sony built fabs to have fabs; the Cell project was the keystone that made the rollout economically viable. What will be built on the 65nm SOI lines? Cell, of course, as per plan. Doing so would be a good bit less expensive than outsourcing... I hope that remains clear. What will be built there when Cell has moved to 45nm (perhaps at an external fab), perhaps still Cell, perhaps something else. Sony has done a very good job of keeping its older fab lines in operation, and as things like EE+GS arise and get put on smaller nodes, the older lines are shifted towards the manufacture of things such as digital camera components.
This slide presentation from December 05 shows how Sony shifts fab capacity to other purposes as it ages, and what other markets they utilize their internal capacity for:
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/info/Semiconductor/2005/pre_index.html
