IBM reportedly considering sale of chip manufacturing operations

IBM reportedly considering sale of chip manufacturing operations

Feb 7th 2014, 15:59, by Jon Brodkin

IBM's POWER chips power Watson.

IBM

IBM is considering a sale of its chip manufacturing operations, the Wall Street Journal reported last night. The company would not stop designing its own chips, however. Just as AMD outsources manufacturing of the chips it designs, IBM "is looking for a buyer for its manufacturing operations, but plans to retain its chip-design capability," according to the Journal's source.
The Financial Times reported that IBM appointed Goldman Sachs to "sound out possible buyers for the business" and that "IBM is not wedded to the idea of selling and could also seek a partner with which to create a joint venture for its semiconductor operations." Potential buyers mentioned in that report include GlobalFoundries (originally an AMD spinoff) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).
IBM designs the chips both for its POWER servers and mainframe computers. IBM's POWER dominates the Unix server market, while the company's mainframes dominate that market as well. IBM last month agreed to sell its x86 server business to Lenovo.