Re: IBM bags multi-billion dollar outsourcing deal with ABN AMRO
@Firewalker
Well this may be greed-driven / incompetence - I really have no idea, but what I do know is that the whole story is a little more complicated - IBM (IMO) is trying to emulate the ARM licencing approach, it will design the CPUs and licence those designs out (check out the Open POWER stuff) to a bunch of companies - some of which you've heard of like Google / Samsung / nvidia and some you may not have like Tyan / TeamSun / ZTE.
IBM Power CPUs significantly outperform everything else from intel and Oracle/Sun by some margin, but don't get the advantages of volume that intel enjoy, so they cost more per unit. Open Power seeks to address that. Some of the companies that joined OpenPower would have issues with IBM retaining sole-manufacturing rights, so IBM sold off the Fabrication facility and have *more or less* pre-paid a 10yr (perhaps longer, I forget the details) outsourcing deal to guarantee production of Power CPUs.
A fabrication facility that can supply Power CPUs to a wide base than IBM and perhaps broaden it's manufacturing to include other architectures such as ARM will get the economies of scale that other vendors (and I believe all the other major Unix vendors enjoy)