| fillet said:
b) The only way you could be on to something is if you were talking about yield issues at a fabrication factory. You aren't though, and if you were you would be wrong because the components in an Xbox 360 don't have yield issues because the tech is ancient and the manufacturing processes used are a gen or two behind in terms of die shrinks. |
Oh boy, you are so wrong on all accounts, I don't even know where to start. And I don't have the time, space or incnetive to tell you how it really works in the real world (and I have had years of insight into manufacturing chains in several areas).
a) This is complete nonsense. As I told before, MS/Sony/Nintendo make plans for each fiscal year on how many items to manufacture, when how many at which time. Depending on the contracts - which are usually telephone-book sized regulations - either party can be responsible for buying parts and have them ready. Individual components are ordered as long as possible before they are needed (Hint 1 for you: MS ordered the memory chips TWO YEARS before the XBox went into production). The shorter the time, the more expensive they are. This pricing law is universal in the manufacturing industry and is an absolute necessity for any manufacturer to keep its assembly lines running at a steady pace and be able to stay profitable. If you happen to have a manufacturer that can ramp up/down production any time, you most likely pay a lot more, or more likely the manufacturer is on the way out (Hint 2 for you: NVidia and other companies are talking with Samsung now, because TSMC is completely unable to ramp up its 28nm yield fast enough, so TSMC might be losing tons of money there). Same goes for XBoxe fabrication (You remember the riots in Taiwan when workers occupied an assembly line for a few days? The reason: They shut down the assemby line for XBoxes there and wanted to fire/transfer workers to a cheaper plant. That shut-down assembly line is not going to reopen any time, if MS thinks they need a few more XBoxes - tough chances).
b) In general, the producer does not care about production yields at all. Again, the producer has long-term phone-book sized contracts with the manufacturer about how, when and where the components have to be ready for shipping/further processing. It is again up to the manufacturer to see that he can make the things in time. Getting out of those contracts is expensive (AMD just forked over $750m to get ouut of the GF contracts).
And yes, of course XBox Slims had yield problems. The CPU/GPU die was a complete redesign in (32nm which was reasonably new at that time), incorporating two different design philosophies on a singe die. Again, this ultimately was IBMs problem, though, to get enough money from MS to offset the loss for too many required dies.
