This feature is an excerpt from The Race for a New Games Machine by David Shippy and Mickie Phipps. It’s available to buy now.


The excitement began in the summer of 2003. My team and I had worked tirelessly at IBM for two and a half years, breathing life into the Sony PlayStation 3 “Cell” central processing chip.

My team was responsible for the PowerPC microprocessor core in the central processing chip. It was an important subcomponent in the overall chip that performed the function of the “brains” for the entire PlayStation 3 game console. Our microprocessor core executed the instructions of the game console operating system and controlled the flow of information just like a traffic cop in a busy intersection.

We ordered our lives around the idea of beating Microsoft to market with a Christmas 2005 launch of a revolutionary new game machine certain to soar to new heights of computing power and market share.

Gamers worldwide would flock to this platform to blow away ghouls, race speedboats, and seduce bikini-clad vampiresses. With Sony’s dream to extend its empire to take over the home-computing business, a second and almost as consuming focus was the race with Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to develop the chip that would surpass the world’s current performance record.

Then Dr. Chekib Akrout, IBM’s senior vice president responsible for the PlayStation’s chip team, told me another customer wanted our secret-weapon, record-smashing PowerPC microprocessor core. It was Microsoft.


We sat alone in his office, a barren, windowless hole on the sixth floor of an IBM building in Austin, Texas. Akrout leaned forward in his big leather executive chair and watched me, tapping his pen on his desk, waiting for my reaction to this shocking news. I was confused.

Sony had agreed that IBM could use the PlayStation 3 PowerPC microprocessor core in other applications in the future, so IBM was on solid legal ground. Nevertheless, this new deal raised some sticky ethical questions in my mind. Wouldn’t we be competing against ourselves? Two-timing? Sleeping with the enemy? Sony was my partner!

My temples pounded. Fury gripped my throat. I was so angry I didn’t dare look at Akrout, so I swiveled my chair to the side and glared at the drab, bare wall instead. I wanted to make a competitive difference for Sony, who commissioned this little work of art. I spent years building a chip for them that would power their game machine to crushing victory in the marketplace, and it was a dream I was not ready to relinquish. While I fully expected our breakthrough chip to continue into future products in some derivative form, I never imagined it would happen before the current job for Sony was finished. I wasn’t ready to consider the demands of an additional customer, especially one that presented such a vast conflict of interest.

“How did this happen?” I grumbled through gritted teeth, still looking at the cracks in the yellowed wall. Fluorescent lights buzzed and flickered above me, creating weird shadows that bumped into each other in the corners of the room.

“Let’s just say it was a blockbuster, an offer IBM couldn’t refuse,” he answered. Lest I think the stakes of the enterprise were small, Akrout told me that over a billion dollars was involved, spanning the entire spectrum from development to chip manufacturing. Microsoft’s Bill Gates approached Sam Palmisano, IBM’s CEO, about designing the next generation Xbox microprocessor chip. The IBM sales team laid out every other chip option they possessed or could dream up, but nothing caught the interest of Gates’s team. Then a senior IBM engineer from another division disclosed to Microsoft some of the most sensitive details of the microprocessor core I was designing for the Sony chip.

My jaw dropped at this news, and I spun around to face Akrout. That was my baby! It was as if they had snuck an unauthorized Polaroid out of the labor and delivery room and posted it on the Internet. This was personal. IBM is a big company, spread across many locations and organized into a complicated web of semi-related divisions, each with its own mission, its own independent team.