SAN FRANCISCO -- Bernard Meyerson, VP and chief technologist for IBM''s systems and technology group, could have a second career as a bartender. His statements to the semiconductor industry at this week’s Semicon West show were, as always, a shot full of advice with a twist of humor and – most importantly – came with a beer back of honesty.

While the theme of this year’s show seems to be the shifting business model and the evolving industry that follows the full supply chain from back-end to front, forcing companies to partner amongst their allies and competition, several of the Semicon panelists and speakers have put a happy face on their discussions. Opposing those who play the sacred and bland “we partner for the good of the industry” or “our goal is to work with best-in-breed companies to provide best-in-breed solutions to our customers” lines, the physicist acknowledged those benefits of partnering, but in his straight forward manner, cut to the chase.

Meyerson’s talk mainly focused on the end of classical scaling and the impending problems that could lay ahead for the industry, if it doesn’t partner up to work out awaiting solutions. R&D numbers are skyrocketing, fab prices continue to climb and general employee expenditure remains high – all of which are viable reasons to partner. But Meyerson stated that cost efficiency isn’t the best alliances can offer.

“The truth of the matter is that [cost issue] is closer to the truth than anyone would like to admit. The cost escalation is driving a bunch of things in our industry. First of all there are alliances that, of course, defray the costs.”

But people miss the point of those alliances, he said. “The major benefit, in my view, is that we are pooling our intellectual capital. It’s not about the money.” 

From IBM’s view – a company that has working agreements with the likes of AMD, Chartered, Infineon and Samsung -- pre-competitive cooperation leads to better integration. And “integration is a killer weapon,” according to Meyerson.

This type of collaboration, or “coopetition,” as the CTO calls it, allows for the building of basic platforms and the realization that competition should be done higher up on the value chain.

“Everybody is going to have to grow up and decide that at this level we are not going to survive if we at least figure out how to get the basics done,” Meyerson remarked.