Gaming's Surprise Winner: IBM

Then there's Sony's Play Station 3, still widely expected to maintain Sony's No. 1 spot in the video-game console race. PlayStation 3's Cell chip is expected to cost even more than Microsoft's chip.

"There's every expectation that PlayStation 3 will sell more than 100 million [units], and there's probably $150 of IBM silicon just in PlayStation 3," says Richard Doherty, leading semiconductor analyst of research firm Envisioneering Group.

Of course, Sony won't sell 100 million units immediately. But it did sell roughly 10 million consoles in the first year after PS 2's launch.

IBM's isn't expected to realize 100% of the game-chip revenue from PlayStation 3 either. Instead, it's more likely to split the revenue with partners Sony and Toshiba, which shared the cost of developing the chip. IBM and Sony will both fabricate the chip.

Still, IBM realizing, say, one-third of the chip revenue from PS 3 could mean an additional $500 million in the first year after the console's launch.

Though Lisa Su, IBM's vice president of semiconductor research and development, declined to comment on the financial details surrounding any of the gaming chips, she did say that the high volumes in the game-console business are certainly one major attraction for IBM.

IBM views its semiconductor business in general as a key differentiator in the enterprise systems market, Su says. But IBM sells fewer servers and mainframes than the number of video-game consoles sold in a year.

So moving into the higher-volume gaming business helps spread out IBM's semiconductor manufacturing and research and development, Su says.

"We were looking for applications where we could use our leadership technology in a complementary market. Gaming is a perfect example," she says. "It's using the same technology base, but we're able to leverage it into a higher-volume market."