Re:Question: Why do they do this? (Score 1)

Fabs consist of a building and the machinery inside. The machinery is designed to produce one silicon process technology, not just on line of chips. Once a new process technology comes on line, the fabs are 'retooled' with new machinery to produce new chips. Older process technologies are used to build less premium chips like i/o hubs and networking chips. Once a silcon process technology becomes to far out of date, chips are no longer produced. Intel probably hasn't produced a wafer of PII chips in years, they are just shipping ones from inventory (and those are probably just limited warranty replacements).