Yes, that does help. Thank you. But doesn't it go against what was said in this thread? The link brings us to a member of the Cointerra team who is stating that he basically had everything to do with making the ASIC card. Where would he do this?
Like Deafboy said, these companies design the chips, while Global Foundries, etc physically produce the chips.
Why do they still go to companies like Open-Silicon for ASIC design and development (well, I'm not sure if they do but I know Butterfly Labs does)?
Open-Silicon provides manufacturing operations management. You give them designs and a sum of money, and they deal with individual factories, production lines, etc.
Global Foundries (a fabricator, also something to do with "tape out")
Tape-out is where you make the final set of modifications to a design. Basically the step right before the physical manufacturing. Read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape-out