Live data from Hacker News

Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production

reuters.com

81–90 of 301 posts

Re: Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production

#81

To all those saying that those companies can afford it themselves, remember that there are reasons they don't. The economics don't add up. Companies tend to do what is in their economic interest to do. Something like this can change the economics, which could be a good thing.

>> To all those saying that those companies can afford it themselves, remember that there are reasons they don't.

Automotive chips for example tend to be produced on older nodes, not fancy 14nm and below at TSMC. I'm not talking about SoC used in infotainment but all the micro controllers all over the car.

There is really zero incentive for a chip maker to expand capacity of old nodes since they are obsolete in some sense. It doesn't pay to upgrade to a new node without a product that demands something from the new node, and even then it's still an obsolete node. Think 130nm, 90nm, or even 45nm, the world could use more capacity at all of those but would you really want to invest heavily in any of those?

I suspect the end game for most of the industry is commodity priced chips at every "last node" where that term means the last node that doesn't require X, and X is a technology change like immersion lithography, multi-patterning, material change, or EUV. With that kind of environment nobody can afford to increase capacity much.

I'm not arguing for government funding here, just pointing to what I suspect is one of the problems.

Re: Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production

#83
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean you only need to get one agency head, or one head of state / cabinet member, or the majority of congress who votes in unison right now to agree, once

Pay them a small chunk of that billions in campaign contributions, and it's easy.

Yeah we are talking about 5 figures if that

7 figures max

Re: Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production

#84
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason these items are not produced at home is because of government policies. I agree that they should be the ones to invest in these fabs, but it also makes sense for the government to make sure that is an internationally competitive move for them to make, rather than forcing them to pour water uphill.

> The reason these items are not produced at home is because of government policies. Which policies? I believe you, genuinely curious

Trade deals, plus subsidies by other governments are the general categories.

Re: Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production

#86
post #19

How about you spend some of that cash hoard and do it yourself? I would rather the government start dealing with cyber attacks because that's going to affect the east coast something fierce if this crap keeps going. If the government gives money then it better talk to these companies about where their items are produced.

My exact reaction as well. Or how about all that money used for stock buy backs over the last decade? Intel especially. It's been mismanaged and now it's putting its hand out for government money while having spent billions on stock buy backs. No more but of course it'll happen because the politics of it. Socialism for the rich and corporations, capitalism for the rest of us.

Stock buy backs are just more tax efficient dividends for investors. If the company is suffering from mismanagement, dividends are good, because it returns capital to investors rather than letting managment destroy it.

Intel has been building fab capacity pretty much always, it's just that their 10nm process doesn't work as intended, and they haven't really been able to fix it, so their development is stalled and their production numbers aren't great and they haven't been able to stop making processors at 14nm to do other things with those fabs. So far, I think we've been hearing of delays on their 7nm node as well, so no good news there.

That said, if there's a market for a 14nm or more fab in the US, Intel has shown they can build that, but they'd probably prefer to spend their money getting 7nm to work than building an old tech fab; spending other people's money on a new 14nm (or whatever) fab in the US is still good for Intel though, so it's no wonder they'd put their hand out to do that.

Re: Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production

#88

Couldn't this be a positive long term benefit of Corona? A push back against globalisation and more domestic production in each region of the world.

> A push back against globalisation and more domestic production in each region of the world.

There are many countries that have always wanted to be self reliant but the powers be can't allow it. Coz it's sets a bad example that countries can exist without certain giants. I don't think they are about to allow that

Re: Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production

#89
post #66
post #6

Dupe from earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27116601

On HN, it only counts as a dupe if the previous submission got significant attention. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html . Lots of past explanation here too: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Didn't know that! I always search for links before submitting and many times I've seen a previous submission with little to no traction (and then subsequently not posted it to avoid dupes).

Re: Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production

#90
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason these items are not produced at home is because of government policies. Which policies? I believe you, genuinely curious

Trade deals, plus subsidies by other governments are the general categories.

Right. Other governments are always going to subsidize though (unless you work that into the trade deals I suppose).

Obviously any barriers to the success of US fabs should be removed, but it's not clear if there's a market for more expensive US chips - if there were, you'd think someone would build it without the need for a subsidy

Post reply on HN