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"The iPhone maker said last month it will lose $3 billion to $4 billion in sales in the current quarter ending in June because of the chip shortage," The IPhone maker has $3 to $4 billion in incentives to fund its own factory
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.
+1. I'd also guess that these companies getting together to start a joint venture is not really feasible, due to anti-monopoly laws.
"The iPhone maker said last month it will lose $3 billion to $4 billion in sales in the current quarter ending in June because of the chip shortage," The IPhone maker has $3 to $4 billion in incentives to fund its own factory
For example, this TSMC fab planned in Arizona is estimated to cost $12 billion: https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyshih/2020/05/15/tsmcs-anno...
These industries squeezed the blood out of US suppliers to compete on cost. I don't think a correct solution is the government building capacity and supply chains. IMHO a more sustainable strategy is the government taxing the environmental and human rights externalities of off-shore production.
Looks like the military industrial complex is about to be expanded with the semiconductor industry.
If this truly comes to fruition, it would be a prime mover in displacing Chinese global hegemony and stave off its bullish nature. China maintains economic well being by donating the chip market and also the supply chains. The Quad has emerged to dislocate Chinese tyranny in the Indo-Pacific, and US chip takeover will be one of the last strokes in China’s downfall.
This crosses into nationalistic flamewar. We don't want that on HN, regardless of $nation. It leads to predictable, nasty discussion that kills the curious conversation which this site is supposed to be for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1. I'd also guess that these companies getting together to start a joint venture is not really feasible, due to anti-monopoly laws.
It's only a monopoly if the government says you are using market position anti-competitively and/or against the common good. If the US government says that chip production capability is now a national focus, companies can expect government cooperation for a joint venture.
No, its a monopoly if you have market power.
It’s only illegal if you are abusing market power.
What I don't see mentioned too often is promoting chip design. Compared to building a fab, making a startup that simply designs chips should be straightforward but through my initial research into it, that's not the case. Tech cos like Google and Amazon have already begun endeavors into in-house fabless chip design through ex.: TPU and Graviton, but hardware startups seem to be few and far between (there are a few like SciFive and Cerebras, but it's not like they are exactly ubiquitous).
In part it has to due with the huge complexity of modern day chips and the fact that if any new startup wants to be competitive it requires hiring talent with deep and niche industry experience.
I think what's more of an issue is accessibility for newcomers into the space. From what I've read, the top 3 EDA companies control the vast majority of their market and license their tools for hundreds of thousands of dollars. These tools aren't accessible to the majority of students and most likely fledgling startups. I know these tools are extremely complex, but it always stuck me as odd how IDEs like VS Code and the ones made by JetBrains are free or are priced so that the vast majority of developers (whether as individuals or as companies)can afford it, while the top of the line EDA tools are only accessible by established players. I know there is an open source effort to change this, but there's a long way to catch up.
Maybe things will change. AMD started out reverse engineering Intel chips and now are beating Intel in most metrics. Hopefully hardware becomes more hyped over time just as machine learning and software startups have.
What are the geopolitical consequence of a de-coupled chip supply chain? Recall TSMC is headquartered in Taiwan, which has been a point of contention in US-China relationship since the 1950s. Please discuss civilly.
On one hand, this could cause other countries to pay more attention to the situation, since -they- will still be dependent on TSMC and may not have the US doing all the posturing.
But that's assuming we wound up truly 'de-coupled'. TSMC tends to be the leader in fab tech, and I am fairly certain any near term plans will involve providing incentive for TSMC to build more fabs in the US.