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

reuters.com

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

#171

Post by lvs »

dang wrote: post #166
axiosgunnar wrote: post #149

@dang, > All: this thread got a flash flood of angry-predictable-obvious comments. Please don't post those! They're really bad for this site. The issue with such points isn't that they're wrong, it's that they're not interesting. Nothing predictable and obvious is. We want interesting conversation here, and that comes from curiosity. If you're feeling agitation rather than curiosity, please wait until that polarity f…

> What "flash flood of angry-predictable-obvious comments" are you talking about? They're collapsed at the bottom of the page now. Before that, they were the page. Downweighting low-quality generic subthreads is one of the key things moderators do here to try to improve the quality of the threads—which unfortunately tends to go to the lowest common denominator by default. p.s. "@dang" is a no-op. I only saw your ques…

Hm, it certainly looks a lot like "improve the quality of the threads" == suppress industry critique.

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

#172

Post by pjc50 »

Covzire wrote: post #123
Traster wrote: post #93

The problem with this governmental intervention is that you can't have it both ways. These companies want the governmetn to step in to hlp them with their problems, but let's take a look - are they going to contribute back once the government has intervened? What are they really proposing, a 20% revenue tax on consumer products that are sold with these new US sourced chips? No. Of course not. God forbid they actually…

Just to play devil's advocate, what would the world look like had there been massive investment 5-10 years ago? The benefits would probably have been a chip shortage that wasn't and we'd be free to complain about other things.

Unless they put the fab in Texas and it went offline with all the other fabs in the power outages? Or went bankrupt, like the previous "let's onshore an important piece of high tech" plan, Solyndra?

If it was started 5-10 years ago, would it have survived the change of administrations?

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

#173

Post by coliveira »

It is funny that the US intelligentsia complains about China as being dominated by government, but there is nothing really big done in the US without huge costs for American tax payers, frequently without any retribution. This is clearly the next step: the US corporations created the "big enemy" China by exporting jobs there during the last 40 years, now they want the same taxpayers to pay for rebuilding the US industrial base that they destroyed, because they're afraid of the competition. It is really a con business.

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

#174

Post by yarg »

bluedino wrote: post #85
_wldu wrote: post #69

IBM use to manufacture PowerPC chips in New York and Vermont. They may still, but I'm not sure.

AFAIK the Vermont plant is owned by GlobalFoundries and is still operational.

I think GlobalFoundries pretty much abandoned the idea of actually improving their tech (https://www.anandtech.com/show/13277/globalfoundries-stops-a...).

I'm not sure what's changed since then.

It may work for GF, but it's not enough for national security interests - critical parts of the supply chain depend on a potentially hostile foreign power (and it's not just silicon).

I'd say the US should invest in TSMC, and push to expand manufacturing capabilities to domesticate some production - but good luck convincing taxpayer's that that's a good idea.

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

#175

Post by jvanderbot »

fsn4dN69ey wrote: post #159
jvanderbot wrote: post #63

Well, TSMC had 2020 revenue in the 30 giga-$ range. Even a few 3% sales tax on that revenue would pay for a 5 giga-$ investment in 5 years. (or a few F-35's / year) That's grossly optimistic numbers, given US labor costs, startup costs, etc, but it's also potentially a reasonable investment that would be sustained by domestic and international purchases (one would hope).

TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation) is a foreign company that operates entirely overseas - why would the US have authority to tax them? If anything I'd imagine they'd be against this proposal.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant that "A US-led TSMC-like foundry (since we're talking about funding a US chip production facility) would be a good source of tax income that might justify a federal startup investment."

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

#177

Post by ClumsyPilot »

robbrown451 wrote: post #31

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."

This sounds a lot like "God moves in mysterious ways and has a plan for everyone, everything happens for a reason". No actual analysis and reasoning required.

This free market religion is what gave us 2008 and will keep giving.

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

#178

Post by jimmont »

The Fed could possibly buy TSM and provide loan and grants to TSMC to accelerate their plant in Phoenix. I don't know how much that would impact the projected 2024 start of operations. https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2021/03/02/taiwan-s... This is an especially good position for Taiwan right now. Also worth noting the concerns around available labor to staff the operation https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2021/03/02/taiwan-s... as much of the US lacks effective infrastructure.

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

#179

Post by fvv »

50b would be better spent founding Taiwan entering un and it's emancipation ,and going explicitly to defend them along with Eu instead of wasting money for Intel buybacks, 50b in that industry is nothing, America and free world need Taiwan independence ( and i'm saying that not because Taiwanese ,i'm European but Europe is weak in those geopolitics play and need us for sure)

Globalization is inevitable , resistance is futile, in 300y we will have the world finally united and democrat with some due exception

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

#180

Post by Nasrudith »

xeromal wrote: post #11
toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been calls for some time to treat semiconductor manufacturing as in the interest of national security. The funding and policy isn't onerous to do so, and "never let a crisis go to waste." Something similar was already done for rare earths [1]. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=rare+earth+us+national+secur...

That's not an incorrect way of thinking! If we need it to be effective for self-defense and existence, it probably needs to be protected as such.

I would call it technically correct but useless only because of how ill defined and exploitable national security is as a notion to bypass all objections by turning everything into an existential threat. Everything is in some degree important to national security - entertainment is a matter of national security because bored soldiers are less vigilant.
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