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Samsung boosts non-memory chip investment to $151B

reuters.com

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Re: Samsung boosts non-memory chip investment to $151B

#21

Post by lifeisstillgood »

This is not just some pork-barrel politics of bribing a company to stay in a given country. S Korea will view this similarly to Taiwan - their chip fabs are existential to their country and state.

The USA is becoming more isolationist - it is nearly oil-independent, so it's signalling pulling out of the middle east (deals with Iran etc).

But it is not silicon-independent.

So S Korea and Taiwan are totally dependent on massive US troop deployments (25,000 !! US troops by the DMZ, a whole fleet patrolling the straits by Taiwan).

Ensuring chips flow in their country is a matter of national security - so the price is probably low.

Re: Samsung boosts non-memory chip investment to $151B

#22

Post by nicoburns »

threeseed wrote: post #18
totalZero wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a chance that what we are observing is different from the past demand spikes. The way we work and learn has changed, and it doesn't look like a reversion to pre-telework habits will ever fully occur. Several companies (including Salesforce, Twitter, Square, and Spotify) have said that telework will be a significant part of their post-pandemic reality. Meanwhile, electric vehicles are slowly but surely taking…

Also don't forget crypto which is still growing and demands custom hardware. And the continued move within the enterprise towards using cloud computing and SaaS products. No matter which way you look there is an increasing demand for silicon.

Cryto may end up being a huge downturn in demand if it ever gets legislated against (not that unlikely if it's share of energy usage continues to grow significantly)

Re: Samsung boosts non-memory chip investment to $151B

#23

Post by baybal2 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #21

This is not just some pork-barrel politics of bribing a company to stay in a given country. S Korea will view this similarly to Taiwan - their chip fabs are existential to their country and state. The USA is becoming more isolationist - it is nearly oil-independent, so it's signalling pulling out of the middle east (deals with Iran etc). But it is not silicon-independent. So S Korea and Taiwan are totally dependent o…

> it is nearly oil-independent,

Like as if it wasn't for the entire century. USA has ennormous, and largely unexplored oil reserves.

Re: Samsung boosts non-memory chip investment to $151B

#24

Post by ithkuil »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #21

This is not just some pork-barrel politics of bribing a company to stay in a given country. S Korea will view this similarly to Taiwan - their chip fabs are existential to their country and state. The USA is becoming more isolationist - it is nearly oil-independent, so it's signalling pulling out of the middle east (deals with Iran etc). But it is not silicon-independent. So S Korea and Taiwan are totally dependent o…

Did anybody do the math of whether it's more cost effective to pay for all that military to ensure you get cheap silicon made in countries with cheaper labor that in the US rather than just subsidizing the production of semiconductors domestically?

Re: Samsung boosts non-memory chip investment to $151B

#25

Post by nicoburns »

berkes wrote: post #14
monsecchris wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should let the government decide how many chips we need, they really outdid themselves on toilet paper last time.

Such comments annoy me. I'm quite radical capitalist (European, though). But any time someone points out flaws in capitalism, people respond with 'but socialism is worse' or 'planned markets are bad too'. A false dichotomy as clear as you get. Capitalism has known flaws. That we should name, know and solve. A famous flaw is the pork cycle, which we see at work here. Pointing out such flaws is good, because it allows…

Yes, exactly! It's such a failure of imagination to think that the economic systems we've tried so far are the only ones available.

For me the biggest flaw in capitalism is that it tends to concentrate wealth over the long term, which in turn undermines the "wisdom of the crowd" principle market systems are based on by concentrating buying power in relatively few people.

We could fix this with much more aggressive progressive taxation and still have a system that is fundementally market based and looks nothing like a planned economy.

Re: Samsung boosts non-memory chip investment to $151B

#26

Post by mschuster91 »

baybal2 wrote: post #23
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #21

This is not just some pork-barrel politics of bribing a company to stay in a given country. S Korea will view this similarly to Taiwan - their chip fabs are existential to their country and state. The USA is becoming more isolationist - it is nearly oil-independent, so it's signalling pulling out of the middle east (deals with Iran etc). But it is not silicon-independent. So S Korea and Taiwan are totally dependent o…

> it is nearly oil-independent, Like as if it wasn't for the entire century. USA has ennormous, and largely unexplored oil reserves.

They're unexplored for a reason. Fracking is immensely damaging to the ecosystem.

Additionally, the US won't ever need to touch these again if it manages to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels.

Re: Samsung boosts non-memory chip investment to $151B

#27

Post by FooBarWidget »

threeseed wrote: post #17
throwaway4good wrote: post #10

It would make a lot of sense if the Koreans could fab for boycotted Chinese customers (HiSilicon etc.). Instead of trying to steal TSMC's business at Qualcomm, Apple, AMD etc.

It doesn't make any business sense at all. Huawei doesn't have much of a future outside of China and the increasing distrust towards CPP doesn't look like changing this anytime soon. So why would you want to help them out instead of trying to win business from US/EU companies who are desperately looking to diversify.

That is a very western-centric view. Outside of the west and India, Huawei is still going strong. Support for China is quite high in the middle east and in Africa, where many people are skeptical of western narratives about China.

Furthermore, Huawei isn't the only Chinese party that needs advanced chips. Other Chinese phone makers such as Oppo and Xiaomi aren't banned. But they have become wary of US dependence and are seeking to decouple their semiconductor supply chain from the US. To them, while Korean suppliers are more risky than Chinese suppliers (which still need time to catch up), it's still less risky than TSMC.

Re: Samsung boosts non-memory chip investment to $151B

#28

Post by baybal2 »

ithkuil wrote: post #24
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #21

This is not just some pork-barrel politics of bribing a company to stay in a given country. S Korea will view this similarly to Taiwan - their chip fabs are existential to their country and state. The USA is becoming more isolationist - it is nearly oil-independent, so it's signalling pulling out of the middle east (deals with Iran etc). But it is not silicon-independent. So S Korea and Taiwan are totally dependent o…

Did anybody do the math of whether it's more cost effective to pay for all that military to ensure you get cheap silicon made in countries with cheaper labor that in the US rather than just subsidizing the production of semiconductors domestically?

Modern fabs are nearly completely lights out.

There are more people sitting in offices there than on the floor.

I fact there is a huge oversupply of semiconductor engineers globally because of fabs becoming less, and less labour intensive.

Companies take a big effort to reduce the number of people on the floor futher, but now not so much for labour cost readon, but security. The chance of somebody who shouldn't really be on the floor acidentally pressing the wrong button, and sending $10M worth of wafers down the drain is the risk they don't want to take.

Re: Samsung boosts non-memory chip investment to $151B

#29

Post by baybal2 »

0-_-0 wrote: post #20
elygre wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you located, with a government that managed toilet paper output and availability?

To be fair, toilet paper shortages in planned economies were definitely a thing. My grandmother stockpiled toilet paper way after the fall of communism, I never understood why as a kid. (Her habit would have come handy at the start of the pandemic though...)

Month long toilet paper outages were a reality of life in USSR.

Though, fresh pronts of "Pravda" never were. That "Pravda" was a very versatile material: from toilet paper, to packaging material, to building material as packing for cracks in walls, to an underlayer for wallpaper.

Re: Samsung boosts non-memory chip investment to $151B

#30

Post by ithkuil »

baybal2 wrote: post #28
ithkuil wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did anybody do the math of whether it's more cost effective to pay for all that military to ensure you get cheap silicon made in countries with cheaper labor that in the US rather than just subsidizing the production of semiconductors domestically?

Modern fabs are nearly completely lights out. There are more people sitting in offices there than on the floor. I fact there is a huge oversupply of semiconductor engineers globally because of fabs becoming less, and less labour intensive. Companies take a big effort to reduce the number of people on the floor futher, but now not so much for labour cost readon, but security. The chance of somebody who shouldn't reall…

Two related questions:

1. Would it thus cost the same to operate such a fab in the US?

2. Why did the US outsourced the semiconductor fabrication in the first place? Was it more labour intensive in the past?

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