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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

#101

Post by bpodgursky »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #100
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 This has never been how it works. Oil is a global commodity. Even if the US produced as much as it consumes, if something happened in the middle east, the global price would go up. Because when the price went up in Europe or Asia, American oil producers would sell to the highest bidder, which would force American consumers to bid higher. The real path to "independence" is to stop consum…

The US can, and absolutely will, restrict oil exports if prices start to skyrocket. Gas prices are an enormous electoral cudgel.

It wasn't even legal to export oil until 2015! https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-118#:~:text=With%20U.S.%....

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

#102

Post by scaramanga »

dboat wrote: post #83
freeflight wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm in Korea and I've yet to meet someone who actually wants the US troops out. That's because voicing such opinions, particularly to foreign strangers, is so far outside the established Overton window that South Koreans have been jailed for voicing them while working in the wrong occupation [0]. Case in point: Just look at the history of the No Gun Ri massacre during the Korea war [1], to this day neither the US n…

It is -just- because voicing those opinions is dangerous though? My understanding is that Chinese aggression is a major regional concern, even for average people.

So is the resurgence of fascism in Japan and Japan's re-armament. Those are big concerns in Korea, definitely bigger threat than North Korea, and probably a bigger threat than China.

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

#103

Post by lumost »

inglor_cz wrote: post #39
ithkuil wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

As for 2), it is less about outsourcing and more about gradual loss of competitiveness. The scientific and technological development between 2000 and 2020 led to a lot of corporations, not just in the U.S., falling out of the race because they could not keep up the pace. Nowadays, only Samsung and TSMC are left, with Intel lagging behind, but still not completely out. Similar consolidations have happened in the past…

This is an interesting take, I'd be curious how it applies to other industries. Is outsourcing an artifact of loss of technical/execution competence required to be competitive?

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

#104

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bpodgursky wrote: post #101
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is nearly oil-independent This has never been how it works. Oil is a global commodity. Even if the US produced as much as it consumes, if something happened in the middle east, the global price would go up. Because when the price went up in Europe or Asia, American oil producers would sell to the highest bidder, which would force American consumers to bid higher. The real path to "independence" is to stop consum…

The US can, and absolutely will, restrict oil exports if prices start to skyrocket. Gas prices are an enormous electoral cudgel. It wasn't even legal to export oil until 2015! https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-118#:~:text=With%20U.S.%... .

> The US can, and absolutely will, restrict oil exports if prices start to skyrocket.

That would cost US oil producers billions of dollars -- more than the price increase would cost US consumers. Which would only happen if oil producers had dramatically less political influence than they do now, i.e. if we stopped producing so much oil. But then there would be no reason to do it.

> It wasn't even legal to export oil until 2015!

Crude oil. It was protectionism for US refineries, not the other thing. Which makes oil cost consumers more, because of the reduction in competition for refining.

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

#105

Post by throw0101a »

csomar wrote: post #44
throwaway4good wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very American perspective on things. Hundreds of thousands of US troops are stationed in Germany, Japan, Korea here 75 years after the end of the second world war. Do you think we would like them to stay for another decade? Our politicians may not be in a position to say so, but we would really like our land to be free of foreign troops. As would any other nation.

I don't think so. > German Chancellor opposes US troop withdrawal plan https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/german-chancellor-opposes-us... Without having a powerful army, Europe is just an order from being invaded by Russia.

Going by military spending, any single EU country spends less than Russia, but 2+ spend more:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

Of course raw numbers don't tell the whole story:

* https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2019/05/03/ru...

* https://warontherocks.com/2019/12/why-russian-military-expen...

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

#106

Post by mastax »

flakiness wrote: post #68

Samsung stopped their own CPU development a couple years ago. I wonder how it costs in this chip warfare context. Maybe not a lot because the layer is different, but the moral level in the field might not as high as they hoped. [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/15061/samsung-to-cease-custom...

Samsung stopped custom CPU core development because their cores weren't very good and because ARMs got better and their R&D cost is shared amongst the industry.

Samsung still makes CPUs, they just use licensed ARM cores.

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

#107

Post by scaramanga »

AYBABTME wrote: post #59
throwaway4good wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very American perspective on things. Hundreds of thousands of US troops are stationed in Germany, Japan, Korea here 75 years after the end of the second world war. Do you think we would like them to stay for another decade? Our politicians may not be in a position to say so, but we would really like our land to be free of foreign troops. As would any other nation.

I'm in Korea and I've yet to meet someone who actually wants the US troops out. I've met people vaguely annoyed with drunken US soldiers and stuff like that, but as far as annecdata goes, I think Korea wants US troops.

They have overwhelmingly voted for a president on a platform of signing a peace treaty with North Korea. The US veto over South Korean foreign policy options, the presence of US troops (and, more importantly, their refusal to transfer OPCON over the Korean military despite decades of promises) has been a major impediment to exercising the democratic will of the South Korean body politic.

The problem is that Korea is a vassal state and there is no path to expelling occupying troops without conflict, which nobody wants.

If you ask more specific and nuanced questions which don't jump to such drastic solutions, then you are quite likely to get different responses. eg. "Should the Korean government command the Korean army?" or "Should Korean voters be able to decide on the relationship between ROK and DRPK?" / "What role should occupying powers (eg. Japan, China, US) play in that?" or "What should be done about US officials guilty of atrocities (eg. Gwangju massacre) and other human rights offences (there's quite a lot of them) in South Korea?"

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

#108

Post by mushufasa »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #100
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 This has never been how it works. Oil is a global commodity. Even if the US produced as much as it consumes, if something happened in the middle east, the global price would go up. Because when the price went up in Europe or Asia, American oil producers would sell to the highest bidder, which would force American consumers to bid higher. The real path to "independence" is to stop consum…

absolutely true. Since some people are questioning this in the comments: for those that want to do their own research, this is called 'The Law of One Price,' and it applies to other commodities where transportation and storage costs are low.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/law-one-price.asp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_one_price https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/ec...

This has been well established in mainstream energy economics for ~50 years. Other disciplines seem to have trouble grokking the arguments. But ask any professional trader and they'll go with the economists on this one.

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

#109

Post by phatfish »

quickthrowman wrote: post #76
throwaway4good wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very American perspective on things. Hundreds of thousands of US troops are stationed in Germany, Japan, Korea here 75 years after the end of the second world war. Do you think we would like them to stay for another decade? Our politicians may not be in a position to say so, but we would really like our land to be free of foreign troops. As would any other nation.

> Hundreds of thousands of US troops are stationed in Germany, Japan, Korea here 75 years after the end of the second world war. Do you think we would like them to stay for another decade? Yes, I believe those countries would prefer if we stayed. Japan and S. Korea are particularly close to China and prefer we’re around to tamp down Chinese aggression. Germany is hoping we don’t withdraw our troops: https://m.dw.com/…

Okinawa at least seems fed up with the occupation: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20210515_13/

Europe would do much better by defending itself on its own terms rather than perpetually hiding behind the Stars and Stripes. Hopefully Trump made it clear how dangerous that is.

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

#110

Post by throwaway_45 »

ithkuil wrote: post #30
baybal2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In general its a dirty process. There are a lot of toxic chemicals involved. People might get sick. Margins aren't as good as software and its very capital intensive so investors would rather invest in software. Lots of booms and bust in the semiconductor industry.
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