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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

#151

Post by throwaway21_ »

jollybean wrote: post #127
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.

" but we would really like our land to be free of foreign troops. " You are probably not in the majority there. Do you want the Russians grabbing larger of E. Europe and seeing how far they can go with it? At the end of the cold war it seemed as though maybe NATO might be past it's usefulness, but after a resurgent Russia, it seems more like it's going to take another 70-100 years probably. Also, the 'rest of the wor…

Great work in the Libya guys - 10 years later country is still at war, 10s of thousands dead (and counting), people are worse in every possible way than during Gadaffi rule... Can't wait to see more similar interventions in the future.

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

#152

Post by [deleted] »

HappyTypist wrote: post #91
Anarch157a wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Ethereum adopting proof of stake, Bitcoin will be left as the only driver for mining hardware. Even they will have to move to proof of stake some day, since it's not sustainable. I believe that the bigest drivers for silicon demand will be IoT devices, including automobiles, especialy when they become more affordable in the 3rd world. The pressure from SaaS and cloud is more predictable than the consume market,…

There is about zero chance of bitcoin moving to proof of stake. Something so fundamental about its SHA256(SHA256())) PoW structure just isn't going to get changed, unless there's a vulnerability in SHA256.

[deleted]

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

#153

Post by [deleted] »

pm90 wrote: post #146
smhost wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Japan and S. Korea are particularly close to China and prefer we’re around to tamp down Chinese aggression. It's not that simple. American presence on the Korean peninsula makes reunification efforts overly complicated. By some estimates, reunification would grow the Korean economy to be the third largest in the world. It would also give Koreans access to Russian pipelines and a large border with China. When climat…

Korean unification is not impeded by the presence of US troops, but by the demands of the DPRK over the nature of what the unified state would look like; it seems unlikely that the current Regime would give up its power just like that. Remember that US troops were stationed in Berlin/ West Germany prior to German unification (i'll admit its not the exact same situation since the East German economy was relatively muc…

[deleted]

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

#154

Post by smhost »

pm90 wrote: post #146
smhost wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Japan and S. Korea are particularly close to China and prefer we’re around to tamp down Chinese aggression. It's not that simple. American presence on the Korean peninsula makes reunification efforts overly complicated. By some estimates, reunification would grow the Korean economy to be the third largest in the world. It would also give Koreans access to Russian pipelines and a large border with China. When climat…

Korean unification is not impeded by the presence of US troops, but by the demands of the DPRK over the nature of what the unified state would look like; it seems unlikely that the current Regime would give up its power just like that. Remember that US troops were stationed in Berlin/ West Germany prior to German unification (i'll admit its not the exact same situation since the East German economy was relatively muc…

> Korean unification is not impeded by the presence of US troops, but by the demands of the DPRK over the nature of what the unified state would look like.

The fact that the American military gets to decide what the Korean people want or what the reunification process will look like, is the single biggest factor hampering the peace process.

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

#155

Post by tooltalk »

adventured wrote: post #11
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.

Strategically it wouldn't make sense. South Korea shouldn't do that because the US is their defense umbrella and helping China in such a manner would go against the spirit of that pact, de facto helping to undermine the containment system being placed on China by the West.

so true. Aside from SK's geopolitical alliance with the US, South Korea has so much to gain from the West's banishment of China than anyone else. The current situation between the West vs China is the best thing happened to South Korea since the Japan-US trade war that helped SK's semiconductor manufacturing industry get their foot in the door and eventually surpass all their Japanese rivals in the 80's and 90's.

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

#156

Post by tooltalk »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #27
threeseed wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

SK suppliers maintaly supply memory and displays to those Chinese makers and they are already produced locally in China. Samsung OLED mobile display may be the exception to this.

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

#157

Post by ksec »

ddbb33 wrote: post #3
ivalm wrote: post #2

Exciting about the progress but semi has always been boom and bust, I hope all the rush for investment will not create another down cycle.

I didn’t know that. Do you have some sources / examples?

It is not entirely accurate to describe all semi are boom and burst cycle. But DRAM and NAND tends to follow that trend, although it finally manage to stabilise in the past decade mostly due to lack of competition ( or some calls it a cartel )

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

#158

Post by totalZero »

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…

Your comment assumes free-market pricing, but crude oil exports from the USA used to be unlawful (the ban was lifted in 2015) and they could presumably become unlawful again. There is no legal reason why the US government could not extend such a ban to include refined petroleum.

https://www.pillsburylaw.com/en/news-and-insights/us-repeals...

Also, several oil-producing nations have off-market domestic pricing for refined petroleum that is favorable versus the international spot price. Such prices won't naturally change when, say, the Strait of Hormuz closes. The IMF has been trying to force free-market pricing, as was the cause of the Ecuador protests in 2019.

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

#159

Post by totalZero »

mushufasa wrote: post #108
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…

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 bee…

That is very theoretical. In practice, petroleum markets go to great pains to deal with transportation and storage. Look up "netback pricing" as a start.

Crude is not an identical commodity in the sense that is assumed by the Law Of One Price. There are some crude specifications that certain refineries prefer not to process, either due to sulfur or viscosity or other characteristics for which the refinery may be ill equipped.

https://www.mckinseyenergyinsights.com/resources/refinery-re...

Crude transportation takes time and money. Transportation prices rise in correlation to crude prices, but they matter if you are determining the relative marketability of different products sourced around the globe.

Arbitrage works worst when transactions are lossy, costly, delayed, and unique, as is the case in the petroleum market.

https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/

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

#160

Post by berkes »

nicoburns wrote: post #25
berkes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

> 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.

Indeed! Related, my pet-peeve, is that consolidation eventually leads to monopolisation: concentrating selling power to relatively few companies. The current growth model of most tech-companies hinges on the monopolisation almost entirely.

Free markets have organisations and systems in place to protect against that; which clearly shows that a free market -in its current state- cannot operate effectively without outside intervention. These orgs are only now moving against the 20-th century monopolies, and doing so too late and too little (IMHO).

But, another clear flaw in capitalism and free markets, patched with centralised, planned governments intervening in those markets.

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