Live data from Hacker News

Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

electronicsweekly.com

11–20 of 593 posts

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#12
post #5

Honestly, this is good policy. We can't have our complete global supply chain held over our heads when China goes and does something crazy inevitably.

This is a very bad policy. We should instead invest in local companies, not a American monopoly like Intel.

We are - indirectly. Intel uses EUV machines provided by ASML.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#13
post #4

Just wait 10 years until we get rid of it again like we did with AMD and Infineon.

If they're willing to build a lot of processors rather than add dangerous features to use one chip or core or whatever maybe they can make it multiples of ten years this time ;-)

Wenn sie bereit sind, viele Prozessoren zu bauen, anstatt gefährliche Funktionen hinzuzufügen, um einen Chip oder Kern oder was auch immer zu verwenden, können sie dieses Mal vielleicht ein Vielfaches von zehn Jahren schaffen ;-)

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#14

Honestly, this is good policy. We can't have our complete global supply chain held over our heads when China goes and does something crazy inevitably.

> Honestly, this is good policy. We can't have our complete global supply chain held over our heads when China goes and does something crazy inevitably.

American/Italian and agreed.

Though I worry what will happen is they just spin up plants in the various totalitarian states of SE Asia in parallel.

(Eg: Vietnam is communist, Thailand is a kingdom, on the ground they are allegedly very similar, but I haven't been to either personally.)

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#15
post #8
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very bad policy. We should instead invest in local companies, not a American monopoly like Intel.

Why? Germany doesn’t pursue political objectivity anyway.

I don't want my tax money filling the coffers of an American monopoly.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#16
post #2

Investing in local chip fabs is long overdue. These are incredibly important for geopolitical stability and should be distributed world-wide. We've centralized too many fabs in too few places in the search for low cost.

This will not do much with Taiwan being a single source for semiconductor manufacturing supplies.

Much of critical blockers for chemicals, consumables, materials will still be in Taiwan just because the semi industry is that huge there.

All 300mm fabs working outside of Taiwan are just few shipments of consumables away from stalling all the time.

When Russia attacks Ukraine, the 3rd world is fucked.

When China attacks Taiwan, the 1st world is fucked.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#17
post #9
post #2

Investing in local chip fabs is long overdue. These are incredibly important for geopolitical stability and should be distributed world-wide. We've centralized too many fabs in too few places in the search for low cost.

Why is the local fab specifically important? They're still going to fly the wafers to Malaysia or wherever for packaging, right? And the tools and chemicals will all be made elsewhere, won't they? It's not as simple as having a steady supply of apples from your local orchard.

I think sourcing those things would be a lot easier than building a fab, on a time scale.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#18
post #9
post #2

Investing in local chip fabs is long overdue. These are incredibly important for geopolitical stability and should be distributed world-wide. We've centralized too many fabs in too few places in the search for low cost.

Why is the local fab specifically important? They're still going to fly the wafers to Malaysia or wherever for packaging, right? And the tools and chemicals will all be made elsewhere, won't they? It's not as simple as having a steady supply of apples from your local orchard.

There's a lot of assumptions there. Why don't you assume that it's about having as much of the supply chain locally?

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#19
post #2

Investing in local chip fabs is long overdue. These are incredibly important for geopolitical stability and should be distributed world-wide. We've centralized too many fabs in too few places in the search for low cost.

ASML is in the Netherlands though.

Edit: Yes ASML is obviously not a chip fab but they supply the machines that actually fabricate the chips.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#20
post #5

Honestly, this is good policy. We can't have our complete global supply chain held over our heads when China goes and does something crazy inevitably.

This is a very bad policy. We should instead invest in local companies, not a American monopoly like Intel.

Intel is far from a monopoly in the foundry business and is frankly, the only realistic option outside of TSMC to make this happen.

And the US does the same thing in terms of tax breaks for German automotive companies building manufacturing plants.

Which again, makes sense, because you want to make sure you have manufacturing across continents in case Russia invades Germany and blows up all of the auto plants (for example).

Post reply on HN