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Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

electronicsweekly.com

131–140 of 593 posts

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;-)

Yes, Bosch just built a huge factory in Saxony

I hope they treat the workers well.

Maybe their chips will end up in my next laptop.

(I think I can keep repairing this one for a while, sorry I'm a bad capitalist or whatever.)

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but it is the monopoly supplier of the single most important device for fabs. If ASML (and all their knowledge) disappeared off the face of the earth today progress in semiconductors would probably be set back a decade or two. The fact they are a single company in one country that the global industry depends on for progress in semis should be of concern.

What company has the next-best litho machines after ASML?

There is no alternative. Without EUV machines (produced solely by ASML), anything below 10nm is infeasible until we find a different way that works at scale.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#134
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.

I don't think this is why fabs were centralized. I think this is because when you start to decrease node size, the fab costs go up astronomically so to keep the cost in check you need economies of scale and with the current manufacturing techniques you can achieve this by centralizing manufacturing.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#135

A more interdependent world is a friendlier and more secure world. When countries are completely independent of each other they will be able to more easily shrug off economic consequences of their aggression. Economic ties also foster greater cultural exchange and understanding, so the less of those there are the insular and navel-gazing the inhabitants of such countries will tend to be, which will also increase the…

That has been the prevailing thought since before WWI, but multiple World Wars and Russia's invasion of Ukraine this year have proven otherwise.

Do you know who was the biggest trading partner of Nazi Germany on the eve of Operation Barbarossa? You guessed it, the Soviet Union. It was responsible for the vast majority of imports of critical resources like various metals, oil, grain, etc. It didn't stop Hitler.

Do you know who were the main buyers of Russian gas, and via which country that gas arrives to them? You guessed it, EU, and the main pipelines pass through Ukraine.

On paper, yes, you're absolutely right. But you're assuming rationality where it's far from certain. Same as in the 1930s, we have a bunch of empty populists everywhere who are anything but rational, intent on blaming everything bad on "bad guys of today", be it the EU, migrants, Soros, the Jews, Nazis, have your pick. With those types of people, you can't assume rationality of actions. Brexit wasn't a rational decision, to give but one example. Poland infringing on press and human freedoms against the will of the EU, while receiving billions of aid from the EU, isn't rational.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#136

It's too late for Intel. x86 doesn't have a future, ARM64 SoC architectures like Apple's M1 (TSMC) are the future of computing. Just as fast (and often faster in many benchmarks) with only 20-25% the power consumption and heat. Even Microsoft is preparing for the shift to ARM, at Build 2⁰22 they announced project Voltera, an ARM Windows 11 PC loaded with Visual Studio 2022 and .NET 7 all for ARM to give devs a head s…

But Intel is investing in ARM/RISC-V and x86 will be with us a bit longer (probably even 10+years). I would be more concerned about AMD then I'm about Intel tbh.

AMD recently acquired Xilinx, who makes ARM SoCs https://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/soc.html

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#137

It's going to be a while before we are not depending on China. If you look at this 2020 Apple List of Suppliers: https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Supp... you can see the large variety of companies they they rely on for manufacturing. Plugging this into Excel, you get the following distribution: Country Count: China 156 Japan 40 US 30 Taiwan 26 South Korea 23 Vietnam 21 Malaysia 15 Philippines 1…

However the suppliers this fab with its EU-subsidies aims to outcompete are not in China but in Taiwan, the US, and South Korea.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#138

It's too late for Intel. x86 doesn't have a future, ARM64 SoC architectures like Apple's M1 (TSMC) are the future of computing. Just as fast (and often faster in many benchmarks) with only 20-25% the power consumption and heat. Even Microsoft is preparing for the shift to ARM, at Build 2⁰22 they announced project Voltera, an ARM Windows 11 PC loaded with Visual Studio 2022 and .NET 7 all for ARM to give devs a head s…

But Intel is investing in ARM/RISC-V and x86 will be with us a bit longer (probably even 10+years). I would be more concerned about AMD then I'm about Intel tbh.

than

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#139
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, but ASML is not a chip fab

No but it is the monopoly supplier of the single most important device for fabs. If ASML (and all their knowledge) disappeared off the face of the earth today progress in semiconductors would probably be set back a decade or two. The fact they are a single company in one country that the global industry depends on for progress in semis should be of concern.

There are tons of these.

Intel FLIR DeBeers Westinghouse for nuclear stuff Lots of specialty suppliers for aerospace where there is only one or two companies that do a particular thing.

Its actually super common.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ASML/asml-holding/...

Profit margin is a different thing.

Ah, I missed “of” in 30% of profits. In which case, I thought Apple’s take was 30% of gross on the app store, not profit?
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