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Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

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Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#181

Post by dragonwriter »

pmoriarty wrote: post #124

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…

> A more interdependent world is a friendlier and more secure world.

No, it's not. Wars between major trading partners aren't historically uncommon at all.

> When countries are completely independent of each other they will be able to more easily shrug off economic consequences of their aggression.

When countries (particularly those toward opposite ends of the extraction -> intermediate goods -> finished goods -> finance & services spectrum) are integrated with trade, it produces durable inequalities through ricardian specialization and strong resentments that are either subjugating through imperial domination, mollified through political union and welfare policies, or expressed in war. Sometimes the latter even after the former through political union.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#182

Post by dv_dt »

Sakos wrote: post #160
dv_dt wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficult thing about even very good prevention is that the absence of events is difficult to prove. Is interconnection perfect? obviously not. Does interconnection prevent more conflicts vs fully independent nations? Likely yes. I think what we are seeing is societies and governments forgetting how bad wars are for stability, on a backdrop of slowing or reversing quality of life for many modern nations.

Your mistake is believing that financial interdependence is what prevents conflict instead of, say, shared values, political interdependence, cultural exchange, etc. Things that aren't money bind countries together far, far, far stronger than a stack of money ever could. That's the biggest reason why trying to bind Russia financially failed, and why it's been failing with China for the past 20 years. Ideology is such…

I don't think financial interdependence is exclusively what prevents conflict. Shared values and cultural exchanges develop when you spend more time interacting, and financial connections are one excuse to spend more time interacting.

I actually wish more nations provided for a youth international travel trip as part of a high school post grad type public benefit. I think it would do a lot for long term peace in the world. It would be better if money weren't the primary driver for so much.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#183

Post by JoachimS »

baybal2 wrote: post #95
lm28469 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes Taiwan inherently better than somewhere else ? If it's just for historical and/or economical reason I don't see why Europe or the US couldn't build their own chemical plants. You have to start somewhere, it took us decades to delocalise everything to Asia, it'll take decades to build these industries locally.

You have just asked why we can't "just move manufacturing out of China:" There are no individual chemical plants, there are huge chemical complexes owned by many companies with own well guarded know hows. There may be 2-4 suppliers in a row producing some intermediary product used in making of only 1 output. Just to make the semiconductor grade hyperpure propanol you need ultrapure catalysts, ultrapure sulphuric acid…

Excellent explanation.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#184

Post by vvladymyrov »

_fat_santa wrote: post #152
baybal2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 attack…

> When China attacks Taiwan, the 1st world is fucked. China would be shooting themselves in the foot by invading, because it would equally fuck them. I've read in may places that as soon as China invades, Taiwan will blow up all the fabs and supporting supply lines. So even if China takes control of Taiwan, the semiconductor industry will be a smoldering pile of nothingness. This article[1] does a great job in descri…

We just have example of another country shooting itself in the foot and attacking Ukraine despite a wealth of widely known arguments against doing this. Unfortunately logic and common sense sometimes take back sit in politics.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#186

Post by [deleted] »

jagger27 wrote: post #121
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #10

Once again EU taxpayer money bankrolling US tech dominance. When will we ever learn to build up our domestic tech industry? And before the chip hipsters crawl all over my back to prove we ackshually have a powerful domestic semi industry, please name me another EU company, other than ASML (a company 90% of people here never heard of before the chip shortage), that has the same margins, dominance and ability to shape…

If Intel’s new EU fabs operate under the TSMC foundry model, is that not a good thing for the EU? Let’s say I’m a smaller company in France looking to get a chip made on a bleeding edge node. I don’t have existing contacts in Taiwan. Surely I just go next door to Intel, right? If Global Foundries couldn’t pull off the leap to 7nm even with ASML next door, who do you suggest is capable of doing so other than Intel, Sa…

[deleted]

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#187

Post by jotm »

pmoriarty wrote: post #124

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's true, but the other side of the coin is that richer/more developed countries take all the specialists and raw materials from poorer countries, set up low level factories for the remaining idiots, control the IP and sell them finished products.

Leaving them in a perpetual "developing" state, unless they smarten up, which is really hard without all the smart people that left, and even harder because the people in power are more than happy to keep things as they are because they get paid for it.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#188

Post by dragonwriter »

dv_dt wrote: post #147
sofixa wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The difficult thing about even very good prevention is that the absence of events is difficult to prove. Is interconnection perfect? obviously not. Does interconnection prevent more conflicts vs fully independent nations? Likely yes. I think what we are seeing is societies and governments forgetting how bad wars are for stability, on a backdrop of slowing or reversing quality of life for many modern nations.

> The difficult thing about even very good prevention is that the absence of events is difficult to prove.

No, an inverse relation between propensity of dyads to go to war and their degree of trade integration wouldn't be hard to prove, if it were true.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#189

Post by riedel »

Sakos wrote: post #145
alaricus wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subsidizing an American company is not necessary for Germany's security. In fact, it undermines it.

Ideally, the EU would be trying to build its own semiconductor industry. I don't see that kind of foresight in any of our political leaders, much less mine in Germany. So the next best thing is to ensure that the current company we're reliant on builds local production.

Germany used to have a semiconductor industry like Intermetall (acquired by micronas acquired by TDK). The problem is that IMHO German automotive industry is not willing to pay a cent more than necessary.

They do only care about short term profit. They triggered the chip crisis in Germany by stopping there orders and then restocking. I am not sure if any government can fix this.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#190

Post by tyrfing »

mcdermott wrote: post #44

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…

> Microsoft will partner with Qualcomm and have their own custom SoC like the M1

Microsoft partnered with Qualcomm 6 years ago and there have been a number of terrible systems released. You probably haven't heard of them because of how bad they are. If there's any progress for Windows+ARM, it's really from Qualcomm's exclusive agreement expiring. They're hyping the Nuvia team right now, but Qualcomm's track record is ridiculously bad, and there's a bit more work involved here than incanting "ARM".

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