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Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

electronicsweekly.com

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Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#331
post #47
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, but ASML is not a chip fab

I think the point was that high-tech shouldn't be concentrated in one location. What if ASML was in China?

ASML is prohibited from shipping its newest machines to China by the Dutch government, because of heavy US pressure. I'm sure China would love ASML to be fully based there.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind explaining why you think this is the case?

America is not part of Europe. No reason to spend European money supporting American companies.

European money for European manufacturing staffed exclusively with Europeans and making chips for European products used by Europeans in Europe.

The question OP asked is why it matters to you that the company that owns the fab is not European? The local investment is what should matter, no?

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Especially when it comes to despotic life-long leaders. After 2018, Xi no longer has to worry about the pretense of term limits. We can only hope the state of Russia after the Ukrainian conflict is a convincing enough lesson.

Invading Taiwan...the risks are substantial and the gain is legacy. Hardly a convincing for a nation, but potentially convincing for a man facing mortality.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no contradiction in interconnected economies being both better for global stability and more volatile to global instability. On a populist level, these kinds of questions are always presented as either-or, when in reality it is a pretty delicate balancing act. No, we shouldn't be completely reliant on potentially adversarial states for our basic well-being, but intertwined economies change the cost-benefit-an…

The USSR and United States had zero trade and never went to war. And since the fall of the USSR the number of conflicts has not gone down. Ukraine and Russia were very interconnected, but that did not prevent the invasion.

Uh, we sold them grain, and they sold oil, and let’s leave aside the NEP period…

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ex…

Russia is not going to invade Germany. Stop spreading nonsense.

You are very confident of that. I wouldn't be so confident of that.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#336
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I ultimately believe you're correct (along with open borders and travel) I wish there were more rigorous proofs that this were the case. I think about the line in West Wing: "Free trade is essential for human rights...the end of that sentence is 'we hope because nothing else has worked.' ...Chinese political prisoners are going to be sewing soccer balls with their teeth whether we sell them cheeseburgers or not…

Human rights is more than just political rights or speech. Hundreds of millions of Chinese lifted out of poverty is a huge win for human rights. When you're poor, you're not free. Having grown up with dirty streets and beggars, you can't possibly imagine how big a deal it is for me to see my hometown transforming into a modern metropolis, and how my grandparents-in-law (in a different city, in a rural area) finaly ha…

> It's because Chinese define democracy by whether they believe their government works for their interest and whether they yield good results, not by how their government is elected.

I'm going to be thinking about this sentence for the rest of my life

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#337
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cutting edge of software that mostly uses these advanced process node sizes is not horribly inefficient. The new applications enabled by, for example, GPU-accelerated ML are not the same as running 400 chrome tabs on an M1. The hot paths in most important high-end computing are mostly quite efficient.

> The hot paths in most important high-end computing are mostly quite efficient. it’s hard to determine the lower bound on a lot of these things. in scientific computing (e.g. physics sims) i still run across a lot of runtime branching that could easily be compiled out if we were using languages that had stronger type systems/templates. we use linear approximations for a lot of things, but it’s been shown that smarte…

You seem to be arguing against "optimal", while quoting parent's "mostly quite efficient". The reality is that while everything is converging to a locally optimal point on the tradeoff curve, a _lot_ of software out there runs in the "hardware is my driving cost" locale. This makes companies squeeze epsilons out of their servers. There's also the "selling hardware is my profit centre", which end-users get to pay for.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#338
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A connected world is not a guaranteed sufficient condition for peace. But that does not mean it's not a necessary condition for peace. One could argue that without economic interconnectivity, Europe could have fought WW1 much earlier, or would have had wars much more often.

While I ultimately believe you're correct (along with open borders and travel) I wish there were more rigorous proofs that this were the case. I think about the line in West Wing: "Free trade is essential for human rights...the end of that sentence is 'we hope because nothing else has worked.' ...Chinese political prisoners are going to be sewing soccer balls with their teeth whether we sell them cheeseburgers or not…

Interconnectedness exposes your countrymen more to other countries cultures - it is much harder to war against a people who you can't paint as a demonic "other". I don't really think that the private industrial sourcing concerns have any real pressure to apply against war - those industries aren't the government and, even with modern supply chain minimalism, it'll take a while for one or two industry sectors to really cause widespread pain to an economy. Those personal connections across borders, though, those are the best defense against war.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#339
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the main argument for global trade already in 1914. France was Germany's most important commercial partner, and vice-versa. All German rifles had stocks made from French walnut wood! All French locomotives had German-made tubing! This stupid mantra was repeated ad nauseam after 1991, too, with silly op-eds from Friedman and friends about how two countries with McDonald joints in both can't be at war and simi…

A connected world is not a guaranteed sufficient condition for peace. But that does not mean it's not a necessary condition for peace. One could argue that without economic interconnectivity, Europe could have fought WW1 much earlier, or would have had wars much more often.

Eh have you looked at the list of wars in Europe in the 19th century?

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#340
post #270
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very important for national stability. A highly-interconnected global economy is arguably better at securing international stability.

That was the main argument for global trade already in 1914. France was Germany's most important commercial partner, and vice-versa. All German rifles had stocks made from French walnut wood! All French locomotives had German-made tubing! This stupid mantra was repeated ad nauseam after 1991, too, with silly op-eds from Friedman and friends about how two countries with McDonald joints in both can't be at war and simi…

And in 1812 the UK was the US's biggest trading partner. And that created major tensions in the US, with New England almost threatening secession over it. But the war still happened.
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