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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

#491

Post by mushbino »

ISL wrote: post #171
mmastrac wrote: 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.

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

A system that doesn't rely on perpetual tension in the search for ever expanding profit would be far better for stability. It's typically been the case that the ones who have the most influence in government know how to make huge profits from instability and conflict. Take a look at the companies making huge profits from the current instability.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#492

Post by justapassenger »

alaricus wrote: post #308
justapassenger wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competing with Intel is out of the question for any local chip company. But semiconductors is much much much more than high end CPUs. There’s totally a huge opportunity for local chip companies to grow. And having company like Intel may help, as people who work there will get a lot of know how that they can take to smaller local companies to help them grow.

> Competing with Intel is out of the question for any local chip company. Why? Intell lost the mobile, and is currently losing desktop/server. RISC-V is more promising each passing day. If India can do this, why can't Europe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31243674

It took Apple, one of the most powerful company in history, about decade and half, multiple acquisitions and many billions of dollars to be able to compete with Intel.

By the time any incumbent in Germany would be ready, even assuming they start right now, that fab will be heavily outdated.

But there’s literally bazillion other semiconductors (and they are the main reason for the shortage, not high end CPUs) that you can competitively manufacture and increase supply chain locality for critical components.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#493

Post by nickstinemates »

imbnwa wrote: post #422
FooBarWidget wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is interesting to read, I'm curious how this diverges/converges from the observation that: In the West the words for referring to someone formally are words that used to refer to the nobility exclusively (Mister, Misses in English comes from 'Master, Mistress', Monsieur, Madamme in French, Señor, Señora in Spanish, derive from 'My Lord, My Lady' respectively). So in the West, the cultural transformation was more…

> Democracy in the West is more than a mere political configuration, its also the cultural precept (however divergent in interpretation)

This was a hard concept for my Thai wife to grasp at first. I described it this way.

In America, each person represents their own kingdom. The government exists to serve (and be subservient) and protect us to keep the peace. I always try to remind myself that government by the people, for the people means that the balance of power lies solely with the people.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#494

Post by nautilius »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #378
christkv wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well multiply that by 3x if there were no interconnectedness.

I'm not sure you understand what a necessary condition is.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#495

Post by fomine3 »

alaricus wrote: post #349
WoahNoun wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was also hated by other EU countries: >President of the European Council Donald Tusk said that Nord Stream 2 is not in the EU's interests.[19] Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán have questioned the different treatment of Nord Stream 2 and South Stream projects.[19][20] Some claim that the project violates the long-term declared strategy of the EU to diversify its gas supp…

Nord Stream 2 was opposed by Americans who want to sell overpriced LNG to Europe. It was also opposed by Eastern Europeaners such as Tusk who (understandibly) dislike Russia.

Now it's proved that Eastern are right.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#497

Post by bradgessler »

mmastrac wrote: 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.

Not just fabs, but other staples like baby formula.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#498

Post by bradgessler »

ISL wrote: post #171
mmastrac wrote: 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.

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

Up to a point. Like anything, there’s trade-offs that have to be considered. Globalization, at its maximum, would centralize the production of resources to places that are most efficient. As we’ve seen, this causes huge problems when the production and/or distribution systems go down. We finally got a taste of that and are paying the price for it. Some level of decentralization will be good, but hopefully we don’t overdo it and end up too far in the other direction.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#499

Post by csb6 »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #378
christkv wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well multiply that by 3x if there were no interconnectedness.

Why by 3? Is there any kind of basis for that number or is it just speculation?

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#500

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

bottled_poe wrote: post #168
cinntaile wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems to me that most software is horribly inefficient anyway. If push came to shove we might just consider making better software?

Software is bloated and slow to make it faster to develop mostly.

Look at your average website with 85 megabytes of JavaScript and Bootstrap for the UI.

TreeShaking in theory can get rid of all that unneeded JS - and there should be something that can do it for CSS, too.

But most people aren't using it. And even if they did, there would still be a lot of bloat left over from using the libraries to make life a little bit easier.

Go to average midsize startup and the amount of this going on is multiplied exponentially by the number of developers.

There's not really a cure here.

There's not enough engineers that know how to do things absent these frameworks - that even if you do know - it's still not worth it because the people you'll be working with probably don't.

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