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Who cares? You can buy performant arm64 laptops and servers. HPC is GPUs.
> You can buy performant arm64 laptops and servers From? Apple doesn't count due to the extremely narrow usability of their software and the complexity of using other software on their hardware.
Glad to see so many people pissed off. Nothing will change but it's good to see so much information and callouts of corporate welfare.
Why pissed off? Intel is the one with experience and the US is desperate de-risking TSMC and control more of the chip as chips is one of the most important resources now and in future. Would they give it to Y-combinator startups? If Yes they would be a fraction of it, Intel earned this by being American and being the cornerstone of American Chip business for past few decades
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/opinion/pefco-export-impo...
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They could force them to license the production to one to three other companies who kick back a percentage of the profits to Intel. That makes two to four suppliers who receive the $25 billion. Then, we have competing firms. If they think that’s unfair, they can quit asking for our tax dollars to expand their for-profit businesses.
Nobody needs to force Intel to do this, Intel is already doing it. They manufacture other company's designs for hire. Opening up their foundries for use by other companies is part of Intel's current business strategy. There are only three companies in the world with cutting edge semiconductor manufacturing capability: Samsung, TSMC and Intel.
My proposal would use our tax dollars to create plants that use Intel technology, but aren’t under their control, with different business strategies, operational priorities, and money going to other directors. The supplier diversity would increase competition domestically while strengthening us. While not done the same way, my precedents for increasing suppliers are Intel having to license to AMD and IBM licensing to Freescale.
I just don't get it - the country has over $34 Trillion in debt already and we are handing out money to mega-rich corporations who don't need the money (among other things we waste money on). This is not going to end well - our kids and grand kids will be paying for it.
They would be paying far more if chips suddenly stopped coming out of Taiwan in the future and the U.S. had no onshore capacity to make their own. It’s more of an insurance policy than a subsidy. Intel needs a reason to build in the U.S., and grants tip the ROI scale on their side to make it happen.
It shouldn’t even be an option for Intel to continue manufacturing in other countries. It should be “move manufacturing back to the US or the Fed will take ownership of the whole company and do it for you.”
(And maybe it’s sort of an unspoken assumption that if they don’t take this carrot, then the US really would use the stick to force their manufacturing back into the US).
In the past 15 years Intel has spent almost $100 billion on stock buybacks. They don't need the money. This is a pure transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the rich. And they're getting more like $20 billion not once you include loans, etc. The wealthy make massive amounts of money, take it out for themselves, and then complain that they don't have capital. That's pure junk. And then we wonder why Biden's approval rat…
I never understood the anti-dividend and anti-buyback mindset.
I've given quite a bit of money to partially own a business (and I don't mean publicly traded shares, but literally buy a portion of a business). I have an agreement with the operator that I'll get N% of proceeds (as long as the business can handle that percentage). Are you saying that I, as an owner, am not entitled to it? That's rather ridiculous.
Imagine a friend coming to you who says "Hey, I need $50K capital to start a business. Let's be partners - you provide the capital, and I'll do the operations. Oh, and I'll give you whatever money I want, whenever I want. Perhaps none at all. It'll be entirely up to me."
Would you take that deal? Because that's how shares work.
Shareholders, on paper, are partial owners. Yet they do not even have an agreement like I do. The company can decide not to share any money at all with shareholders. IMO, all companies that sell shares to the public should be required by law to give a representative amount of money to these owners.
BTW, my N above is significantly higher than the percentage almost any company pays back in dividends. Intel used to give about 4.5% return via dividends, and that was triple the industry average. They've since reduced it to 1.5% to be in line with the industry.
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Stock-buy backs are basically just dividends with a better tax treatment.
There is also the benefit to any exec whose compensation is related to a rising stock price, right?
Usually comp structures look at multiple metrics that owners want to see. Owners prefer stock price to dividends, so they reward it more.
In the past 15 years Intel has spent almost $100 billion on stock buybacks. They don't need the money. This is a pure transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the rich. And they're getting more like $20 billion not once you include loans, etc. The wealthy make massive amounts of money, take it out for themselves, and then complain that they don't have capital. That's pure junk. And then we wonder why Biden's approval rat…
Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39764821
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and yet INTC has been in business for decades, profitable the whole time, producing chips without this grotesque handout of taxpayer monies. They have already used their excess profits - many $10's of billions of dollars in recent years, for stock buybacks, but apparently they really, really need this money from taxpayers to stay a going concern.
This is a thing intel didn’t care about doing. The government wants the fab strategically so is incentivizing them to do it. It has nothing to do with intel’s profitability otherwise. It’s no different from grants to build renewables, farms, housing, munitions, whatever the government wants done in the country.
However, it is a very indirect way of getting what the government wants, prone to manipulation.
The more direct option is to contract and purchase the finished product.
The general problem is twofold. First, it can be more financially efficient to spend on incentives then finish product. Second, much of the public do not trust their representatives to perform this analysis and negotiate in good faith.
Is a 25 billion Upstream incentive cheap compared to the Chip Price premium the government would have to pay to have the same incentive?
The other question is who benefits from domestic chips and if the government is the right person to pay.