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Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

nytimes.com

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Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#271

Post by aylmao »

HEmanZ wrote: post #55
transcriptase wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IMO this is a big enough national security threat that what intel is doing is similar to if Lockheed said “we’re going to start selling to Russia instead of the US unless the US gives us nice grants”. 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 i…

An expropriation of this kind and magnitude by the US government would be historic. Has it happened before? I'm curious.

I know there's talk about TikTok either selling to a USA owner or leaving, which seems pretty monumental too. Not quite an expropriation since the state wouldn't be taking control of it, but somewhat similar.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#272

Post by orangecat »

bluSCALE4 wrote: post #28

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.

Yes this is corporate welfare, and sadly it's probably necessary. We need to be able and willing to blow the TSMC fabs if China invades Taiwan, and being able to credibly make that threat decreases the chance that they will invade.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#273

Post by Aloisius »

edward28 wrote: post #202
dotnet00 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel is still innovating though? What's with everyone acting like they aren't innovating just because they aren't the leading performance x86 chip manufacturer? They're still shrinking node sizes, they've entered the GPU market, they're opening up their fabs to also make chips for other companies...

Bit hard to claim they are shrinking nodes, when Intel 4 claimed to be in production in 2022, but is still MIA except for low volume laptop products. And Intel 3 still has yet to appear.

How can you tell the laptop products are low volume?

Meteor Lake appears to be in mass production and shipping in a plethora of laptops worldwide. There doesn't appear to have any availability problems.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#274

Post by pwthornton »

rhelz wrote: post #269
chiefalchemist wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. But then the question is: How did this happen in the first place? If the Pentagon is playing out scenerio after scenerio after scenerio, how did we allow ourselves to be so embarrassingly venerable? And now the taxpayer is on the hook for $8.5B and growing? There's a certain smell to all this.

> How did this happen in the first place? By not pursuing protectionist public policies. > the taxpayer is on the hook for $8.5B $8.5B is a big price tag, but whether the government should spend it or not depends on whether or not the investment pays off.

This is way bigger than trade policies. Intel was the world leader in chip-making until fairly recently. Steve Jobs wanted them to build the iPhone chips because they were a generation or two ahead of any other fab in the world. Today, Intel is no longer leading the world in chip fab process.

Intel at the time wasn't interested in fabing ARM chips, and the rest is history.

Intel and American fabs fell behind for a number of reasons. Some of it is tied to our education system and the kinds of people we are training. Some of it is probably related to Intel turning their nose up at the iPhone chip making, losing billions upon billions of money they could have put into R&D. Some of it is a story of American corporate culture not innovating enough.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#275

Post by notact »

RobotToaster wrote: post #238
curiousllama wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having seen a few 'high tech' places myself: there's high tech, and then there's _high tech_. Assembling a motherboard is to semiconductor fabs as flying a toy drone is to landing a Boeing 747. One you can learn in an afternoon; the other takes years to learn.

> Assembling a motherboard is to semiconductor fabs as flying a toy drone is to landing a Boeing 747. A 747 can pretty much land itself on autopilot.

What are the conditions and steps necessary to engage autopilot during landing? What are the failure conditions, and the steps necessary during a malfunction when autopilot is engaged?

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#276

Post by 7speter »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #129
RandomWorker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is there are few opportunities for junior people to start their careers. There is no shortage of talent but where do we start? I’ve been applying for jobs in the semi conductor industry but haven’t had any luck because ever Is looking for senior staff but nothing for newcomers.

In most of the west (with few exceptions) is that you should waste at least a decade training yourself with little information of what's useful to learn. Then, you'll be talked down for being poor and lost. And whatever money you make will be put directly in the hands of your landlords, that profits off scarcity.

Or be told youre looking for a dei handout

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#277

Post by bluGill »

nonethewiser wrote: post #226
eitally wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a silly anecdote and I have a hard time believing chip fab line workers are too much different from those in other types of high-tech (where I spent 15 years working on test automation & quality systems). Some smart folks, for sure, but almost zero roles required even actual engineering background. A lot of management had strong technical education, but the vast majority of line workers are just following simp…

I think people are also underestimating the intelligence of people in the once very large manufacturing workforce.

It doesn't help that the union culture is opposed to promoting smart people. If you work an assembly line you are not better than anyone else on the line, so their position makes sense - smart people are not worth more. However it also means smart people that want to move to management (want - if you are content that is your choice) find things worse: you are required to start at the bottom and your previous experience doesn't count for anything (including the pension)

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#278

Post by Guthur »

pkulak wrote: post #136
FredPret wrote: post #123

We're living through the silicon age and Intel has made a total dog's breakfast of it. Stagnant revenues, falling profits. Both should have been growing geometrically. Just compare these companies: https://valustox.com/INTC https://valustox.com/AMD https://valustox.com/AVGO https://valustox.com/AMAT Even Qualcomm has seen good growth: https://valustox.com/QCOM This is how it's done: https://valustox.com/NVDA EDIT the…

Well, you can chase short term profit and send your designs off to TSMC, or you can own your own foundry. This is exactly why it's in the interest of the US government to ensure that Intel doesn't totally abandon US manufacturing just like AMD did years ago.

And yet the US has been the biggest pusher of comparative advantage economics for everyone else via the world bank and imf. What is good for the goose is apparently not good for the gander.

Though I totally agree with the strategic imperative I just wish the rest of us non US countries would wake up to it and stop allowing Western countries to extract economic rent by capturing strategic monopolies on energy, goods and services.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#279

Post by adventured »

jiveturkey42 wrote: post #231
TremendousJudge wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Globalization is breaking down quickly Is it? I don't know if there's a concrete way of measuring "amount of globalization", but I'd guess that right now we're probably the most globalized we've ever been. "More things that you use are made outside your own country" has only been growing, and with the advent of full remote companies that also includes much more software than before -- it used to be that only huge co…

You could proxy a measurement of "amount of globalization" by disruptions in global shipping of food, energy, manufactured goods, etc. Covid caused disruptions, Houthi attacks in the Suez Canal disrupted shipping, Panama Canal is facing issues with water due to drought.. US continues to withdraw from Naval security commitments from the Bretton Woods era Physical goods are much more complicated to move around the glob…

> US continues to withdraw from Naval security commitments from the Bretton Woods era

Would you mind listing all the naval security commitments - from the Bretton Woods era - that the US has withdrawn from (eg over the past decade or so, anything relevant to "continues to")?

I'm not aware of any meaningful reduction in US naval security commitments. If anything the US is as busy as ever with its global naval security efforts. It's hyper busy everywhere: from Latin America, to Australia, to Europe, to the Middle East, to Asia.

The notion that the US has stepped back at all is entirely unsupported by the actual facts. It's just a weak myth being posted endlessly since Trump began spouting isolationism in 2015-2016. Meanwhile, in actuality, the US just spent another hundred billion dollars on a foreign war in two years.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#280

Post by smallmancontrov »

pwthornton wrote: post #274
rhelz wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How did this happen in the first place? By not pursuing protectionist public policies. > the taxpayer is on the hook for $8.5B $8.5B is a big price tag, but whether the government should spend it or not depends on whether or not the investment pays off.

This is way bigger than trade policies. Intel was the world leader in chip-making until fairly recently. Steve Jobs wanted them to build the iPhone chips because they were a generation or two ahead of any other fab in the world. Today, Intel is no longer leading the world in chip fab process. Intel at the time wasn't interested in fabing ARM chips, and the rest is history. Intel and American fabs fell behind for a nu…

> the kinds of people we are training

I was a physics student who took a nanofab class, fell in love, and desperately wanted to go down this path... until I learned about how complete and utter dogshit the wages were. I kept in touch with two classmates who stuck with it a bit longer. The free market had to beat them over the head a bit longer to get them to let go, but it eventually succeeded. Intel was absolutely printing money for investors the whole time, of course, and now that the material consequences of their poor management have come home to roost they are getting bailouts. Yay, capitalism!

Our education system over-produces qualified scientists, but if semiconductors are a road to not having a house or family and if it pays 5x better to sell ads or stocks... you get what you pay for.

I hope this has changed but I wouldn't bet on it.

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