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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

#351

Post by MichaelZuo »

adolph wrote: post #316
MichaelZuo wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are thousands of items on the agenda in the present day, everything from better open source LLMs to moon-base railway designs, so even if 99% of these turn out to be duds that can’t be budged, there are still sufficiently many remaining to absorb all bonafide super-geniuses on Earth several times over.

In this particular item on the agenda, chip fabs, it is not clear spending more money one time will produce a result, much less a faster result by attracting "bonafide super-geniouses." One might respond that "you can't win if you don't play" which would lay bare the gamble.

Chip fabs is just one of ‘many processes’ which was what I was replying to. It’s practically irrelevant if even 99% of all processes have this characteristic. There’s way more than enough remaining to occupy all available people who could actually speed up large complex projects by 10x.

Of course if they were somehow disproportionately forced to only ever work on chip fabs for the rest of their lives, then that would create huge waste, but this doesn’t seem likely.

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

#352

Post by specialist »

hollywood_court wrote: post #108
icyfox wrote: post #79

Right now one of the biggest blockers in on-shoring semiconductor fab at any kind of reasonable price-point and timescale is the lack of a skilled workforce. This legislation has dual objectives: train new people to get into sophisticated manufacturing AND to build out the actual infrastructure itself. That almost guarantees it won't be the most efficient way to actually get these chips on American soil. Whether we l…

I imagine we’d have that skilled workforce if companies paid enough. I’m a former construction contractor who reinvented myself as a software developer. Each time I run into one of my former peers in the construction industry I hear the same complaints from them. “We can’t hire any good help.” Yet they are still paying the same non living wages that they have for 30 years.

Yes and:

Record corporate profits while wages stagnated. Coincidence?

Is American labor really more expensive? Really?

Or do American workers simply have the unforgivable expectation of some kind of profit sharing?

(Yes, yes, yes. CoL in the economically important parts of America is higher. Again, the root cause being windfall profits for the elite.)

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

#353

Post by orangecat »

dheera wrote: post #321
JonChesterfield wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, this is intel. They'll spend it on a dividend.

Dividends don't make you any money because the rest of the passive-aggressive investors downvote the stock price by exactly the dividend amount when dividends are given. If everyone agreed to maintain the stock price when dividends were issued, the dividends would be useful.

the rest of the passive-aggressive investors downvote the stock price by exactly the dividend amount when dividends are given

This is the expected result if markets are correctly pricing stocks. The value of a company is its assets plus its future income streams. When a company pays a dividend, its cash assets decrease, so the value of its stock should decrease by that same amount.

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

#354

Post by selimthegrim »

rhelz wrote: post #320
znpy wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but almost zero roles required even actual engineering background Small anecdote: pat gelsinger, intel ceo, started as a technician at intel (iirc) at like years old or something like that. That entry level job paid enough that he could have a roof on his head and i guess covered his university tuition? I’m not making this up: it’s all in his book he wrote about his life (not sure I recommend the book)

True, but Pat Gelsinger isn't a good example of what public policy we should pursue to help Joe six-packs enjoy a middle-class life. Gelsinger is one of the few people I would follow blindly into the maws of hell itself; his intellect is exceeded only by his ability to lead.

LTI and Santa Clara are not public institutions.

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

#356

Post by elihu »

huytersd wrote: post #326

I hope these have stringent, result based conditions applied to them.

There's one condition in particular that I think should absolutely be part of this: a requirement that Intel offers foundry services on an ongoing basis and giving equivalent access and prices to foundry customers as they give to their own internal customers.

Foundry services are a small part of Intel's business currently, but in the event TSMC is disrupted then Intel would have a near-monopoly on high-end chip manufacturing. Whether Intel is obligated to work with Nvidia, Apple, AMD, etc... could make the difference between those companies surviving or not.

It's in the interests of the American public that money ostensibly spent to mitigate the economic and technological fallout of something potentially happening to TSMC is actually effective at mitigating that risk in a sensible way, or if it's just a huge handout to Intel that they can happily use to dig a deeper moat around their business.

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

#357

Post by s1artibartfast »

randerson wrote: post #324
timmg wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think companies should work? If they all re-invested all their earnings into growth, wouldn't that mean that every company is growing un-sustainably? And what is the incentive for investors to fund these companies that never return anything to the investors?

Reinvesting in growth seems more sustainable than extracting all value until the company can't even keep up with its newer competitors. There's surely a middle ground where a company should return _excess_ profits to shareholders when they're doing well. Intel was too busy paying out hundreds of billions to notice that Apple/TSMC/ARM/AMD/NVIDIA were eating their lunch.

That doesn't mean that lack of funing was the problem.

If the company leadership can't find a way to get a return on the money, why not take it somewhere else?

Intel investors sell and become Nvidia investors.

It seems like people have the blind assumption RnD investment always has profitable returns and is the limiting factor.

There are real institutional differences and limitations to what money can do.

You can't drop a billion dollars on a turd and come back the next day and collect 2 billion dollars. When a company pays a dividend, it is saying that it can't put that money to better use.

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

#358

Post by javajosh »

sfilmeyer wrote: post #116
hollywood_court wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine we’d have that skilled workforce if companies paid enough. I’m a former construction contractor who reinvented myself as a software developer. Each time I run into one of my former peers in the construction industry I hear the same complaints from them. “We can’t hire any good help.” Yet they are still paying the same non living wages that they have for 30 years.

I don't think that dynamic is the same in construction and in semiconductor manufacturing. Certain parts of the chip-building supply chain just plain don't exist in the USA, and so no one in the USA currently has those skills. It's not like there are lots of folks with the skills in the USA but they're all leaving the industry for higher paying jobs.

What skills are they, specifically? I'd like to see companies like Intel make a resource describing them, at least, and at most, offer to pay training costs and offer a job at the end of it.

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

#359

Post by okasaki »

mfer wrote: post #228
rhelz wrote: post #132

WRT to lack of a skilled workforce, here is an interesting anecdote. I remember back in the late 90's, Intel had to fire most line workers in their FABS, and hire people with Ph.D.'s in solid-state physics. I actually knew one of these people who were fired: She was our housecleaner. And--like the supper-smart garbage man of the Dilbert Cartoons, she was very smart. Smarter than me. I know because she helped me solve…

This award isn't about innovation, the best way to do things, or job requirements. This about supply chain security and national defense. So many of our components are made overseas and under governments who are not close allies. This is in order to operate things in our country. When you have the FABs in the US and under US control you can handle international foreign policy and the security of the nation differentl…

> under governments who are not close allies.

I wonder why...

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

#360

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

rhelz wrote: post #334
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that what happened to Intel was a lot worse than just missing Andy Grove's paranoia... - They missed the mobile market - They missed the gaming market - They missed the AI/ML market - They got multiple generations behind TSMC and Samsung in the fab business - They lost a whole bunch of market share to AMD, including datacenter The NY Times article is paywalled, so I can't read it, but I have to wonder what k…

You are forgetting two things: 1. All those happened after Andy Grove's time. 2. And when Andy Grove was at the helm, Intel did not miss opportunities like that. E.g. when Intel's memory chip business started losing market share to the Japanese (who were at the time a low-wage country), they were able to transition to CPUs in time.

Yeah, but what I meant is that these can't all be explained by not being paranoid (letting the competition creep up on you), or even by not having an exceptional CEO.

If you are in the business of making CPUs, and obviously aware of how fast things move in the tech world, then how can you not be aware of industry trends going on like smart phones, gaming and AI? If you are somehow late to see the trend then double down and catch up. What about getting behind on process nodes/generations? This used to be one of Intel's core strengths, and you'd have thought they'd have institutionalized the things you do and don't take on in a new process to keep the change manageable.

So, I wouldn't say it just a matter of not having Andy Grove - it seems like a matter of having incompetence at many levels.

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