Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
381–390 of 657 posts
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#382WRT 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…
What governments that aren't your allies?
Chips are produced in Taiwan, in Korea, in Japan. In that order. Which of those governments is not allied with the US of A?
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#383Earlier 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…
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. One you can learn in an afternoon; the other takes years to learn.
The hard one to learn is flying a drone, right?
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Intel at the time wasn't interested in fabing ARM chips, and the rest is history. Fun fact, in the late 90's, Intel was the biggest manufacturer of ARM chips. I was there at the time, and I wrote lots of software to aid in their design. What happened to Intel was twofold: The first problem was that Robert Noyce, Andy Grove, And Gordon Moore died. Each one was a once-in-century intellect, and it took Intel a while t…
> would for years have had such a huge opportunity cost, that the shareholders would have sued, and with cause. I've been considering the Intel issue (had family there) and the other post in the thread mention the decade of misses. This actually seems like one of the most reasonable rationales that I don't hear mentioned very often. You might want to do something, yet your hands our tied, because the investors will s…
It is the classic innovator's dilemma. There are ton of incentives to keep the focus on today's cash cow in any business.
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#385WRT 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…
It wasn't just intel, it was every semi-conductor manufacturer in the valley (hence the inability to find other work). They closed because it was cheaper to build in other countries, or to outsource from contractors who build in other countries (where organized labor doesn't exist). The U.S. lost thousands of high-paying (and tax-paying) labor positions and atrophied the skills that went with them. Intel profited fro…
Honestly it blows my mind they were able to give control of one of the most important industries in the world over to a foreign country like that.
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
What governments that aren't your allies? Chips are produced in Taiwan, in Korea, in Japan. In that order. Which of those governments is not allied with the US of A?
Read carefully :P close allies. Those allies are far allies. Sea lanes and supply chain risk is a real thing.
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> The notion that the US has stepped back at all is entirely unsupported by the actual facts.
40 years ago the US Navy was equipped and staffed to patrol the global oceans. Now, the US has a relatively few massively powerful forces of naval power projection but is woefully understaffed and under-equipped to maintain the global order against multiplying chaos. This is unlikely to change at all let alone be fast enough to influence outcomes. Growing sentiment after decades of the war on terror is for the US to be hesitant to intervene internationally, and while that isn’t current policy it’s predictive of future policy. It’s not at all clear that it would be popular in the USA to, for instance, go to Moldova’s defense.
> the US just spent another hundred billion dollars on a foreign war in two years.
The vast majority of this was accountancy fictions about the value of stockpiled obsolete materiel we couldn’t sell but had to pay to maintain or pay to scrap. We have demonstrably not gone all in on supporting Ukraine and Congress is currently strangling any attempt to do so. This is another sign of the US inevitably devolving into an unreliable defense partner.
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
The chip supply chain is a lot shorter and more concentrated than the mining supply chain. If you're thinking of "rare earth" metals in particular, it's probably better to focus on the refining rather than digging out of the ground. Between South America, West Africa, and Australia there are lots of mines for most of the metals, but only refining in China (because it has been highly subsidized by both monetary and re…
There's substantial wafer capacity in the US, from silane production, through polysilicon granule production and wafer making. There are several different wafer makers in the US with both 200mm and 300mm wafer capacity. Some of the silane and polysilicon companies are US owned, but I don't think that any of the wafer makers are US headquartered anymore.
Isn't all high grade silicon derived from one place in the US?
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#389Earlier 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? Texas Instruments didn't give guys like Morris Chang enough opportunities to advance. That's why TSMC was founded.
Similar mistake is being made right now by restricting sales of chips. It forces people to make their own. It is just a matter of time the consequence comes … like many other decisions made by some big wigs before …
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#390WRT 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…
>Intel had to fire most line workers in their FABS, and hire people with Ph.D.'s in solid-state physics
Why did Intel HAVE to fire most line workers and hire Ph.Ds?