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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

#411

Post by TuringNYC »

whimsicalism wrote: post #406
WWLink wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

>> i find this rise in nativistic and jingoistic sentiment weird. comparative advantage exists for a reason - we are not going to be the best at every single step of every single industry.

There are more considerations than just profits. Consider how domestic PPE plants closed down in the US because even US gov institutions wanted the cheapest product, and went overseas. Then when COVID hit, we had no local supplier for PPE.

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

#412

Post by kurthr »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #388
BostonEnginerd wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Spruce Pine - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spruce_Pine_Mining_District

It's the purest source, but lots of cheap PV poly is made from other stuff.

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

#413

Post by tacocataco »

adolph wrote: post #206
Esras wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too much money in what context? It can be an extremely effective motivator for solving a business problem - hire smart people to work on it, they'll happily go work for double their pay.

A baby can't be made in one month just because you had the money to hire 9 surrogates. Many processes do not scale just because a money spigot turned on. What most often does scale as quickly as monetary availability is fraud, waste and abuse.

Couldn't you keep hiring surrogates until you get a premature birth?

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

#414

Post by kurthr »

beauzero wrote: post #331
kurthr wrote: post #260

Earlier 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…

Refining is dirty and dangerous so it has been pushed out. Used to work for a Canadian gold mine in Montana in the mid 90's. Most of the friends I graduated with went overseas for new mines or were Environmental engineers focused on cleaning up messes from the late 1800's early 1900's.

Yeah, lack of regulation is actually a pretty big subsidy for large scale "rare earth" metal refining.

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

#415

Post by defrost »

kurthr wrote: post #414
beauzero wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refining is dirty and dangerous so it has been pushed out. Used to work for a Canadian gold mine in Montana in the mid 90's. Most of the friends I graduated with went overseas for new mines or were Environmental engineers focused on cleaning up messes from the late 1800's early 1900's.

Yeah, lack of regulation is actually a pretty big subsidy for large scale "rare earth" metal refining.

What's a few inland lakes of acid residue toxic metal soup along with tailings piles classified as low level radioactive waste between friends though?

These are still being created today, not just as a practice from the 1800's.

It is the price of technology, better to address these as we progress rather than pushing them out of mind and sight and kicking the can down the road for future generations.

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

#416

Post by typ »

gen220 wrote: post #347
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…

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…

It's wasn't just the semi-conductor manufacturers either.

The PRC had the supply chain from the bottom up (to some extent funded by the western consumers and corporations), whereas the US is trying to get reindustrializd from the top down, without first building a solid fundamental. To make the tough jobs easy, you must have the easy jobs done well first.

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

#417

Post by rhelz »

joncrane wrote: post #390
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…

>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?

Well, even back in my grandfather's day (he was a millwright for Ford) working on the line required more mental skills than most people realized. Remember when Elon Musk finally gave up trying to 100% automate his factories? He said "we undervalued the abilities of humans."

If manufacturing cars is so complex you can't train monkeys, or build robots, to do it, how much harder must it be to make chips?

Making things that small, that precisely, repeatably, profitably, by the millions and billions, is spectacularly complex. And with each process node, the complexity grows even faster than Moore's law does.

Eventually, it gets to the point that even to tell somebody how to do something, you need to do it using the language of advanced physics, the kind of physics which requires you to spend studying 60-80 hours a week, for 5-7 years in grad school to learn. As the gen-X proverb goes, reality bites.

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

#418

Post by echelon »

whimsicalism wrote: post #407
nyokodo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether we look back in 20 years and think "wow glad we took that hit upfront" is anyone's guess Globalization is breaking down quickly. Chips are crucial to national security and our economy. The supply chain for advanced chips is heavily dependent on East Asia which is a geopolitical powder keg and a demographic time bomb. The only thing more expensive than whatever we end up with is chips unavailable at any pric…

Globalization is breaking down because of actions being led by the US. It is not some inevitable process that we have to pre-empt, rather it is actively precipitated by our actions.

It is US-led, but the US has good reasons.

- The US has almost everything it needs in North America to be self-sufficient. Food, energy, natural resources, manufacturing, trade.

- The US is tired of being involved in the Middle East.

- The US is tired of protecting the oceans and trade for everyone else.

- The US is tired of China stealing its tech, being protectionist, becoming an adversary, not being friendly to US companies, meddling in US trade, etc.

- The US is tired of NATO not stepping up to the plate. It won't back out, of course, but would love for Europe to care more about its own security.

There are so many reasons the US is pulling back. Both the Trump and Biden presidencies are completely on board with it. It's fully bipartisan, and it's going to accelerate.

The US is going to near-shore, friend-shore, and to every extent possible, onshore what it needs.

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

#419

Post by rhelz »

imgabe wrote: post #366
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…

You should hire the very smart people to figure out how to make the jobs doable for average people. Surely there must be a way to configure line work to not require a PhD...

Anything which doesn't require a Ph.D. in solid-state physics to do must be automated, because only machines can handle/manipulate/transport the wafers with enough precision not to damage them.

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

#420

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

supportengineer wrote: post #212
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…

>> dog's breakfast Native English speaker here, I've never heard this expression before?

A lot of places and definitely historically whatever scraps were left from dinner would be the dog's breakfast bowl tomorrow.
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