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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

#451

Post by rhelz »

demondemidi wrote: post #438
rhelz wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

chuckle Asking for further justification is always fair play, and I don't mind being checked....but I'm kind of a loss as to what to cite. It wasn't something I read in a book, it was lived experience. But, I mean when you say: > clean room alarms went bananas when he lit up you might have answered your own question...that stuff may have flied when we were at 180 nanometers, but lets face it, there's only so far down…

Just show me where PhDs are needed to wheel a batch of wafers from the litho room to the bath. I'll wait.

If you think that is the bulk of what people in fabs do, well… obviously you aren’t a golfer.

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

#452

Post by xcv123 »

Dalewyn wrote: post #448
xcv123 wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty sure they've captured as much of the AI/ML business as CPUs possibly can. Which is exactly how they missed out on AI/ML. CPU is irrelevant in that market. > Because Intel is popular in gaming PCs All gaming consoles use AMD or Nvidia hardware. Gaming PCs use AMD or Nvidia GPUs.

>Gaming PCs use AMD or Nvidia GPUs. Any Steam hardware survey (the most relevant for gaming PC contexts) will show Intel handily beating AMD at around 66% to 33% for CPU[1], so your claim that Intel is somehow not popular is bunk. [1]: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/processormfg/

GPU

Note the "G" followed by PU

Graphics Processing Unit

None of those are GPUs

Steam survey PC video card stats show 76.92% Nvidia, 15.09% AMD, and 7.59% Intel (graphics unit integrated with CPU)

I never said that Intel CPUs are not popular on gaming PCs. But Intel used to have 99% of that Market.

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

#453

Post by davidgay »

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…

There's something off in this thread, which seems to posit that all of this is about Intel moving fab capacity back to the US and away from unreliable places.

That is clearly not the reality: according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si..., 16 of 23 of Intel's fabs are in the US and 6 of the other 7 are in close allies (Ireland, Israel, Germany).

There may be something to be said about what's happened to the rest of the US fab industry, though.

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

#454

Post by shiroiushi »

TuringNYC wrote: post #410
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.

>> 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. The engines of capitalism only look 1 quarter ahead. And the politicians who support them only look up to the next election. Unless you are majority or largely controlled by your founders, who care about building a good legacy.

Exactly. It's why authoritarian and/or single-party nations have so much more potential to succeed. It's why China did so well for a while. However, in practice, as we've seen with China and others, authoritarianism only works well when the people at the top are really smart and don't have some major character flaws (i.e., the "benevolent dictator"). Eventually, you get a dictator who's a narcissist or moron or fruitcake and it all falls apart. In that case, the best case is that the inner circle will murder him in his bathtub and select a better leader before he ruins everything.

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

#455

Post by ruined »

postpawl wrote: post #405
gen220 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> nice job, if you can get it TSMC is paying around $23/hour to manufacturing technicians in Arizona. They’re also sending people to Taiwan to get trained and apparently it’s brutal enough that most people drop out of the program. Asianometry did a video on this recently: https://youtu.be/Nk-lBok9_TU

i've done better than $23/h making pizza

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

#456

Post by shiroiushi »

Dalewyn wrote: post #443
throwawaymaths wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a joke but it's also true. The entire Japan South Korea Taiwan situation is at a high risk, if actual conflict breaks out, Taiwan is out, and SK and Japan become trickier on shipping insurance costs alone , assuming they choose not to get involved (they probably will) Obviously Mexico is also a close ally.

Japan cannot get involved unless the US is directly attacked, their constitution and laws governing use of the JSDF are very explicit in forbidding any use other than defending themselves or the US. If (when?) Taiwan gets China'd, that by itself cannot serve as a casus belli for Japan. I have no intimate knowledge with regards to South Korea's laws and will thus refrain from commenting there.

>Japan cannot get involved unless the US is directly attacked, their constitution and laws governing use of the JSDF are very explicit in forbidding any use other than defending themselves or the US.

Japan can change this on a whim with one meeting of the legislature. You think Japan can't change its own laws?

>If (when?) Taiwan gets China'd, that by itself cannot serve as a casus belli for Japan.

Wrong. I don't know that they would, but Taiwan is a huge trading partner and great friend of Japan, in fact Japan's closest friend in the whole region. It's quite conceivable that Japan would get involved.

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

#457

Post by JellyBeanThief »

postpawl wrote: post #405
gen220 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> nice job, if you can get it TSMC is paying around $23/hour to manufacturing technicians in Arizona. They’re also sending people to Taiwan to get trained and apparently it’s brutal enough that most people drop out of the program. Asianometry did a video on this recently: https://youtu.be/Nk-lBok9_TU

I wonder how the much the pass rate might improve if pay were higher.

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

#458

Post by rhelz »

coliveira wrote: post #423
typ wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. That's why this has everything to go wrong. You cannot create the talent and the supply chain needed for this with $8B. The US needs to solve much more fundamental things like their schools and the local supply chain to even have a shot of creating a successful chip business again.

Recall, it takes years to build these fabs. Fortunately, people will be more likely to spend years in grad school training for these jobs, if they know that when they graduate there will be fabs to hire them.

Rebuilding is a chicken and egg problem, but it’s not as hard as defeating the axis powers in WWII. If this country has the Will to do something, it’s gunna get done.

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

#459

Post by s3p »

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.

Intel pays its employees very well. They also have generous vacation allotments, and paid sabbaticals every 4 years.
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