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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

#461

Post by SmellTheGlove »

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

You can do better than that flinging burgers at Dicks here in Seattle.

That’s wild. For something that requires a trip to Taiwan for training, which I imagine makes it not an easy job, why does it pay so little? I’d think retention would be important if the training is that intensive.

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

#462

Post by anonuser123456 »

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…

>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 from it.

How about asking the workers in other countries who benefitted from this transaction if they were happy with the arrangement? Or do only Americans matter? Maybe you think foreigners are fit only to till dirt fields as subsistence farmers?

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

#463

Post by golergka »

speed_spread wrote: post #401
gentleman11 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long until all those new workers are laid off again as intel goes back to overseas fabs?

Add the numbers get bigger and the risks increase, the number of "cheap labor" countries where investments in large tech infrastructure are safe is shrinking every year. Maybe South America? Intel has (had?) a fab in Costa Rica...

South America is very underrated. People still think about the region in 20-30 year old stereotypes, but most countries have gotten much more stable, economics have improved drastically. Workforce is highly educated, different countries share a very similar culture and mostly speak the same language, which means that a lot of things can be scaled much easier. Of course, there's also Portuguese, which is still somewhat similar, and Quechuan languages speakers who learn Spanish as a second language, but this doesn't change the equation much.

The only thing the region lacks is investment and ecosystem to attract and protect it.

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

#464

Post by canadianfella »

eddiewithzato wrote: post #450
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.

That’s the power of slave labour. Global economy is really modern day slavery. When you are making trillions in USD in the USA, paying someone in china $2 a day would’ve been an Egyptian pharaohs dream.

Calling it slave labour is an insult to the people who had to live with actual slavery.

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

#466

Post by demondemidi »

rhelz wrote: post #451
demondemidi wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's thousands of people working at D1X. They are not all PhDs. Your initial post is just some made up BS polluting hacker news. I really like this site, but if you want points for storytelling, go to slashdot or reddit.

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

#467

Post by KerrAvon »

rhelz wrote: post #376
andyferris wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it not possible to build two fabs and make $48 billion?

What would you do? Build two fabs and make $48 billion, or build two fabs and make $80 billion? It might be hard to remember now, but Intel was in the position NVIDIA is today: they could sell absolutely every x86 processor they could make, at pretty much any price they cared to name. So even if Intel could have built another fab (which, btw, it couldn't, the world only graduates so many solid-state physics Ph.D.'s p…

I don’t buy this completely. AMD’s 64-bit humiliation of Intel wasn’t that far in the past, and they knew GPUs were important. They could have hedged their bets a bit more on the basis of sound business management without incurring shareholder wrath.

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

#468

Post by KerrAvon »

coliveira wrote: post #437
quantum_state wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 …

Yes, they have just forced China to make their own chips, and they will make them cheaper and in higher volume than anyone can do...

Absolutely correct; same for banning any other tech sales to China. I’m not sure it’s terrible policy, though. It’s only speeding up the inevitable a little.

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

#469

Post by FactKnower69 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #350
yard2010 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what the heck you are talking about. Socialism is not the kind of bs like capitalism or communism, it has no winners nor losers everyone is in the same boat. Anything else is just some crooked politicians, could be billionaires but don't have to, getting more rich and powerful and say whatever they have to say to keep it this way.

I don't see how socialism is any different. It is still the state taking from one person to give to another. How is anyone in the same boat with Socialism? Unless your metaphor is that some paddle and some don't, but everyone goes the same speed

>I don't see how socialism is any different. It is still the state taking from one person to give to another.

Socialism is when workplaces are owned and managed by the people who work there, rather than private investors. It has nothing to do with taxes, or welfare, or "the state" doing one thing or another -- that is a uniquely American conflation.

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

#470

Post by 4gotunameagain »

echelon wrote: post #418
whimsicalism wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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