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

nytimes.com

471–480 of 657 posts

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

#471

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. 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 fruit…

Seems to have worked for Russia.

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

#472
post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I just hope you don't loose your love for pizza.

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

#473
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…

Hardware people get boned. I worked at a non-semiconductor tenant company in a semiconductor research campus/facility. Parking lots tell the story. There was a pecking order for the lots, which made it easy to classify. The best off working people were the trades guys. The plumbers and electricians were high-skilled and well paid. Like guys commuting 2,000 miles and buying a second $90k F-250 to drive around town in.…

I work at a hardware company. Our parking lot looks like a Tesla, Rivian and Mazarati dealership.

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

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's because in Taiwan that's standard compensation for this field, and for that specific project it's TSMC. They don't want to pay US rates if they can avoid it, and it's possible that their company would be unprofitable if they had to.

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

#475
post #94
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…

> 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…

"because East Asia devolves into a war stricken basket case"

The past decade of American media has been promoting this new cold war narrative as if there is inevitably going to be a major war with China.

If there is war in East Asia then the whole international economic system will collapse, people will be starving in the streets. That's if it's not a nuclear Armageddon and we're left to rubbing two sticks together. Nobody will care about chips if there is a war. That will be really far down the list of actual concerns

The world is so interconnected and everyone depends on everyone so much that there is basically no point in planning for this scenario

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

#476
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…

>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…

In many of the countries with cheap labor the ones who profit the most are not the workers as you try to imagine this nice idea )))

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

#477

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. 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 fruit…

You cannot have a dictator who is not a "narcissist or moron or fruitcake" - this is not how human mind works.

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

#478
post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Intel doesn't have and has never had a GPU line worth writing home about, so I don't know why you would bring up something Intel never had to say Intel is unpopular in gaming PCs.

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

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Please have some clue about what you're talking about first:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Japan#Amendmen...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_96_of_the_Japanese_Con...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_9_of_the_Japanese_Cons...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Mutual_Cooperation_a...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Japanese_military_legisla...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.%E2%80%93Japan_Alliance

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

#480
post #347
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.

This doesn't make sense, Intel did and still does most of its manufacturing in the US, didn't it? (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si...) I assume the thing that changed if there was a major loss of jobs was automation, not outsourcing. It's a lot easier to keep a clean room clean if you don't need to let people (with their hair and dead skin particles) in.

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