Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

591–600 of 657 posts

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

#591

Post by ToucanLoucan »

fransje26 wrote: post #557
ufocia wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semiconductor manufacturing is very capital intensive so running the company as a nonprofit is a nonstarter. You've presented historical data to counter the of argument that wage/salary growth MAY lead to potential unprofitability solely on the basis of one year's profit numbers. That's literally driving forward looking in the rearview mirror because it says very little about how profitable the company would be if it…

Hiding behind "it's complicated" is an over-used excuse to avoid a more critical look at a problem. A one year point is a crude approximation, but it does illustrate the order of magnitude mismatch between what they could pay their employees vs what they actually pay them, which was the short point being made. More broadly, TSMC had no problem shelling out $9.9 billion to shareholders that same year (or $123,000+ per…

Our markets, not even remotely isolated to semiconductor, are saturated in these bloated old businesses that are running on the razor's edge of financial ruin, yet every quarter are paying out catastrophic amounts of money in stock buybacks and generous compensation packages for the executives running them into the ground. It's beyond fucking parody at this point.

Also I wonder what the excuses will be once all the underdeveloped nations do what China did and actually develop. We have a finite number of exploitable countries on the planet with workers willing to work for pennies to assemble products. At SOME POINT this party is going to end, it has to.

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

#593

Post by staunton »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #475
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…

"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.…

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

This sentiment was very prevalent right before WWI.

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

#594

Post by gen220 »

creato wrote: post #588
gen220 wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their DoD and Dod-adjacent business (read: high-nanometer) processes are largely in the U.S. Their consumer and server business (read: low-nm) processes are largely international. The wikipedia page you linked evinces this statement. The phrase "most of its manufacturing" is a Simpson's Paradox statement. It's true, but not in a way that's interesting. High-nanometer processes are easier to automate.

All of the "low-nm" process fabs on that wiki page are in the US (with one in Ireland).

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole to try and find manufacturing stats per fab, and it's pretty difficult to find.

First, it's worth noting that most of the But the Israeli fab really shouldn't be discounted, they employ 12k people in Israel. I can't find numbers on production output, but that headcount is a similar OOM to the Oregon plant. Most of their successful, recent designs came from Israel, too. The Ireland fab employs 4.5k people. There's 22k in Oregon, unclear on the breakdown of manufacturing and R&D/non-manufacturing roles.

As I understand it from said rabbit hole, they do a lot of design and "proofing" manufacturing of low-nm processes in Oregon, but rely on Ireland and Israel to scale-up.

It seems that the recent (i.e. post-9/11) Arizona plants are more geared towards high-volume production. Regardless of what calculations went into those decisions, they're a hedge against political instability in Israel.

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

#595

Post by rabite »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #590
rabite wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the same interview Putin said that if the US had not broken the promise to Gorbachev to not expand the NATO eastward, the war would not have happened. Yet this contradicts his statements in 2002 that it was not a big deal and not his business. He only changed positions when he viewed the Russian economy as big enough to wage war and take territory. There was also no such promise, this is a complete myth. Russia…

It seems like you are way too invested in this and unable to think clearly. I'm sorry if it has affected you negatively, it is a terrible situation for everybody except the elites. However, blame is never black or white. It cannot be all Russia's fault.

> However, blame is never black or white. It cannot be all Russia's fault.

Most crimes are a single party's fault. One is the criminal, and one is the victim. Saying it is impossible for it to be all Russia's fault is logically fallacious. Russia chose to invade and commit mass murder. Russia needs to be held to account for that.

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

#596

Post by rockostrich »

ejb999 wrote: post #35
rockostrich wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're this worried about tens of billions of dollars going to Intel, I have some news for you about the military industrial complex.

I guess in your mind it is not possible for both things to be bad? As long as we have the bogeyman of the DOD budget, any money spent that is even a penny less than the DOD budget is OK, is that how you see things?

Well, the DoD budget is 2 orders of magnitude more than this so it's about 80 quadrillion pennies less.

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

#597

Post by 4gotunameagain »

rabite wrote: post #595
4gotunameagain wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you are way too invested in this and unable to think clearly. I'm sorry if it has affected you negatively, it is a terrible situation for everybody except the elites. However, blame is never black or white. It cannot be all Russia's fault.

> However, blame is never black or white. It cannot be all Russia's fault. Most crimes are a single party's fault. One is the criminal, and one is the victim. Saying it is impossible for it to be all Russia's fault is logically fallacious. Russia chose to invade and commit mass murder. Russia needs to be held to account for that.

I will stop replying to you now. Your judgement is clouded by emotions. Criminals and states are not comparable.

I wish you the best.

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

#598

Post by [deleted] »

_heimdall wrote: post #520
antihipocrat wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok then perhaps offer a better approximation, let's say 50% of profit instead of the 100% share. That is still a very decent wage and is on top of the existing labour expense which profit has already accounted for

Companies have absolutely non incentive to do this. TMSC turned that profit in 2022 with wages as-is, why would they spend more on wages if they don't need to? Don't get me wrong, I wish companies were incentivized to do right by their employees. That's just not how the world works, companies only need to do the bare minimum to get the job done and leave as much profit on the table as possible.

[deleted]

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

#599

Post by humansareok1 »

ejb999 wrote: post #38
humansareok1 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been repeating this tired trope for decades and yet we persist. The US doesn't even have the worst debt load of developed countries and ones that are significantly worse are still operating fine!

you mean other than the rampant inflation we are seeing now - and will almost certainly get worse - everything is fine?

>and will almost certainly get worse

If you are so sure go make millions on the stock market and stop complaining!

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

#600

Post by rabite »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #597
rabite wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, blame is never black or white. It cannot be all Russia's fault. Most crimes are a single party's fault. One is the criminal, and one is the victim. Saying it is impossible for it to be all Russia's fault is logically fallacious. Russia chose to invade and commit mass murder. Russia needs to be held to account for that.

I will stop replying to you now. Your judgement is clouded by emotions. Criminals and states are not comparable. I wish you the best.

> Your judgement is clouded by emotions.

This is pure ad hominem. My statements are not emotional at all. Ukraine committed no offense against Russia. Georgia committed no crime against Russia before they aided Abkhazian and South Ossetian rebels. Putin committed these offenses unilaterally against these. Russia chose to steal territory and murder hundreds of thousands of people. These are not emotional statements, they are factual ones.

It is in fact your claims which are clouded by emotionality -- obvious sympathies for Russian propaganda.

Post reply on HN