Aren't they shipping the chips back to Taiwan for packaging anyway?
There are other US-based packaging - while it's unlikely to be relevant to AMD, Intel does some packaging in New Mexico.
AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more
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Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tldr; yes they are kind of cooked
Why is the government bailing them out then? Is that just good money thrown after bad? Regardless, it seems like the company leadership should be gutted (the same could be said of Boeing) and the company given over to a new technically-grounded leadership team.
What is the alternative, except dependence on foreign countries for key economic inputs?
Betting some on Intel is very wise when the alternatives are, as I see it: 1) investing in TSMC building fabs and creating more of an employee knowledge base and skill base on shore, 2) hoping a US-based startup gets enough traction to grow.
Agreed on leadership. But selecting leadership teams, especially technically-grounded leadership teams is extremely difficult. Which is why companies revert to non-technical leadership so often.
Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boards are low tech and low profit, does American company and workers even want to do it?
Maybe not, but if the entire country doesn’t have the ability to manufacture it, then it’s still going to be a strategic weakness when push comes to shove. The entire exercise of doing more chip manufacturing in the U.S. is about maintaining national competitiveness and independence. It’s certainly not about cost. So I think it’s a good point that investments should made to be able to onshore the entire stack rather…
Or we could strengthen alliances with our neighbors and potentially shift some of that burden to them. Trying to move everything here is not feasible. We simply do not have the human capital or willingness to manufacture every low level widget in the world.
What this administration is doing is not a recipe for success: trade wars with everyone, immigration crackdowns, and unpredictable tariff policy.
EDIT: Oh and hinting at invasion (Greenland, Canada) doesn't help either
Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more
#54The US cost of stationing forces, patrols, and readiness in the pacific is probably 20-40 billion USD per year. cut that huge subsidy and Taiwan ceases to exist within several years. 5%? we should really evaluate if we need a long term dependency on taiwan. It would probably be better to evacuate them all.
There's a lot more to the American defensive posture in the Pacific than threatening PRC with MAD if they invade Taiwan.
Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more
#55The article doesn’t say, but I assume these are SOTA AI chips? If so, it’s a huge deal that American can build them. Another interesting point: > AMD and larger rival Nvidia Corp. recently gained a reprieve on restrictions imposed on shipments of some types of artificial intelligence accelerators to China. It’s still not clear how many licenses will be granted — or how long the companies will be allowed to ship the c…
That is their goal because they saw their restrictions had just made China accelerate domestic development instead.
China would be stupid to stop the acceleration of its domestic development right now.
Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more
#56What I really want to know, from someone who does know: Is Intel cooked? Like, will they be able to manufacture chips that compete with TSMC? They used to be a crown-jewel of US tech. But it seems like every time I read the news, they are announcing a delay or shutting down some product.
Intel is more than just fabs. AMD spun off digital foundry forever ago and just uses TSMC, no reason Intel couldn’t do the same. At this point their fabs are a liability. They have a new leader who’s from a semiconductor manufacturing background so I have some faith they’ll give up on the pursuit of next gen fabs and focus instead on their IP. There’s a huge opportunity in their GPU segment. They’ve gone from a joke to competitive in a couple years, and they offer more VRAM for the dollar. They could tailor towards AI and really get some traction there.
Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tldr; yes they are kind of cooked
Why is the government bailing them out then? Is that just good money thrown after bad? Regardless, it seems like the company leadership should be gutted (the same could be said of Boeing) and the company given over to a new technically-grounded leadership team.
The inability to make SOTA silicon chips domestically would be catastrophic in a event of a war in the east.
TSMC is making fabs in the US, but they are not SOTA fabs. Those are kept in Taiwan.
Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more
#58What I really want to know, from someone who does know: Is Intel cooked? Like, will they be able to manufacture chips that compete with TSMC? They used to be a crown-jewel of US tech. But it seems like every time I read the news, they are announcing a delay or shutting down some product.
> used to be a crown-jewel of US tech
I feel like x86 itself is kinda legacy tech. So while AMD has made advancements, they're somewhat in the same boat as Intel.
It seems like NVIDIA and Micron are the real "crown jewels" of US tech
Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more
#59The article doesn’t say, but I assume these are SOTA AI chips? If so, it’s a huge deal that American can build them. Another interesting point: > AMD and larger rival Nvidia Corp. recently gained a reprieve on restrictions imposed on shipments of some types of artificial intelligence accelerators to China. It’s still not clear how many licenses will be granted — or how long the companies will be allowed to ship the c…
They can make advanced chips in Arizona, but the bleeding edge is in Taiwan. Arizona can make TSMC’s 4nm process, but in Taiwan they’re doing 3nm and ramping up 2nm.
Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more
#60[flagged]
This factory was built as a part of the CHIPS act, so it's unrelated to him. If anything Trump escalating was probably pretty bad but his willingness to pivot is probably good. I know he shit talks about the chips act though which is definitely a mistake. Seems odd given his platform is about bringing manufacturing to the US.