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US Intel

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Re: US Intel

#431

Post by prewett »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #231
rich_sasha wrote: post #46

I am torn on this. On the one hand, I strongly agree with this article. This kind of state ownership never brings anyhing good. I don't see how this is different. On the other, it is hard to deny how impressive the new wave of Chinese manufacturing is. No longer are they just making knock offs of Western products with stolen IP. BYD for example seems genuinely innovative, a top product. There are many other examples.…

The thing the US should fear the most, ironically, is China moving further and further away from communism. If something happened to Xi and the party elected a hard nosed communist, China would unravel itself.

Xi is a return towards Communism, or at least Communist-style control. And things have slowly gotten worse over his tenure. I think zero-Covid and the Shanghai debacle lost a lot of trust, too.

I don’t foresee the Party choosing someone more hardline than Xi, though. China has always been authoritarian, but collective ownership was new and an unmitigated disaster. They are too smart to go back that direction, although if they did, I could see that happening.

Re: US Intel

#432

Post by XorNot »

SlowTao wrote: post #385
axus wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world collectively (mostly the US) spends trillions on national defense, that spending is unnecessary if we all just got along. I think you're right that everyone spending money on local semiconductor industries is even more wasteful.

Unfortunately, that defense allows hoarding wealth. If the wealth was more evenly distributed globally, there would be little reason to defend against raids. This is how places like the US despite having 4% of the population have about a quarter of the material and energy consumption. Not to single them out, I am in Australia, it is a similar ratio. I am not defending this situation, just highlighting its role.

Why would a more even distribution of resources lead to less war?

Like, it might but if resources are equally distributed then raiding your neighbors for more is one of the best ways to get more of them.

Does no one study history? War wasn't invented in the 20th century.

Chimps in the damn jungle go to war with each other.

Re: US Intel

#433

Post by ipnon »

superb-owl wrote: post #420

Honestly the fact that we don’t have a sovereign wealth fund invested in US equities is just silly. I get that you don’t want too much central interference in the economy but it feels like leaving money on the table

It's pretty funny to talk about central interference when the federal government already has a monopoly on monetary policy.

Re: US Intel

#434

Post by bee_rider »

scarface_74 wrote: post #52
wat10000 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel was the best until fairly recently. Then they still looked like the best to a non-expert observer, and then still looked at least competitive until even more recently. The modern world changes too fast for our governments to adapt to. Especially when we're talking about state of the art semiconductors and our leader was born before the invention of the transistor.

Intel hasn’t been “the best” since the world cared more about mobile in 2010. There GPUs have always been also ran. It just wasn’t a big deal until crypto and later machine learning. Even for integrated graphics, Intel has been behind Apple’s/TSMC ARM based processor before the Mx based Macs.

Mobile as cellphone chips? I guess you are right, they were never really all that close to best.

Intel was very competitive in laptops until Apple started coming out with the M-chips. Now, AMD is doing pretty good. Has Microsoft released their Snapdragon surfaces? Haven’t heard much on that front.

Re: US Intel

#435

Post by beachtaxidriver »

ecshafer wrote: post #247
nemothekid wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the wrong way to look at it. The people in the US that you would want working in semiconductors aren't NEETs. They are at Facebook/Google/Jane Street/Citadel/McKinsey. If I am a capable person working on delivering node improvements dealing with smaller and smaller challenges as the physics issues become quantum - I will eventually start to ask myself: why am I working on the hardest physics problems in the p…

The cost of assets (especially housing, schooling, and health care) is a huge problem, and your example is a poignant one. More funding could sway a few people in that pipeline to go towards semi-conductors, but the majority of workers aren't Jane Street quality, they are technicians and engineers doing lots of highly skilled "grunt" work. Personally I think the other half of the problem, Big Tech paying so much migh…

This right here.

When Silicon Valley was cheap enough to live in that people could casually start a company in their garage... Then people didn't have to relentlessly optimize for short term comp.

Today you have to work at FANG to afford a garage in the Bay area.

Re: US Intel

#436

Post by safety1st »

themgt wrote: post #7

I’ll be honest: there is a very good chance this won’t work .... At the same time, the China concerns are real, Intel Foundry needs a guarantee of existence to even court customers, and there really is no coming back from an exit. There won’t be a startup to fill Intel’s place. The U.S. will be completely dependent on foreign companies for the most important products on earth, and while everything may seem fine for t…

Well, there's a really easy and straightforward explanation for how this happened. It's just uncomfortable for everyone who's succeeded because of it. So they don't say it.

America abandoned free enterprise in favor of managed monopolies. It happened via a wave of financialization, globalization, government bailouts, mergers and consolidation that all granted immediate financial benefits to shareholders, at the cost of long term competitiveness.

That's it that's the whole story in a nutshell, look at Boeing, Intel and others, you'll see it again and again.

This is not the right way and US economics are looking more like Mussolini's every day.

Force these incumbents to compete. With fragments of each other, or with new American companies. Perhaps shelter them from some foreign competition if you really must.

That would once again unlock the unparalleled power of the 350 million enterprising souls spread between the two coasts. Which is what got America to #1 in the first place.

Give those souls something to do again that isn't meth or opiates.

Managed monopolies are not the way.

Re: US Intel

#437

Post by 999900000999 »

ronsor wrote: post #429
999900000999 wrote: post #428

I'm not an expert, but I would of vastly preferred a fund to start a bunch of smaller fab companies. Most systems don't need start of the art processors. Get some minimal fabs set up for RISC V chips. If we removed the profit motive, how much does this cost ? Alternatively... Even a refurbished GameCube can probably run a basic rest API server. If anything we have enough EWaste that we can probably just recycle what…

My ideal situation is one where anyone can fab simple processors at home the same way you can 3D print almost any small object with under $5000 in total expenses. Unfortunately that seems far away.

I imagine if you could get it under a million, it enters the extreme higher end of the hobbyist range.

Not like everyone can personally design a chip anyway, but if a small city has at least one fab it can be something in an emergency situation.

Recycling is probably a better solution here thought.

Re: US Intel

#438

Post by blackoil »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #418
tkiolp4 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If any, the US is one of those countries everybody else is afraid of. Americans may be proud of that, but that’s pure bullying.

>Americans may be proud of that, but that’s pure bullying. It's slightly weird to me how foreigners seem to look on the Trump era as personifying the US to a greater degree than e.g. the Biden or Obama eras. Trump is not especially popular right now: https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker

What's the point of democracy if people are absolved by simply claiming "not my president". Trump isn't a surprise elected first time.
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