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Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

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Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#161
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any company should definitely be planning for the inevitable decline or elimination of China as a production and/or trading partner. If not caused by politics, then by demographic crash.

can you explain more on this "demographic crash" because I am not in the loop. Are you talking about population decline which I'm sure will have some effect but elimination?

Even if they mandated non-stop births from all capable females by law, it still wouldn't catch up to declines.

https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/chinas-popula...

Massive immigration (on a scale never seen in human history) would be required. I don't see that happening with one of the most xenophobic cultures on Earth.

This isn't a problem confined to China, they just have the worst numbers. The entire "first world" is facing declines of varying degrees.

This coupled with climate change is why immigration policy is probably the single most important thing for most countries right now.

Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#162
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any company should definitely be planning for the inevitable decline or elimination of China as a production and/or trading partner. If not caused by politics, then by demographic crash.

Over what timescale? Is the presumption that China, the country of one child policy, will do nothing about the problem?

https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/chinas-popula...

Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#163
post #3

>Broadcom will produce advanced radio frequency components — including FBAR filters Thin-film bulk acoustic resonator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-film_bulk_acoustic_resona... >Trends to utilize RF spectrum more efficiently with higher frequencies than roughly 1.5–2.5 GHz and in some cases also simultaneously with increasing RF output power have supported FBAR technology to become one of the key enabling techno…

FBAR is cool, but what can Claude come up with?

Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#164
post #135
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their aging population will pose an extremely serious problem in the coming decades.

If demographics are a problem for chipmaking in China, then it's good to compare against key chipmaking countries. To compare, 2024 (UN) fertility rates (highest-lowest):[1] US: 1.62 Japan: 1.23 China: 1.02 ROC: 0.86 ROK: 0.75 (where an increase to 0.8 in 2025 was cause for celebration, as is a predicted increase to 0.85 by mid 2026)[2] Alternatively (and perhaps accounting for migration etc), UN 2024 forecasts popul…

Chipmaking is not a high labor industry (other than during the building of plants).

China's one big advantage over other work forces is massive amounts of labor that can be directed by central planning. As their labor costs have gone up, labor intensive manufacturing has already started shifting away. When population declines cause labor costs to go even higher, they lose their advantage.

Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#166

As much as I hate the source of the tariff policies, from an uneducated outsider PoV, they do seem to be causing fewer dollars to leave the country in imports. How does it feel from an insider perspective? Are the increased costs on imported items and dependent services worth it for a bit more local investment?

I'd encourage you to educate yourself.

Analysis of previous tariffs have found they cost a ton, drive prices up, and increase corporate profits.

The 2018 Trump washing machine tariff raised prices not just for washers but also dryers (12%), and cost $820,000 per job onshored.

A 2012 chinese tire tariff cost $900,000 per job onshored.

It's terrible business.

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.20190611

Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#167

As much as I hate the source of the tariff policies, from an uneducated outsider PoV, they do seem to be causing fewer dollars to leave the country in imports. How does it feel from an insider perspective? Are the increased costs on imported items and dependent services worth it for a bit more local investment?

The tariffs have been highly destructive to local manufacturing because in the US we mostly build complex things made out of simpler parts which we import. The cost of everything we build simply increased and as a result many businesses selling relatively higher margin, higher complexity products had to scale back or shut down. More to the point, the notion that dollars leaving the country is a real problem is really…

[deleted]

Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those would be OCXOs. TXCOs are just temperature compensated.

Every time I trust my memory it betrays me.

I treat my technical memories in discussions like the Russian proverb Reagan popularized in the disarmament negotiations with the Soviets.

  доверяй, но проверяй
“Trust, but verify.”

Meta: Yes, I did a quick search to verify some of this before replying.

Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, the "HF physics is black magic" trope has made me numb to the phantastical contraptions. I appreciate when they look cool, like esoteric orgon wave radiators.

Small note of clarification. HF in a radio frequency (RF) context actually refers to what we would now consider fairly low frequencies between 3 and 30mhz where wavelengths are in the tens of meters. The black magic is mostly in UHF AND microwave regions where wavelengths start to measure closer to the size of circuit elements. Although I have also heard it said “RF physics is black magic” to cover all the bases

Yes, radio found out naming is hard before software did, in very old times there was High Frequency (HF), but then circuits got fast enough to go higher, oops, ok no problem, let's call the new frequencies Very High Frequency (VHF) whew that was close, but wait they got even faster! Ugh! Ok let's call the new frequencies Ultra High Frequency (UHF), but wait, we're still not in the Ghz range yet! Thankfully they did not keep going to Super Super Mega Ultra High Frequency.

Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small note of clarification. HF in a radio frequency (RF) context actually refers to what we would now consider fairly low frequencies between 3 and 30mhz where wavelengths are in the tens of meters. The black magic is mostly in UHF AND microwave regions where wavelengths start to measure closer to the size of circuit elements. Although I have also heard it said “RF physics is black magic” to cover all the bases

Yes, radio found out naming is hard before software did, in very old times there was High Frequency (HF), but then circuits got fast enough to go higher, oops, ok no problem, let's call the new frequencies Very High Frequency (VHF) whew that was close, but wait they got even faster! Ugh! Ok let's call the new frequencies Ultra High Frequency (UHF), but wait, we're still not in the Ghz range yet! Thankfully they did n…

Sky High Frequency
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