I thought fabs require massive amounts of water to function, isn't AZ a pretty dry state?
Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
11–20 of 657 posts
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#12I thought fabs require massive amounts of water to function, isn't AZ a pretty dry state?
Water is reused.
Wafers have purity requirements so you'd be stupid to not recycle and re-purify the water used.
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#13[dead]
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#14Grants ?! Isn't that massively anti-competitive/entrenching a monopoly? I would've expected it to be at least disguised as a tax break or something. ('No tax on US-manufactured chips' or whatever.)
A strong percentage of Intel's current sales are vendor lockin from the historical "Wintel" age (windows + intel). This is a moat Apple finally crossed after great effort, and Windows has made a few attempts to cross. If chips were sold purely on hardware specs and not software lockin then Intel would have much fewer sales. The US giving grants, tax credits, and cheap loans to Intel only serves to extend the lifespan…
These grants are for a completely different side of the business. The fab side, and that side is strategically significant for the US government so it makes sense they put some money in. The rest of the world is doing the exact same as well.
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Due to the licensing agreements Intel and AMD have a duopoly on all modern x86 chips.
Who cares? You can buy performant arm64 laptops and servers. HPC is GPUs.
> You can buy performant arm64 laptops and servers
From? Apple doesn't count due to the extremely narrow usability of their software and the complexity of using other software on their hardware.
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#16I just don't get it - the country has over $34 Trillion in debt already and we are handing out money to mega-rich corporations who don't need the money (among other things we waste money on).
This is not going to end well - our kids and grand kids will be paying for it.
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#17In the past 15 years Intel has spent almost $100 billion on stock buybacks. They don't need the money.
This is a pure transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the rich. And they're getting more like $20 billion not once you include loans, etc.
The wealthy make massive amounts of money, take it out for themselves, and then complain that they don't have capital. That's pure junk. And then we wonder why Biden's approval ratings are terrible and why we might end up with Trump again.
We need to make stock buybacks illegal again. They provide no value to everyone but the ultra wealthy.
Edit: Wow, the downvotes are amazing. A company gives away $100 billion then comes hat and in had to taxpayers asking for another $20 billion and we just hand it out. And I'm getting downvoted?
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#18[flagged]
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#19I just don't get it - the country has over $34 Trillion in debt already and we are handing out money to mega-rich corporations who don't need the money (among other things we waste money on). This is not going to end well - our kids and grand kids will be paying for it.
They would be paying far more if chips suddenly stopped coming out of Taiwan in the future and the U.S. had no onshore capacity to make their own.
It’s more of an insurance policy than a subsidy. Intel needs a reason to build in the U.S., and grants tip the ROI scale on their side to make it happen.
Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
#20In the past 15 years Intel has spent almost $100 billion on stock buybacks. They don't need the money. This is a pure transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the rich. And they're getting more like $20 billion not once you include loans, etc. The wealthy make massive amounts of money, take it out for themselves, and then complain that they don't have capital. That's pure junk. And then we wonder why Biden's approval rat…
I don't care if companies buy back stock - but if they can afford to buy back stock, they don't need or deserve my tax money to operate.