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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

#111
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it just means they had been partnering in the past and now they're expanding it with more investment.

I think they were complaining about grammar. Shouldn't it have been 'spending' rather than 'spend'?

yes, I was complaining about grammar

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

#112

What is with the phrase "increase spend"? It just seems gramatically .... off. Why not say "Apple partners with Broadcom to produce billions more US chips".

Your proposed sentence contains less information.

The initial headline also conveys both that there is current spend with Broadcom, and that the future spend is higher than current levels.

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

#113

What is with the phrase "increase spend"? It just seems gramatically .... off. Why not say "Apple partners with Broadcom to produce billions more US chips".

It sounds better on the quarterly report than "Apple will pay more money"

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

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit flips in a database = years of people’s labor and planning

No, it's literally just bitflips. The supply of dollars increases by trillions a year between fractional reserve banking and, depending on the year, fed policy. We're not even printing them.

Indeed. And according to MMT what that does is claim economic output for the government (work resources etc), without direct taxation.

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

#115

What is with the phrase "increase spend"? It just seems gramatically .... off. Why not say "Apple partners with Broadcom to produce billions more US chips".

Help pump AVGO by tipping sentiment and creating a visualization of billions getting dumped into Broadcom.

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

#116
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it just means they had been partnering in the past and now they're expanding it with more investment.

I think they were complaining about grammar. Shouldn't it have been 'spending' rather than 'spend'?

Using the infinitive rather than gerund form of a verb to reference a an instance is a common pattern. "I went for a walk," instead of "I was walking."

I think it is interesting to attempt understanding people's choices to shorten "spend" rather than "spending," or to use something longer like "methodology" rather than "method" when they describe the method not a study of methods.

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

#117

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?

For some recent data, see the diagram "Semiconductor foundry capacity 8" & 12" - by foundry location (in %)" at [1] for a rough idea of kWpm (thousand 300mm equivalent wafer starts per month) for key countries/regions for 2024, 2025 and prediction for 2031. China and ROK are predicted in this report to have the largest overall market share increases to 2031.

For some more detailed data (hard to find it publicly available), also see the OECD report at [2], particularly pages 18 and 20 (as numbered). This report provides a breakdown of ~2024-2025 per-country/per-region capacity by chip type (power, analog, speciality memory, commodity memory, advanced logic, mature logic) and a prediction for pre-country/per-region upcoming capacity increases by chip type.

There are markets within markets of course. China dominates in power electronics which makes senses when you consider even just their domestic demand for electric vehicles and renewable generators. Taiwan dominates in advanced logic and exports pretty much all of it. ROK dominates in commodity memory and also exports pretty much all of it. When you compare populations of China vs. USA, the USA are/will be punching above their weight for analog and advanced logic chips, which is also where the focus of their investment is.

In categories such as power electronics and mature logic which China dominates, labour cost is much more important than categories such as advanced logic where equipment is the overwhelming cost. For this reason you'll find China (and maybe even India if they bother to get into the market) dominate these categories due to lower costs of labour. Traditional competitors in these categories such as Onsemi and STMicroelectronics have been hurting.[3]

It's hard to predict which announced/planned investments will go ahead and be impactful, for various reasons such as utilisation rates of fabs once built. But it'll be particularly and increasingly difficult to predict the future of semiconductor fabrication due to what is happening in China. China has expanded their domestic chip making equipment industry enough to mandate Chinese fabs use at least 50% Chinese equipment.[4] Over 2024 and 2025 the investment from China into chip making equipment was estimated to be 37-42% of global spend, so we're talking about 20% (or maybe higher up to 40%) of global chip making equipment spending not being readily observable.[5]

[1] https://www.yolegroup.com/product/report/status-of-the-semic...

[2] https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...

[3] https://www.trendforce.com/news/2025/02/26/news-power-chipma...

[4] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-mandates-50-domest...

[5] https://www.semi.org/en/SEMI-Reports-Global-Semiconductor-Eq...

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

#118

What is with the phrase "increase spend"? It just seems gramatically .... off. Why not say "Apple partners with Broadcom to produce billions more US chips".

It sounds off because “increase” can be a verb or a noun and “spend” can also be used as a verb or a noun (but is more often used as a verb) so you’re brain is trying to parse the sentence with dual meaning terms

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

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An arbitrary score that's meant to represent said years, not the actual output of those years. It's important to remember that money is not value. It's a score that's meant to represent value, but the value itself is entirely distinct.

People literally work their lives for that representation. It’s not the value itself but it’s a way to store and transfer certain kinds of value.

It's a way to represent that value. The number does not itself store the value, nor does changing the number transfer the value.

It's true that people work hard for that representation, because we've built systems where the link between the representation and the underlying value is quite strong, but it is still just a number at the end of the day.

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

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No company can plan based on the tariffs. There is zero guarantee that then next government won't revoked them or that the current one won't flip-flop. Local manufacturing doesn't swing on a 2-4 (or 6 or 8) year timescale. There needs to be consistency. The company that moves (or starts) manufacturing here today might get run out of business when/if tariffs are repealed and their competitor already has production lin…

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.

Labour is one part of the equation. China has really well-designed supply chains and economic zones, where getting access to related components just means walking/driving few minutes down the road. They have made huge strides in robotics as well, so the argument for demographic collapse is weak IMHO.

> inevitable decline or elimination of China as a production and/or trading partner

I don't think this will happen anytime soon, that companies will need short-term planning.

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