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Intel chief Pat Gelsinger: Too many chips made in Asia

bbc.com

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Re: Intel chief Pat Gelsinger: Too many chips made in Asia

#121

Post by Taniwha »

rakah wrote: post #108
Nokinside wrote: post #54

As he says here, the decision not to take risk and jump to EUV with TSMC and Samsung was the mistake that started this downfall and it snowballed. The decision happened somewhere in the pathfinding stage into 10nm. When Gerald Marcyk was running Intel components research back in the 2001 Intel was already considering using EUV lithography for the 45nm technology node that would come out 2007. It turned out that the s…

EUV is hard, but isn't part of the reason why only ASML can make those machines because of the CRADA they have with DOE as a member of the EUV LLC? I believe this agreement was why ASML wasn't allowed to sell their solution to China recently. I bet Intel will have no trouble buying EUV to bring in-house - especially if that serves US strategic interests.

ASML only makes a few machines every year, you can't just buy them off the shelf

IMHO banning sales of ASML's product to China is chest thumping protectionist nonsense - if you're worried about the rise of China's military then you should be tangling their economy up more with that of the West so that they have more reasons not to go to war rather than driving them to be self sufficient.

Re: Intel chief Pat Gelsinger: Too many chips made in Asia

#122

Post by NobodyNada »

coliveira wrote: post #82
NobodyNada wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that? As the article explains, they have just announced their plans to directly compete against TSMC/Samsung as a manufacturer of chips for other companies (rather than just manufacturing their own designs). To me, this suggests Gelsinger is confident in the company’s ability to get their 7nm-and-beyond processes back on track and become competitive once again.

> this suggests Gelsinger is confident in the company’s ability to get their 7nm-and-beyond processes back Or it may suggest that the company wants to say anything to reassure investors that it will change course and stop losing market share. I wouldn't read any particular guarantee into these statements.

That’s a fair point. A comment [0] in a parallel thread points out a third possibility: that Intel believes x86 is on its way out, and they’re attempting to pivot before their only significant revenue source dries up.

I hope for the semiconductor industry’s sake they really are getting 7nm back on track this time, and that this new manufacturing business will be competitive. Perhaps that’s unrealistic to expect given their track record lately, but at least Gelsinger seems to deserve more confidence than Swan.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26568598

Re: Intel chief Pat Gelsinger: Too many chips made in Asia

#123

Post by Nokinside »

rakah wrote: post #108
Nokinside wrote: post #54

As he says here, the decision not to take risk and jump to EUV with TSMC and Samsung was the mistake that started this downfall and it snowballed. The decision happened somewhere in the pathfinding stage into 10nm. When Gerald Marcyk was running Intel components research back in the 2001 Intel was already considering using EUV lithography for the 45nm technology node that would come out 2007. It turned out that the s…

EUV is hard, but isn't part of the reason why only ASML can make those machines because of the CRADA they have with DOE as a member of the EUV LLC? I believe this agreement was why ASML wasn't allowed to sell their solution to China recently. I bet Intel will have no trouble buying EUV to bring in-house - especially if that serves US strategic interests.

ASML EUV machines are the combined result of basically everybody in the business except maybe Canon and Nikon. Motorola, AMD, Micron, Infineon, IBM, Intel, Samsung, TSMC, lasers and plasma physics from LLNL.

Re: Intel chief Pat Gelsinger: Too many chips made in Asia

#124

Post by stefan_ »

paxys wrote: post #26
Waterluvian wrote: post #15

America should use the "we need to spend spend spend to revitalize the economy" to domesticate more industry.

I think a national security argument will highlight the importance and urgency a lot better.

There is a lot of national security silicon in the US, it just tends to be the obscure processes for various defense gadgets..

Re: Intel chief Pat Gelsinger: Too many chips made in Asia

#125

Post by ripe »

numpad0 wrote: post #97
conteenants wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Indo" in "Indo-European" comes from India, one of the two largest countries on the Asian continent. You might classify some languages spoken in India as.. Indo-European. Shocking. Those Indians who speak those languages.. are Asian! Surprise! Since you missed third grade geography, the other continents in addition to Asia are Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, and recently discovere…

So how often would you refer to people from India as Asians, should you use the word?

In Britain they call people from India Asians all the time. Immigrants from the Indian subcontinent are the biggest nonwhite group, and that’s the word they are known by.

In the US, I think people often use “Asian” to euphemistically refer to people they used to call Orientals. The latter term is considered problematic. The new term hasn’t improved their treatment, though.

Re: Intel chief Pat Gelsinger: Too many chips made in Asia

#126

Post by [deleted] »

dragontamer wrote: post #61
smiley1437 wrote: post #42

I'm all for redistributing fab capacity geographically. But I thought it became concentrated in Asia because of the lower cost for high quality engineers due to LCOL. How will Intel change this equation to make it profitable in other geographic regions?

USA has some of the lowest cost of energy / electricity in the world and one of the best rail-freight systems in the world. Our passenger rail sucks and our people are expensive. But significant manufacturing remains in the USA (yes, we manufacture more today than ever before, despite the hoopla about outsourcing). There's a reason for that: USA has some pretty good advantages if you know what to look for.

[deleted]

Re: Intel chief Pat Gelsinger: Too many chips made in Asia

#128

Post by irrational »

numpad0 wrote: post #90
triceratops wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Asia is not a continent though According to...? And if it's not a continent, what is it? > “other worlds that don’t speak Indo-European languages” There are hundreds of Indo-European languages spoken in Asia. One of them (Hindi) is the 4th most common first language in the world, after Mandarin, Spanish, and English[1]. (I'm actually surprised Arabic isn't higher on that list but maybe the various regional variants…

Asia is a hyper broad term that could include areas from east to Russia to just west of Turkey except Middle East. Some thinks Central Asia is not or whatnot. “Continent” refers to single contiguous land encircled by seawater, that aren’t islands, at least as I think of the word. > where you're getting your geography It’s 7:45 now where I am.

> “Continent” refers to single contiguous land encircled by seawater, that aren’t islands, at least as I think of the word.

To the best of my knowledge, you are literally the only person who uses that definition. By that definition Asia, Europe, and Africa would be a single continent. North and South America would be a single continent. What school did you go to that they taught you there are 4 continents in the entire world?

Re: Intel chief Pat Gelsinger: Too many chips made in Asia

#129

Post by rtkwe »

kingaillas wrote: post #74
r3trohack3r wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think National Security might have something to do with manufacturing of electronics moving outside the US. The war on crypto called for manufactures to either provide two versions of their product, or move manufacturing to a place they could export a single product: https://www.eff.org/pages/decrypting-puzzle-palace

So? Don't most manufacturers already have to provide multiple product versions if they sell internationally, to handle different electricity/plug differences around the world (among many other things)? Maybe there is an effect, but it isn't as if products sold worldwide come in one version that works everywhere. Corporations love excuses to differentiate (read: charge more, especially for local captive customers) for…

The electrical differences are isolated from the chip level manufacturers no processor that would have been affected by crypto export bans would be taking raw wall voltage.

Re: Intel chief Pat Gelsinger: Too many chips made in Asia

#130

Post by totalZero »

Taniwha wrote: post #121
rakah wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EUV is hard, but isn't part of the reason why only ASML can make those machines because of the CRADA they have with DOE as a member of the EUV LLC? I believe this agreement was why ASML wasn't allowed to sell their solution to China recently. I bet Intel will have no trouble buying EUV to bring in-house - especially if that serves US strategic interests.

ASML only makes a few machines every year, you can't just buy them off the shelf IMHO banning sales of ASML's product to China is chest thumping protectionist nonsense - if you're worried about the rise of China's military then you should be tangling their economy up more with that of the West so that they have more reasons not to go to war rather than driving them to be self sufficient.

I don't think they're worried about China's military so much as China's independence from the rest of the semiconductor supply chain. When you give China a machine, it's only a matter of time before they reverse engineer it and make something slightly worse but much cheaper. This kind of theft is backed by the government. So the expectation that they will remain forever dependent upon ASML is wishful thinking.
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