the president unilaterally extorting 10% ownership out of a company isn't going to build the kind of system that competes with anyone. Big business can't really thrive under this kind of thing any more than corner stores can thrive under a protection racket.
US Intel
121–130 of 581 posts
Re: US Intel
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
And it took a long time for mobile CPUs to be considered important. Arguably mobile CPUs still aren't considered more important than desktop, even though they obviously sell more.
Mobile CPUs are almost a commodity these days and fairly low margin especially compared to server chips. Most people really don't care what chip does their phone has and its almost always "good enough" relative to the price. IMO that's much less of a case for laptop and desktop (let alone server). Even if people don't understand the technical details e.g. Apple's superior performance per watt (or its implications at…
This is demonstrably not true. TSMC is ahead because of the volume of mobile and that happened on the back of a lot of investment from Apple - who does make high end chips.
Intel focus on low volume high end chips is another reason they are behind.
Re: US Intel
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me it's debatable that they were "behind" on GPU because I didn't need a bleeding edge gaming GPU. I only needed a GPU fast enough for spreadsheets and code editors, provided at a competitive price and power budget. Intel actually did deliver that.
Intel also had adequate software for their GPUs. They didn't mess about using binary blobs for them.
To a first approximation, no one cares about open source drivers when most PCs are running Windows and servers running Linux don’t care about Intels GPUs
Re: US Intel
#124I’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…
It's such a stunning dereliction the US let things get to this point.
It's a side effect of systemically putting short term gains ahead of long term research. CHIPs act may be too little, it is certainly too late...
Re: US Intel
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Well on desktop and server they pretty much had no competition until the late 2010s or so. So they were the best by default.
AMD definitely gave them a scare several times before that.
Re: US Intel
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have developed an economy oriented around selling one another websites, and we are only belatedly noticing that none of our enemies seem to have followed.
It’s ridiculous. It’s so easy to find VC funding for software but heaven forbid you try and make agricultural innovations. Biotech is slightly better but still a struggle. Hardware only counts right now if it’s defense tech but even then people would rather have another SaaS.
Yeah seeing the innovations DJI is making in agriculture makes me wonder why VCs do not want to fund other startups like it. I know the margins are worse and it takes way more capital to fund hardware companies, but that has to be better than funding another chat-gpt wrapper. I guess that is why I am not a VC though lol.
Re: US Intel
#127How is this ‘equity stake’ different than nationalization? (The thing that soviet socialism did to russian property and business a hundred years ago). After all the government prints the money. So instead of just taking control of a company the govt prints the money to buy it. Isnt it the same thing? And where is the example of a successful govt run business? Why dont we encourage businesses here w free trade zones?
It is a minority stake so they won't "control" Intel in the way we typically associate with "nationalized" businesses.
> And where is the example of a successful govt run business?
This is a bit of a loaded political question until you first define "success" and "business". Most of the reasons you'd even want a company to be run by the government in a mixed-market economy are precisely because you want it to be run differently than a private company.
Re: US Intel
#128The short version is: this can work but it won't. Let me just say, for those of us who remember the 1990s and 2000s, Intel's drop off has been something nobody would've predicted. It's hard to overstate just how dominant they were (other than the fairly brief but significant Athlon64 era). And even when they were behind on consumer CPUs, which they were until the Core Duo/Centrino platform (which was really the Penti…
This is a bit of a long piece but if you're interested in this subject I think it's a good read https://docseuss.medium.com/the-biggest-threat-facing-your-t...
I'm surprised I haven't seen this before. Thanks for mentioning it. It is long and I did skim some sections but I read large chunks. I'd actually be curious to know the author's politics because that is a deeply anti-capitalist essay (which I agree with, for the record).
The Bungie grenade example was funny because I've seen this exact same ignorant data fuckery. Blizzard does this with World of Warcraft now because they're tuning talents that classes have based on how much they're used, which ignores how often people just copy builds and how some abilities are just inherently fun (as the grenades apparently were). The net result is they just keep nerfing anything people like.
When he was talking about Valve and Steam and EA and sports exclusivity, he may as well have just said "enclosures" (in the capitalist) sense because that's exactly what he means.
Every modern corporation is just looking for a formula that they can repeat ad nauseum. He talks about this with media properties and the Marvel and Star Wars slop (my word, not his) that we get as a result. This is fundamentally incompatible with creative projects, be it movies or games.
One of the most destructive ideas to come out of the 20th century is this idea that a good business leader can manage anything. So we get a lot of "leaders" who end up running things they know nothing about and in large companies, "leaders" get shuffled around every 6-12 months on purpose, to avoid them ever failing because they're never anywhere long enough to see the consequences of their actions.
You see that with the VP shuffle at any large tech company.
I also appreciate that he was anti-NFTs as I was for the exact same reasons: it doesn't actually solve any problems or give consumers anything they actually want.
Re: US Intel
#129I’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…
Is it just me or is the author only making an argument for why Intel is too big to fail? He says hes steelmanning the equity stake but then he doesn't argue why it's necessary. He devotes 2 sentences to CLAIMING its necessary after aruging that Intel is too big to fail.
The article is basically like this:
> Leading edge domestic foundry companies are a national security concern. Therefor Intel is too big to fail.
OK. Many can agree with this. And I think the author makes a very good argument for it. He makes some good points:
- Startup cant replace Intel - US cant rely on TSMC alone - Artificial demand could actually improve Intel by solving the chicken and egg problem
But that doesn't answer the question, "why the equity stake?" And for more context, it's replacing what would have been grants with the equity stake. So it's, "Why replace the $XB in grants with an equity stake?"
He does touch on it but it's just a claim thrown in at the end:
>The single most important reason for the U.S. to own part of Intel, however, is the implicit promise that Intel Foundry is not going anywhere. There simply isn’t a credible way to make that promise without having skin in the game, and that is now the case.
OK, maybe. But that now needs to be argued for. The US can give them money as grants. Grants put skin in the game for the US because they require Intel to meet the terms.
Re: US Intel
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s ridiculous. It’s so easy to find VC funding for software but heaven forbid you try and make agricultural innovations. Biotech is slightly better but still a struggle. Hardware only counts right now if it’s defense tech but even then people would rather have another SaaS.
Yeah seeing the innovations DJI is making in agriculture makes me wonder why VCs do not want to fund other startups like it. I know the margins are worse and it takes way more capital to fund hardware companies, but that has to be better than funding another chat-gpt wrapper. I guess that is why I am not a VC though lol.
They're just hard. What is the US robotics startup that you would use as an example of success? iRobot? It barely broke even.