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Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

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Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#141

Post by windexh8er »

Dah00n wrote: post #101
windexh8er wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But China doesn't actually have a lot of technological prowess on their own. The USG might be trying to slow them down but they're not concerned about China militarily. I worked for a defense contractor back in the early 2000s when the USG was selling a lot of arms and systems to Taiwan. I got to see the bullying in person via the ASOC (part of the C4ISR platform) system we were installing. China would routinely fly…

>The USG might be trying to slow them down but they're not concerned about China militarily. The one thing that matters in the long run is money and even though the US is fighting tooth and nail to halt China it isn't very likely to happen - who knows, we'll see. Whenever this discussion pops up it reeks of racism. People from China aren't less intelligent than people in Germany or in the US so with time and more mon…

> Whenever this discussion pops up it reeks of racism. People from China aren't less intelligent than people in Germany or in the US so with time and more money they will with 100% certainty overcome any technological gap. Sure they are behind in some areas but pretending they can't make a pen is disingenuous.

It's not disingenous and it's not racist as I've laid it out. Facts are facts. I've never discounted the fact that China can't make electronics or that it can't, as a nation state, build satellites. What it's manufacturing sector, the bulk of China's financial success couldn't do was make a ball point pen as it requires precision manufacturing. That was not in China's wheelhouse until 2017. There are countries that excel in precision manufacturing at scale. You're conflating some very macro things.

> China has in a very short time-span gone from mostly agriculture to being in the top three in many (most?) high tech areas.

Define "high tech". The top 5 chip manufacturers in the world are: AMD (US), Intel (US), Broadcom (US), TSMC (CN --> Taiwan), NVidia (US). I'm curious if that helps you understand, better, what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about run of the mill electronics manufacturers. If you round out the top 12 - China isn't there: STM, NXP, Micron, LRC, Applied Materials, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm - none of which are Chinese corporations. These are the companies that know how to build chips. Where is China in this mix? Because these are the companies you need to build high-tech things. Putting an iPhone together is not the same thing as building the chips in them.

> But in short can you explain why the US is using insane amounts of energy to slow down China if they are so totally incapable? Why do we need a completely new doctrine and pivot of the navy to be sailing around an utterly incapable and un-concerning China?

Yes. TSMC. They are the dominant, mass volume, manufacturer of these chips today. The US supply chain relies on this right now. Chip building isn't like retail where you can throw up a store in a few weeks and are off to the races. Building what TSMC has takes time. The US is buying time. That's why you slow China down and keep the issue of Taiwan at bay.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#142

Post by greggsy »

chaorace wrote: post #111
Isinlor wrote: post #22

China already declared that it will use force in Taiwan if "possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted". From Chinese Anti-Secession Law: Article 8: In the event that the "Taiwan independence" secessionist forces should act under any name or by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan's secession from China, or that major incidents entailing Taiwan's secession from China should occur, or t…

This kind of bluster is a mainstay of Chinese geopolitics. The law was intentionally written in an open-ended way so that the party always gets the final say on what "completely exhausted" should mean. It serves as a propaganda tool internally and a point of leverage externally -- the party never needs to actually act on the threat for it to serve a valuable purpose. With that being said, it's not that simple. Bluste…

Exactly - they’re not constrained by the same four-ish year terms held in most democratic countries, and are able to play out twenty- and even fifty-year scenarios without too much domestic uncertainty.

That strategy manifests in that slow chipping away: they don’t need to do things all at once.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#143

Post by petra »

Dah00n wrote: post #114
windexh8er wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? China doesn't possess the capability to build their own competitive chips. The chips they do manufacture do not require high precision. Everything I've read about China over the last few years has indicated it is, generally, unsustainable. From their disastrous fiscal policies of internal hyper-finance [0], their weakening navy [1], their aging population that's well on its way through decline [2] and the [3] co…

>China doesn't possess the capability to build their own competitive chips The US doesn't either. ASML is the only supplier of cutting-edge lithography systems and they are Dutch, not from Taiwan or the US. Without them Intel and TSMC couldn't do what they do and US sanctions is why China can't currently build competitive chips. It is not because of some kind of US tech brilliance.

I believe TSMC is 50% owned by US companies.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#145

Post by matthewaveryusa »

rzwitserloot wrote: post #42
Isinlor wrote: post #22

China already declared that it will use force in Taiwan if "possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted". From Chinese Anti-Secession Law: Article 8: In the event that the "Taiwan independence" secessionist forces should act under any name or by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan's secession from China, or that major incidents entailing Taiwan's secession from China should occur, or t…

> can't be caught off guard by China as EU was caught off guard by Russia. There's always a bigger fish. The last time nations were obsessed with autarky, we got WW1, and soon after, WW2. Most countries (i.e. every country not suffering from a drastic case of the resource curse) have the nature that if they trade a lot with another country, either country would lose economic value if they invade the other, _even if_…

>Europe has stated they want to wean themselves off of fossil fuel within a decade or so.

And to think that in the 80s Regan tried (but opposed by business) to impose sanctions on europe because of the USSR gas pipelines. What a circus. Europe got hooked on USSR gas in less than 20 years, and has been planning to wean off for 10.

Europe after WW2 relied on the US to defend against Russian aggression, and not even 30 years later, in a master class of cleverness played both sides by buying, and then becoming dependent, on Russian gas, only for the Russians to become aggressive again.

Where the cleverness falls apart is that cheap Russian gas was on bought time, and now all the europeans have to show for it is massive debt, expensive social programs, a lack-luster military and closed nuclear plants. Good job...

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#146

Post by buscoquadnary »

rswail wrote: post #134
buscoquadnary wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're both wrong. Many people subscribed to each belief. The economists, globalists and industry people believed that it could never happen. The military, nationalist and political folks figured it would be inevitable, or at very least if it happened they had to win. Many people subscribed to the argument of the economists and globalists in more democratic countries because it was a comforting illusion the people in…

Or, like the UK, the days of Russian empire are over and the new bi-polar world will be the NATO/India/AUNZ/Asia vs China/Africa. So another Cold War for the 21st Century if we continue to rely on a mercantilist attitude in a world where networking is more important than some trade links.

No the cold war required a bipolar world for it's stability with MAD being the keystone that held the arch together. That was the only way for it to be stable and why we didn't have a massive war, with all actions being confined to small proxy wars.

We are in a multi-polar world now, Trump pointed out and many people are starting to agree, about whether or not the US really should be so closely aligned with Europe, NATO will probably stick around but it might not be enough. Meanwhile India has happily agreed to buy all the Russian oil that Europe isn't, which is done to spit in the face of the sanctions imposed on Russia. The mutli-polar world right now is US, India, China, EU, and Russia which is still a regional power, each of which have different interests.

The problem is China and the EU are facing huge demographic shortfalls in the next 30 years that will pose existential threats to their society, Russia is in the same boat. The EU is having this problem addressed to a certain extent through immigration but the nationalistic racist attitudes of the Chinese people make this a less palatable option for them. It is likely that the demographic cliff is going to continue to stress Chinese society to the breaking point until it snaps and begins an international incident that could quickly escalate to a global war. The best thing the US could do to preserve it's interests is do whatever we need to to schmooze up to India and cement an alliance with them, as they represent the best regional challenger to China and if they end up on the side of the CCP will cause huge problems as at that point a Bejing-Delhi alliance will be able to exert control over 1/3 > of the world's population. (This assumes they will be able to control all of Southeast Asia through soft and hard power)

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#147

Post by blihp »

adeptima wrote: post #59
bouncycastle wrote: post #50

Related: There is a massive TSMC factory being built in Japan right now. Take a look at the pictures, I've never seen this many cranes at one location: https://www.nhk.jp/static/assets/images/newblogposting/ts/7P... https://cdn-cw-english.cwg.tw/ckeditor/202205/ckeditor-628ae... It looks like a forest of cranes...

"The plant will produce 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer chips to address strong global demand for speciality chip technologies, they said" I'm curious why not the latest - 3nm, 5nm

Cost... both to design for the node and to manufacture on it. A lot of products don't need the latest and greatest process node, they just need economical capacity.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#148

Post by saiya-jin »

jcranmer wrote: post #126
roenxi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a more simple explanation - if China wants a boat to travel from anywhere to Guangzhou, Tianjin or Shanghai then at the moment the boat has to pass close by an island that is a US ally. If China controlled Taiwan, that would no longer be true and they'd have easy access to the Pacific. For the last 300? 400? years the dominant global superpower has been a naval power. You don't need to be a Leninist or a "tr…

> There is a more simple explanation - if China wants a boat to travel from anywhere to Guangzhou, Tianjin or Shanghai then at the moment the boat has to pass close by an island that is a US ally. If China controlled Taiwan, that would no longer be true and they'd have easy access to the Pacific. No, it would still be true. Just beyond Taiwan on the north side are the furthest islands in the Japanese island chain, an…

They may be neutral, but China doesn't care much. I've personally seen in cca 2014 in Philippine's Palawan islands (near El Nido, great diving place btw) big modern military ship plus few smaller that were there stationed semi-permanently. When I checked online back then there were already some provocations from Chinese side happening so this was the response.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#149

Post by glitchc »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #123
breckenedge wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Treating political and military leaders as rational entities is dangerous.

Xi is one of the most rational actors on the world stage. Machiavellian rational, but rational. I recommend the Economist's podcast series on him.

Xi is not rational. His isolationist policies and "return to Mao-style communism" have killed China's economy. The current zero-COVID policy is the icing on the cake: It runs completely counter to scientific thought and is impossible to achieve for 1.2 billion people. He's painted himself into a corner and is unwilling to budge (how can the Premier be wrong?), and is doing tremendous damage to China in the process.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#150

Post by windexh8er »

Dah00n wrote: post #114
windexh8er wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? China doesn't possess the capability to build their own competitive chips. The chips they do manufacture do not require high precision. Everything I've read about China over the last few years has indicated it is, generally, unsustainable. From their disastrous fiscal policies of internal hyper-finance [0], their weakening navy [1], their aging population that's well on its way through decline [2] and the [3] co…

>China doesn't possess the capability to build their own competitive chips The US doesn't either. ASML is the only supplier of cutting-edge lithography systems and they are Dutch, not from Taiwan or the US. Without them Intel and TSMC couldn't do what they do and US sanctions is why China can't currently build competitive chips. It is not because of some kind of US tech brilliance.

Look at the top 12 chip manufacturers globally. The ones that design the chips that run our everyday lives. They are mostly US based companies. The IP is within, mostly, US based companies. I posted this in another comment. This is why the US is heavily subsidizing bringing that to US soil [0]. This is preemptive, but in many ways, a bit late.

If you're saying the US doesn't know how to design and build chips then you're conflating two very different things. The US manufacturers used to build them here, but the global supply chain made it infeasible to do it on US soil historically. The US currently doesn't have the manufacturing capacity to fabricate the chips they design - but the actual R&D is here. China doesn't have that.

> It is not because of some kind of US tech brilliance.

If that's the case then please share one Chinese rival to Intel / AMD.

[0] https://www.nist.gov/semiconductors/chips-act

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