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AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

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Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#161

Post by AnimalMuppet »

tensor wrote: post #158
DSingularity wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think a CPU factory won’t be profitable for 20 years? MAGA movement won’t listen to you here if we can’t even agree on basic facts.

A CPU factory may (because of high margins), but, for example, a car factory may not. A factory isn't just the labour, it also requires inputs, and tariffs that change weekly means that you can't rely on being able to source the inputs reliably. When your margins are smaller, random input costs can easily sink you. If you want to bring back manufacturing you need to consider the entire supply chain, and make sure tha…

My son-in-law works for a domestic truck manufacturer (semis, not pickups). Orders are down because nobody knows how much the order will cost, because of tariff uncertainty.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#162

Post by babypuncher »

rich_sasha wrote: post #119
timmg wrote: post #34

What I really want to know, from someone who does know: Is Intel cooked? Like, will they be able to manufacture chips that compete with TSMC? They used to be a crown-jewel of US tech. But it seems like every time I read the news, they are announcing a delay or shutting down some product.

I'm not into hardware but I remember when AMD was sneered at, and all real CPUs were Intel. Then Ryzen happened. My meta conclusion is that its super hard to tell when someone is done, and it can change quickly. Or not. Sometimes it if looks like terminal decline, it simply is terminal decline.

A big part of AMD's turnaround was going fabless.

I think the big fear here is that if Intel does the same, there won't be much competition left in the fab space.

Is Samsung still competitive with TSMC?

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#163

Post by renewiltord »

tensor wrote: post #154
jajuuka wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this reads like an attempt to push the "made in America" narrative the admin wants. "Things will cost more but it's made in the US" And this is good because...why? It's not about broadening the supply chain to the consumers benefit. It's about avoiding the disaserous tariff strategy which the company isn't even paying in the first place.

What would be good for the rest of the world is if there were SOTA chips that were not produced by the US nor Taiwan. Frankly, even the ones produced in Taiwan are under US control. The world needs a healthy diversified CPU/GPU chip market. At least there is ARM on the CPU side, but it's not nearly enough.

Where could it be? The places with abundant energy are where these things establish. US is about at the lower limit. Korea, Taiwan, Japan. China has SMIC and Huawei. But Europe doesn’t have enough energy to run air conditioning. They’d struggle to add more industry. India has power shortages. Africa isn’t reliable. Australia? South America too unstable.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#165

Post by hnuser123456 »

Arainach wrote: post #122
rich_sasha wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not into hardware but I remember when AMD was sneered at, and all real CPUs were Intel. Then Ryzen happened. My meta conclusion is that its super hard to tell when someone is done, and it can change quickly. Or not. Sometimes it if looks like terminal decline, it simply is terminal decline.

These things go in cycles and predate Ryzen by a lot. The late-model Pentium 4 chips were overheating power-guzzling garbage compared to the Athlon XP, and the Athlon 64 was a serious competitor to the Core 2 series. Ryzen is the current incarnation of AMD coming into vogue in desktop, but it's not like it took them 40 years to get there.

Athlon 64 competed with first-gen Core, but Core 2 thru Sandy Bridge is what left AMD in the dust for 10 years.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#166

Post by Alupis »

sebstefan wrote: post #97
linuxftw wrote: post #35

This is why tariffs matter. Despite the US having much higher wages, and likely property and infrastructure costs, manufacturing is only 5-20% more for these high tech products. Corporations outsourced not because they couldn't compete, but because why leave 10% on the table when we can reward the executives with that cash instead of the labor?

Tariffs don't work to bring manufacturing back home if they change every 2 weeks and are sure to disappear in 4 years You need to have reasonable certainty that your factory is going to be profitable on a 20+ year horizon to commit into building a production line. I don't understand how MAGAs don't get that.

> and are sure to disappear in 4 years

I wouldn't be so sure about that. The Biden Admin left in-place a lot of Trump foreign policy, and Democrats (the likely next admin-party) have been wishing for tariffs for years. Currently they're playing their part as the "opposition" but I'd bet money most of the tariffs stay during the next admin.

Your point about changing every 2 weeks is sound, however.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#167

Post by Alupis »

sebstefan wrote: post #137
hajile wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Biden came into office, he kept MOST of Trump's tariffs on China and even added a bunch of his own. Despite the marketing, the tariffs are fairly bi-partisan among the congress.

The ones on Chinese EVs to protect the local car industry maybe, the blanket 10% he puts on your allies and the 25% if the allies are too woke maybe not.

Reciprocal tariffs have been something many people (on both sides of the isle) have been wishing for forever... It's not normally a D vs. R thing, except right now where the D's feel a need to play the opposition role.

On the other hand... most of the tariffs you hear about aren't real and never had/will-have an impact, and are clearly being weaponized as a way to get trading partners in-line. Few actual tariffs have been realized as-of yet... but if you read the news you'd be led to believe everything you buy is tariffed all to hell.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#168

Post by dilyevsky »

lukevp wrote: post #56
timmg wrote: post #34

What I really want to know, from someone who does know: Is Intel cooked? Like, will they be able to manufacture chips that compete with TSMC? They used to be a crown-jewel of US tech. But it seems like every time I read the news, they are announcing a delay or shutting down some product.

Intel is more than just fabs. AMD spun off digital foundry forever ago and just uses TSMC, no reason Intel couldn’t do the same. At this point their fabs are a liability. They have a new leader who’s from a semiconductor manufacturing background so I have some faith they’ll give up on the pursuit of next gen fabs and focus instead on their IP. There’s a huge opportunity in their GPU segment. They’ve gone from a joke…

They are bringing a lot of that “liability” online in the next few years. You’re ignoring strategic context - as long ad intel maintains domestic fabs it will not be allowed to fail

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#169

Post by perbu »

Arainach wrote: post #122
rich_sasha wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not into hardware but I remember when AMD was sneered at, and all real CPUs were Intel. Then Ryzen happened. My meta conclusion is that its super hard to tell when someone is done, and it can change quickly. Or not. Sometimes it if looks like terminal decline, it simply is terminal decline.

These things go in cycles and predate Ryzen by a lot. The late-model Pentium 4 chips were overheating power-guzzling garbage compared to the Athlon XP, and the Athlon 64 was a serious competitor to the Core 2 series. Ryzen is the current incarnation of AMD coming into vogue in desktop, but it's not like it took them 40 years to get there.

They made the amd64 architecture. Let’s not forget that.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#170

Post by jajuuka »

tensor wrote: post #154
jajuuka wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this reads like an attempt to push the "made in America" narrative the admin wants. "Things will cost more but it's made in the US" And this is good because...why? It's not about broadening the supply chain to the consumers benefit. It's about avoiding the disaserous tariff strategy which the company isn't even paying in the first place.

What would be good for the rest of the world is if there were SOTA chips that were not produced by the US nor Taiwan. Frankly, even the ones produced in Taiwan are under US control. The world needs a healthy diversified CPU/GPU chip market. At least there is ARM on the CPU side, but it's not nearly enough.

To a degree sure. I think a common architecture should be prioritized to ensure software portability. Similar to x86/x64. Where anyone can make hardware for the platform and porting software is much easier. Returning to the old days of every computer have their own unique architechture is not a good idea. Just caused insane fragmentation and nobody could truely invest in a computer without being worried about not getting certain products or software.

CPU space is definitely easier to disrupt but the GPU space requires a HUGE investment and you're fighting uphill against proprietary technology like CUDA that has become industry standards. Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung and Google have made inroads with budget to mid range which is the highest selling segment. But to compete with Nvidia or AMD on the high end you either need a whole datacenter or many years of R&D with very little return for a long time. Apple would be on this list but they have siloed off themselves entirely.

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