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Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

economist.com

181–190 of 734 posts

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#181

Thanks (O/T: copy-pasting text into vim to even read TFA high times to flag ad-ridden, basically unreadable content, or not link to it in the first place)

>> or not link to it in the first place

Please, do not suggest this.

You can decide for yourself whether or not you want to go to the extra effort to read the content. And then the rest of us can also decide for ourselves.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#182
post #46

Highly recommend the economist’s podcast on Xi called ‘The Prince’ Xi became a Leninist and is trying to be the next Mao. He is a true believer that his glory and the glory of China can only happen by taking back Taiwan. TSMC is a huge reason for this conflict. The current US policy is trying to slow China’s technological might for that next war.

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…

I don't even really understand what "glory" is supposed to mean here; I'm more a believer in the cold, hard reality of geopolitical survival : you can't be a global superpower when your own seafront is literally at the mercy of an hostile (and warlike) nation.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#183
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nitpick, but AFAIK China hasn't violated Taiwan's airspace. Taiwan says they'd treat it as an act of war if they did. Taiwan has an Air Defense Identification Zone where they track aircraft and aircraft entering it are supposed to identify themselves. This extends over the Chinese mainland and it's this zone that everyone talks about China "violating". But it's Chinese airspace and ultimately they have the right to f…

Chinese missile went directly over the island near the capital of Taiwan:

- https://japan-forward.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/JF-Grap...

Source:

- https://japan-forward.com/editorial-chinas-missile-tantrum-t...

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#184
It seems silly to measure short term success in an industry known for "notoriously cyclical" booms and busts. The size of the investment needed to create these manufacturing plants in the US, coupled with the complexity and time it takes to build them, combines perfectly for articles like this.

I can't think of a reason that on-shoring chip fabs would be a bad thing for the US - other than the vague threat of China retaliating. Cutting off foreign dependencies in high-tech industries would surely be beneficial in the long term.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Xi['s] ... isolationist policies ... have killed China's economy.

The PRC's GDP was US$17.7 trillion nominal in 02021, the latest year for which we have numbers, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China. That makes it the world's second largest economy by nominal dollar value (after the US) and the largest by PPP. That's not just individual countries, either; it overtook the economy of the EU in nominal GDP in 02021 under Xi's leadership. The IMF's estimate for 02022 is US$20 trillion according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi....

This isn't just a matter of domestic numbers that can be fudged, either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_exports says it exported US$3 trillion worth of goods in 02021, up from US$2.5 billion in 02020, making it the world's #1 exporter, with almost twice the exports of the US at #2, though by this measure the entire EU does still exceed PRC. (The EU is excluded from the list for not being a country.)

Nor is it just a question of adding together poverty-level earnings of 1.2 billion people. The PRC's per-capita GDP is US$20k PPP. Economically, the average Chinese person is doing fine, although they're experiencing a lot of unfortunate things outside the economic sphere.

China's economy is experiencing major difficulties (Evergrande, zero-COVID lockdowns) but it is far from being "killed" or a "return to Mao-style communism", by which I charitably assume you mean 01970s-style stagnation and not, for example, the largest famine in human history.

You should take a long hard look at where you're getting your information from and how you decide what information is trustworthy.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#186
post #101

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…

it's not racism. sure chinese could develope all these things on their own. but you need to realize, they'd have to produces the machines that produces the machines that produce the machines... first. all this 'high tech' stuff is _really_ hrd to make. it would take a ton of money invested to even get to current tech levels. and tech advances pretty fast.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#188

To be perfectly honest, this is still within a 1000km radius circle that encompasses Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. That covers the majority of next-generation fabs that aren't Intel. It's great to legally diversify these fabs, but it does very little to mitigate geopolitical issues that are brewing in and around the east china sea.

How does it do little to diversify these fabs? The current situation is that if China invades Taiwan, the entire Western world is compelled to engage militarily over Taiwan's high end chip fabs. It cannot be overstated how much we depend on that, if TSMC operates in other countries, we don't HAVE to engage in WW3.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DUV seems to be economical down to about 7nm though.

From what Intel put out in marketing materials, even at 14nm they had a very unreliable process with DUV. So, it might not be economical for the type of IC produced in these factories.

So it means that chinese SMIC announced '7nm' implies they have EUV working?

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would mostly agree, but is "saving face"[0] considered rational behavior? How big a factor is that in this thread's context? Honest questions here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)#Ch...

It's quite rational because of the crucial importance of reputation internationally, and the image of competence domestically.
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