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How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

economist.com

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Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#201

Post by gorjusborg »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #68
gostsamo wrote: post #24

Surprisingly few people engage with the main points of the article. It is pointed out how much money are spent, but the article is about how profitable those fabs will be. The author is conservative in judgments, but they ask a few questions worth considering, mainly: are the fabs big and efficient enough to offset the slower build, which is also more expensive, for lower volumes of production.

Profitability on the fab level is the wrong metric. Producing semiconductors, like producing vaccines, has large positive externalities. It enables basically the entire rest of the economy to function. These fabs could lose billions, kept alive by government subsidies, and still be a great deal for the country as a whole.

I think this applies to manufacturing in general (it is good for a society to build things).

The trouble is that capturing government subsidies can become a business by itself.

As long as the subsidies are there to restart involvement I think you get the benefits without profitability. If real profitability isn't a medium-to-long-term goal, things could get messed up.

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#202

Post by jagged-chisel »

serjester wrote: post #155
quantumwannabe wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hilarious thing is that when TSMC was founded they had to train EVERYONE . Taiwan had zero chip fabrication talent. All of the specialists at the time, even the founder of TSMC, were in the US. For them to complain that it's impossible to train a workforce is laughable and is most likely just racism/nationalism.

To be fair the expertise needed to produce chips in 1987 and 2023 is radically different.

The continuity of knowledge transitioning from one generation of production to the next shouldn’t be underrated. If you started in 1987 with state-of-the-art knowledge and kept up with the advances, your knowledge would have transformed over the years.

Of course, if you’re just getting started now, the knowledge from 1987 is of little use (not entirely useless though) and indeed drastically different from 2023 SotA.

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#203

Post by CamperBob2 »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #160
jjoonathan wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty. U**ons solve one problem only: when value created is high but leverage (=pay) is low. The fact that this problem pops up all over the damn place should tell you something about our relationship to u**ons.

it's not just low pay. children used to work 10 hours a day and lose hands in machinery. hell, kids are dying in factories now, and the rules just keep getting rolled back further. miners get black lung or asbestos exposure. dudes boiled alive in machinery that didn't have fail safes. company towns that only paid in scrip and then charged you 3x the price of regular goods. people had to fight and die for an 8 hour wo…

We have laws to address those things now. You wouldn't believe the paperwork when someone gets boiled alive at work nowadays.

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#204

Post by nickpsecurity »

dirtyid wrote: post #185
petsfed wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is explicitly why Boise State University, an otherwise middle-to-low-tier research university boasts such a high-quality materials engineering department. BSU actually hold some of their intro-to-materials-science courses at the Boise Micron fab so Micron employees can work towards said degrees without missing as much work to commute between the two locations. Edit to add: I've met a few people who are aware of…

Current analysis projects US semi to face shortage of ~80k talent in next few years, ~300k+ in by decades end. This is reality pretty much in every semi producer countries, SKR and TW both have 50k-100k+ shortage with pretty developed talent pipeline. From everything I've read, current US+co short/medium term talent production won't be enough fill all the new fabs being proposed. Unviable due to operating costs which…

This could be an opportunity for low-cost, educational groups to scale or partner up. Is there a list of degree or course requirements fabs are looking for? What programs would be necessary to meet that demand?

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#205

Post by RC_ITR »

bagacrap wrote: post #63
Spooky23 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the worst business to work for. You’ll work 60 hours a week for shitty pay, and be the Yoda of some tool. In 10 years there will be a new magic tool. Then you start learning the Starbucks menu.

Why can't you learn the next tool? Everyone in a tech field has to retain the ability to learn new things over time. AI might not take our jobs but it will likely change them. I guess it sucks if you have a fear of learning. Admittedly, at first learning a new thing can be kind of uncomfortable, like getting into a cold swimming pool. But once you get over the initial shock and start moving around, it's not so bad.

Old tool made one wavelength of light for lithography using a specific laser you are an expert in.

New tool makes a different wavelength of light by shooting high energy beams at molten tin and all your PhD research isn't relevant to that.

It's not like moving from Adobe to Figma, it's like moving from physics to chemistry.

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#206

Post by api »

vel0city wrote: post #13

Judging by all the construction I see at the fabs around me, the people I see moving in to get the new jobs working at the fabs or related businesses, I'd say its pretty real to me and those around me. https://www.ti.com/about-ti/company/ti-at-a-glance/manufactu... https://news.ti.com/blog/2022/09/29/tis-new-300-millimeter-w... https://dallasinnovates.com/finisar-considers-3-billion-semi... https://www.dallasnews.com…

The Economist seems to really dislike the idea of making anything physical. It’s a pattern I’ve seen generally.

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#207

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #142
KennyBlanken wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A commitment that apparently does not include: - treating anyone who isn't "white enough" with dignity and without extreme suspicion of being in the country illegally. Driving in texas and not white enough? You might end up in jail if you don't have sufficient proof on you that you're not "an illegal" - a reliable power grid, because they petulantly do not want to have to follow federal regulations in how they run sa…

It’s a law in many countries that you have to carry your ID with you, eg Germany. The police may do random check in high risk areas. Do you think Germany treats its citizens without dignity?

The point is that this isn't Germany and there is no such law here.

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#208

Post by Spooky23 »

vel0city wrote: post #54
Spooky23 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the worst business to work for. You’ll work 60 hours a week for shitty pay, and be the Yoda of some tool. In 10 years there will be a new magic tool. Then you start learning the Starbucks menu.

There are loads of jobs related to the fabs surrounding them though. Lots of companies designing the things these fabs will end up actually producing, lots of testing the things these fabs produce, lots of integrating these things the fabs produce. The technology services supporting those companies making the designs. Etc.

I worked on a campus as a tenant at the facility with a big semiconductor focus and some prototype fabs.

The pecking order was established in the parking lot. The execs drove BMWs and Teslas, the tenants varied. We were in a special lot.

The worker bees in the fabs drove older Hyundais and Nissans. Except for the trades - fabs require a lot of plumbing and electrical contractors, and those guys were all union, all minting overtime, and all driving fancy pickup trucks.

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#209

Post by Spooky23 »

asow92 wrote: post #165
bee_rider wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are “smart enough” to have learned the previous generation of tools while in school or in the early parts of their careers (where expectations are lower), and not “smart enough” to learn the next generation of tools while also doing their full time jobs. So, ok, but anyone thinking about entering the field can see that they’ll be left in a lurch when they hit mid career. We’ve already run this experiment for a g…

Up above we see "Then you start learning the Starbucks menu". Does that seem like an honest take here? Surely folks "dancing around the fundamental constraints of reality" aren't about to start whipping up frappuccinos because they failed to keep up with industry trends and plan ahead, right?

My good friend from high school has a PhD and was a published expert in a field that stopped being relevant when his company acquired another company and went with their tech.

He was laid off and unemployable in the field. He survived as a Starbucks manager and sold Herbalife for a year while getting some additional education. I was able to help him get a contract as a tech writer to get out of the retail stuff. Now he’s a director level person in a cybersecurity firm.

The one true path is obvious on message boards, but the reality is people find themselves in bad places sometimes.

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#210

Post by bee_rider »

burkaman wrote: post #200
bee_rider wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d have to check and see how it works. I’m happy to block ads (I’ll render whatever I’m sent however I want), but I wouldn’t want to access content that the publisher didn’t intend to send.

It works for sites that set a cookie to limit how many free articles you can see without logging in, or sites that let search engine scrapers bypass the paywall to read the full content. I would say it's a little more ethically questionable than ad blocking. Ad blocking is like buying a paper from a newsstand and duct taping over the ads - totally fine, it's my paper and I'll do whatever I want with it. This extensio…

Yeah, it feels vaguely more grey-area than ad blocking. Although that’s just a gut read, not very reliable.

I’m very much ideological about being in the camp: you can send me whatever you want, and I’ll render it however I want, and anyone who has a problem that is the problem.

I’m not sure how I feel about impersonating a scraper or switching around my cookies so that the site sends me something else.

Actually, this is legitimately the first question in this area that has gotten me confused in a while; if the tool was impersonating somebody, a specific person with account, that’s just be straightforwardly unauthorized access. Impersonating a category of user that has no actual specific identity, but that they default to allowing access? That seems… I mean, doesn’t really seem like lying exactly, but it also doesn’t seem totally honest. Tricky!

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