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US Intel

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Re: US Intel

#201

Post by bigyabai »

onetimeusename wrote: post #189

The other day when the US's stake in Intel was announced, people assumed it was a political stunt. I suspected it was because of national security interests. The CHIPS act probably didn't get the result US Defense wanted quickly enough. Some details that were glossed over include that there was a chip shortage a few years ago as a result of COVID and TSMC supply chain disruptions that led to a shortage in electronics…

> Recently, the US was pushing NVDA to start using Intel's foundry. I assume it's for national security reasons.

The real reason is simple, if you've been following IFS: Intel's foundry has no large customers. The free market has spoken and almost every single customer prefers TSMC or Samsung silicon. America was boxed-out of serious world-class chip manufacturing ever since Intel swerved on EULV. If it was for natsec reasons then I doubt the fed would waste their time taking a passive seat when they could claim Intel as eminent domain.

It's not about national security whatsoever; this is part of a last-ditch effort to force Apple and Nvidia to buy American silicon.

Re: US Intel

#202

Post by epicureanideal »

mallets wrote: post #96
minkzilla wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robust and redundant manufacturing spread across the world with more opportunity for innovation?

Trillions of dollars spent just for redundancy? Most wouldn't even succeed in building a working process, forget profitable.

Sounds like a huge infusion of cash to highly skilled workers, and supporting the building of skills that can be transferred between companies sounds like a good thing.

Re: US Intel

#203

Post by nine_k »

bix6 wrote: post #87
troad wrote: post #65

Earlier 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.

I'd say that VC funding may be an inappropriate tool for that. VCs want you to either grow fast, or fail fast. Not necessarily to bring profit fast, but to visibly capture the market (see Uber). Move fast, break things, rework things every week, trigger that wave of sign-ups.

Agriculture is much slower, every iteration may be is a year, or (in tropical climates) half a year. Microelectronics is comparably slow, and even more unforgiving about making mistakes. Building robots does not scale ls easily as producing chips, let alone software.

These areas need a different model of investment, with a longer horizon, slower growth, less influence of fads, better understanding of fundamentals. In some areas, DARPA provided such investment, with a good rate of success.

Re: US Intel

#204

Post by slipperydippery »

Loudergood wrote: post #125
qwytw wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had a Duron chip that, for like two full years in the early '00s, would've required an Intel chip about double the price to beat it. That was wild. I assume the Celeron line in particular only hung on through that period via contract-inertia and brand recognition, because it was a total joke next to Duron, on a bang-for-your-buck basis.

Like I did (at the time) high-end gaming on it, back when gaming used to sometimes tax your CPU and not only your GPU, and in that entire time I didn't ever feel like I would have benefitted at all from an upgrade, it was so far ahead of the curve. And that was AMD's budget chip line! They simply didn't deliberately cripple it nearly as much as Intel did their Celerons.

Re: US Intel

#205

Post by scarface_74 »

onetimeusename wrote: post #189

The other day when the US's stake in Intel was announced, people assumed it was a political stunt. I suspected it was because of national security interests. The CHIPS act probably didn't get the result US Defense wanted quickly enough. Some details that were glossed over include that there was a chip shortage a few years ago as a result of COVID and TSMC supply chain disruptions that led to a shortage in electronics…

The issue is that Intel manufacturing chips in the US wouldn’t have solved the chip problems with cars for instance.

What TSMC traditionally does is keep trailing edge fabs online that are fully depreciated and use those to produce chips that don’t need to be leading edge. It wouldn’t make sense to create a new fab for trailing edge chips.

Car manufacturers aren’t going to all of the sudden start using 2mm expensive chips for their cars.

Even for TVs, the BOM for the “smarts” need to be under $10.

Re: US Intel

#206

Post by empath75 »

mc32 wrote: post #21
empath75 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think the model here isn't communism, it's fascism/corporatism. They aren't nationalizing directly, they're intimidating private enterprises into compliance and cooperation.

I think that's an incorrect framing. A more proper framing is that some industries are key to ensuring a nation is not dependent on another for key products that ensure a dominant (not supplicant like say Ukraine) position with regard to defence and therefore independence. This is recognized by the current administration but is also a continuation of the previous administration's pivot toward undergirding and support…

> A more proper framing is that some industries are key to ensuring a nation is not dependent on another for key products that ensure a dominant (not supplicant like say Ukraine) position with regard to defence and therefore independence.

That was why they passed the chips act to direct this money to Intel. It has nothing to do with Trump forcing them to dilute shareholder value in order to get money that they had already been allotted by congress.

Re: US Intel

#207

Post by nine_k »

bigyabai wrote: post #201
onetimeusename wrote: post #189

The other day when the US's stake in Intel was announced, people assumed it was a political stunt. I suspected it was because of national security interests. The CHIPS act probably didn't get the result US Defense wanted quickly enough. Some details that were glossed over include that there was a chip shortage a few years ago as a result of COVID and TSMC supply chain disruptions that led to a shortage in electronics…

> Recently, the US was pushing NVDA to start using Intel's foundry. I assume it's for national security reasons. The real reason is simple, if you've been following IFS: Intel's foundry has no large customers. The free market has spoken and almost every single customer prefers TSMC or Samsung silicon. America was boxed-out of serious world-class chip manufacturing ever since Intel swerved on EULV. If it was for natse…

But NVidia chips are now part of national security, I suppose.

Re: US Intel

#208

Post by bee_rider »

mallets wrote: post #96
minkzilla wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robust and redundant manufacturing spread across the world with more opportunity for innovation?

Trillions of dollars spent just for redundancy? Most wouldn't even succeed in building a working process, forget profitable.

I think it depends on what the goal is. Like, lots of countries (and probably a few US state) could, I bet, do their own foundries for, like, 22nm. Process node names are bullshit of course, but we’re talking about stuff that Intel was doing in 2012, Global Foundries in 2015.

22nm is already overkill for a lot of applications. But, like, if your country gets embargoed, you should be able to make computer chips for cars and farming equipment. Top end GPUs? Not necessary. Some basic RISC-V cpu for compute appliances? That should be a capability that everybody has.

Re: US Intel

#209

Post by slipperydippery »

3D30497420 wrote: post #10
rickdeckard wrote: post #2

> "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." If the last 8 Months of this year has shown something, it's that every decision the US takes could be considerate, but as likely also completely random and reversed and bent at any moment in the future. Accepting those risks in order to sell in the US-market (assuming it w…

> every decision the US takes could be considerate, but as likely also completely random and reversed and bent at any moment in the future. This my main problem with this investment. I can certainly appreciate the benefit of US government investment to ensure "homegrown" production capabilities. However, this depends a lot on a level of understanding, intelligence, and planning from the US federal government which is…

I actually think that if we're going to tax-privilege capital gains to a huge degree over wages, it's entirely appropriate for the government to claim some small chunk of non-voting, least-privileged (both to avoid conflicts of interest and fucking up the regular equities & debt markets) shares of every corporation over some size, probably with some other implementation details in there (graduated percentage as company revenue size grows or whatever, that kind of thing). I also think we should consider going back to things like having some parts of the defense industry outright government-operated, like we used to do, which these days might include a chip foundry or two. Not saying we should definitely do it, but I think it should be seriously considered.

... this ain't that, though. It's a one-off, not a reliable broadly-applicable policy, and it's not clear what kind of strategy it represents in the bigger picture. I also doubt the ownership structure is as hands-off as I'd prefer, though I admit I've not looked into the details (if there even are details yet—we've had a lot of reporting on things as if they've happened, that then sometimes go on to never actually happen, lately)

[EDIT] I further think it would be better than the status quo to acknowledge that we have an economy dominated by Zaibatsu now, and to use the government to leverage them for public benefit the way the "Asian Tigers" do/have, though I don't think this is that happening, either. I think we're currently picking the worst of three options, of "intentionally use them to their fullest; break them up; do nothing" (we've been on the "do nothing" track so far, having abandoned "break them up" in the '70s).

Re: US Intel

#210

Post by downrightmike »

onetimeusename wrote: post #189

The other day when the US's stake in Intel was announced, people assumed it was a political stunt. I suspected it was because of national security interests. The CHIPS act probably didn't get the result US Defense wanted quickly enough. Some details that were glossed over include that there was a chip shortage a few years ago as a result of COVID and TSMC supply chain disruptions that led to a shortage in electronics…

The chip shortage only came about because everyone cancelled their chip orders and then had to re-queue in a different order and they found themselves at the back of the line.

Their lack of planning doesn't constitute an emergency on the public's part

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