271–280 of 761 posts
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Wild to learn this is the same company selling MSG (mono sodium glutamate) and build up film - https://www.ajinomoto.com/innovation/our_innovation/buildupf... - https://www.ajinomoto.com/brands/aji-no-moto
Not really shocking considering how Japan likes conglomerates. Hyundai makes cars and military weapons and probably thousands of other things that aren’t even related to each other, don’t know if they still make computers.
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Intel needs to course correct. I live in the area and know a LOT of intel fab workers. The issue is not the workers: Intel has been captured by corporate raiders and toxic management. They aren't interested in making chips or an innovative company. They just want to squeeze the juice out of the company until it is dry. That is why it is so bad.
They were not caught by corporate raiders (feel free to provide names of outside investors that caused them to stagnate). Instead of investing in the future and paying top dollar for top employees, the Board paid the shareholders (even 20 years ago). They never even tried to compete for the best employees, and instead let them all go to Alphabet/Apple/Amazon/Meta/Microsoft/Nvidia/Netflix. This includes the employees…
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Why is the government bailing them out then? Is that just good money thrown after bad? Regardless, it seems like the company leadership should be gutted (the same could be said of Boeing) and the company given over to a new technically-grounded leadership team.
The inability to make SOTA silicon chips domestically would be catastrophic in a event of a war in the east. TSMC is making fabs in the US, but they are not SOTA fabs. Those are kept in Taiwan.
I see the point being made here, and yeah 5%-20% extra for what amounts to insurance against geopolitics isn't too bad, but doesn't this all fall apart when China catches up? That 5%-20% is worth it now because no one else can fabricate competing chips. In a competitive market, 5%-20% can be the difference between having the price edge or not. I understand why the USA wants TSMC to manufacture outside of Taiwan, but…
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 a great example of the fact that between stupidity and low-integrity behavior as a default, the people in charge fuck up in ways that the man on the street would get right. Defense is starting to get a blank check with fairly bipartisan support for the first time in at least 30-40 years and it's centered on semiconductor supply chains . There has never been a better time to secure the fucking funding, have A…
Really? Because:
> During Donald Trump's 2025 speech to a joint session of Congress, the president asked House Speaker Mike Johnson to “get rid” of the subject act.[190]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act#Subseque...
I couldn't help but laugh. And they say software engineers are replaceable by AI.
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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.
Everyone thought AMD was done. Intel is going through a difficult transition, but if they can make 18a /14a work and keep improving their GPU line we could be having the same conversation about AMD in 10 years.
“If Intel can just get this next node they’ll be sitting pretty” is what people have been saying for over a decade isn’t it?
Just getting the nodes working and producing enough chips has been a huge issue for them, let alone having good chip designs on top of that.
“No one got fired for choosing Intel” has stopped applying. They’re even losing server marketshare, which was their rock.
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> used to be a crown-jewel of US tech I feel like x86 itself is kinda legacy tech. So while AMD has made advancements, they're somewhat in the same boat as Intel. It seems like NVIDIA and Micron are the real "crown jewels" of US tech
Tech-wise places too much premium on the ISA. Modern processor design is fairly orthogonal to the ISA being exposed. Intel could make exciting RISC-V relatively quickly if they wanted to; what stops them and other companies like this is the strategic asset they perceive their existing ecosystem as.
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Intel's fab issues are overstated in my opinion. They were stuck on 14nm for a very long time because they bit off too much with 10nm. People act like that means ALL research in nodes smaller than 10nm must have stopped, but that's simply not true as research into tech and materials needed for smaller nodes happens in parallel. It's also noteworthy that GAAFET being a complete redesign of major parts of the manufactu…
Didn't it just come out that Intel is considering scrapping 18a? That's not a good sign. And all of their current CPUs are on TSMC, aren't they? I would be very surprised if 14a and 10a comes out soon enough to be competitive with TSMC.
The article doesn’t say why the chips have a cost difference. The wafer cost of advanced nodes is ~$30k per wafer. Is the wafer cost different or is the yield different and hence the reason for the variance of 5-20%? All else being equal (same die size/design on same process) I suspect that a large part of the cost difference is yielded cost due to maturity of operations at the Arizona fab. Taiwan has had many years…
More cynically, perhaps the DoD is getting a sweetheart deal and TSMC is passing the cost onto customers.