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Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

economist.com

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Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#311

Post by akuma73 »

Comevius wrote: post #125
mrjin wrote: post #34

Not sure how well/bad is AMD doing right now. Have been using Intel machines for over two decades now but not long ago I finally switched to AMD with my new PC and I regret haven't done so earlier. In the meantime, I'm also about to ditch Windows. I guess I'm not alone. Time to say goodbye to Wintel league.

That's more or less irrelevant, AMD is one of the many fabless companies like Qualcomm or MediaTek. Intel makes it's own chips, and now wants to make chips for other companies as well. They may end up making AMD processors one day.

Isn’t that a huge conflict of interest?

It’s hard to see how AMD would get capacity ahead of Intel CPUs.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#312

Post by mlsu »

slickrick216 wrote: post #303
theptip wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused by this take. Who is threatening Japan with cruise missiles? Certainly not China or Russia. North Korea, perhaps. The primary reason that we're concerned about semiconductor fab concentration in Taiwan is that China has consistently stated that it is going to invade Taiwan at some point (and that could be 2049 or in a few years for all we know). This is completely outside of any hypothetical scenarios of…

If China attempts an invasion on Taiwan it is not unrealistic to suggest they’ll also take a swing at Japan and at least try to destroy the fabs there.

If China invaded Taiwan it would be despite, not because of, the fabs there.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#313

Post by mistrial9 »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #230
iancmceachern wrote: post #221

It's the people, the talent, the knowledge that drives any industry like this. The US government, US, we, gave Intel and some other companies a huge sum of money to stay awesome. Then they announce huge layoffs to get rid of a lot of thr talent, people, heart of their business. So, wouldn't we have been better off as a society of we had just offered thT CHIPs money as a startup find and asked a bunch or people from I…

Targeted layoffs might be the best thing long-term. From my limited perspective of having recently worked at Intel, they had a lot of dead weight. There was a lot of talent, but it was also diluted by a lot of management and bureaucracy. I honestly don't know if layoffs are an effective solution to this, but IMHO they could definitely benefit from lower headcount and greater urgency.

well-connected one-percent chick goes to work for Intel Security long enough to get health care for babies then quits. At the same time, competitive University grad-with-honors working class girl does protests and environmentalism, can't have children with no health care, ends up hanging out with lots and lots of other thirty year olds in the same boat, with debt. Just another day in America.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#314

Post by PuppyTailWags »

ansible wrote: post #263
nonrandomstring wrote: post #236

We've reached or are approaching "peak tech". The other day we were discussing Pablo Azar, "Computer Saturation and the Productivity Slowdown" (Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics, October 6, 2022) [1] Simply reinventing systems and deliberately obsoleting stuff to create fake demand is over. The metaverse isn't hoing to happen. People are fatigued with tech. We're entering a different era in wh…

I disagree. We've already passed the tipping point for tech, and investment will continue to accelerate. This is true for various form of artificial intelligence, and the rest of tech. Businesses in general started to see the appeal around the time that the Google Assistant, Cortana, Alexa and Siri started to become actually useful and desired by the general public. Because of that, there will continue to be a push t…

I disagree current systems can turn a web search that presents results in a pleasing manner. I had a horrible time trying to find a specific musician's work on YouTube just last night. It kept recommending me completely unrelated vids as if I was browsing just to browse. It couldn't seem to comprehend that even though I usually watch cute cat videos today I am searching for music, even when I was exact quoting the author's name.

I think technology has shifted from giving me what I want to telling me what I want. I really dislike it.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#315

Post by xwolfi »

tsimionescu wrote: post #302
JAlexoid wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Em... I doubt that semiconductor industry is the thing to lead us to WW3.

I think you underestimate the dependency of all modern economy on semiconductor industry. I honestly think there is 100% chance that if China invaded Taiwan today, the US would declare war and send troops to defend Taiwan. In contrast, I think there is >0% chance that the US would not declare war on Russia if they did a (tactical) nuclear attack in Ukraine.

But you underestimate our ability to downsize, turn around and build them locally on a 5-year horizon, and our ability to backtrack tensions anyway if we re reaching a nuclear point.

We will give Ukraine to Russia if we can save Paris.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#316

Post by terminalcommand »

xxpor wrote: post #304
terminalcommand wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't ASML scale up? I don't understand this. I think because they are a monopoly they can work slower, they don't need the extra profits.

ASML is (now) a company everyone has heard of, but like GP hinted at with their Zeiss comment, their supply chain is crazy deep as well. Getting everything scaled up across companies and countries is far from trivial.

That's true, but this is one of the most important techs we have. From the recent news, I see that TSMC wants ASML to scale up as well. TSMC announced that it will cut its capital expenditure by 10% due to supply problems. This announcement tanked ASML's share price.

My comment is that ASML is hitting their profit targets, they have backlog until 2024. If I were leading ASML or an employee of it, I wouldn't want to scale up. I am already hitting my targets, it's cozy, I have backlog until 2024, I have no competition.

The current situation is good for ASML and bad for us.

My comment is equally applicable for all companies in the supply chain that are monopolies.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#317

Post by shepherdjerred »

JAlexoid wrote: post #291
nscalf wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Em... I doubt that semiconductor industry is the thing to lead us to WW3.

Why not?

Don't semiconductors represent a significant military advantage? Would we really want China to control the worlds semiconductor supply?

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#318

Post by hunglee2 »

galangalalgol wrote: post #205
kragen wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The games played with currency and private debt that fueled the massive export boom are not sustainable indefinitely. There are already signs it may be tipping, and the world raising interest rates to combat inflation will worsen the situation. Combine that with their exports to the US falling due to sanctions and a new interest in US manufacturing. And as their population and the population of their other trading pa…

I think people overrate TSMC are the primary motivator for the PRC, who have basically maintained the same posture toward the 'renegade province' since 1949. This is unfinished business from a civil war which never officially ended.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#319

Post by iancmceachern »

teawrecks wrote: post #252
iancmceachern wrote: post #221

It's the people, the talent, the knowledge that drives any industry like this. The US government, US, we, gave Intel and some other companies a huge sum of money to stay awesome. Then they announce huge layoffs to get rid of a lot of thr talent, people, heart of their business. So, wouldn't we have been better off as a society of we had just offered thT CHIPs money as a startup find and asked a bunch or people from I…

So far the rumor is that they're laying off marketing folks, not engineers. And we paid them to expand their microchip infrastructure, not create jobs.

Thanks for this. I'm curious to dig a bit deeper. What is involved in expanding their microchip infrastructure? What would funds be spent on? It seems like hard tooling, buildings, fab lines, and then they need people to build install and run all that stuff. I guess I'm asking - am I missing something, like can they expand their microchip infrastructure without the labor of people? In my experience designing automation for fabs there is a ton of skilled labor that goes into every single fab, both to design and set it up but also to run it.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#320

Post by matthewmacleod »

terminalcommand wrote: post #287
kuschku wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need certain machines for EUV. There's only one manufacturer (ASML) for those, and they're at capacity. And even if they wanted to scale up, there's only one manufacturer (Zeiss) for the EUV mirrors required for those machines, and all their capacity for the next years is already bought as well.

Why can't ASML scale up? I don't understand this. I think because they are a monopoly they can work slower, they don't need the extra profits.

It’s not software - they can’t just sprinkle some Kubernetes on it and scale. There are complex global supply chains involving extreme cutting-edge technology, engineering, and research.
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