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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

#361

Post by fnordpiglet »

Melatonic wrote: post #355

Seems like a dumb article - their whole argument is that we should NOT be building fabs in the US because demand has recently fallen and we MIGHT end up with too much supply? Seems like a good thing to be honest. More supply means cheaper prices and even if demand is a bit lower there is no way it is going to keep going down. We have CPU's in damn near everything these days. The drop is probably mainly because of cry…

Seems like a good thing as a consumer. As a producer it’s what you try to avoid. They’re not charities

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#362

Post by victor9000 »

bobkazamakis wrote: post #325
paxys wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as "peak tech". There are simply alternating periods of faster and slower growth, and we are currently in the latter.

Do you think these alternative cycles are always the same amplitude? or do you think maybe... we're at peak amplitude of that tech growth cycle that won't be seen again without another major breakthrough technology? Or I guess we can just be pendantic. There are no such thing as alternating periods, all periods of time are exactly the same!

Ah yes... pedantic contrarianism, unsupported and bluntly stated as fact, the lifeblood of HN threads.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#363

Post by lossolo »

windexh8er wrote: post #51
mensetmanusman wrote: post #26

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.

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…

Things changed. Most war games/simulations around Taiwan that I'm aware of were lost by US or stalemated.

"US Could Lose 1000 Fighter Jets, Its Entire Global Fleet If It Goes To War Against China Over Taiwan"[1]

1. https://eurasiantimes.com/us-could-lose-over-900-fighter-jet...

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#364

Post by mywittyname »

windexh8er wrote: post #82
kingkawn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese tech and power has come along way since your formative image of them took shape in the early 2000s

How? China doesn't possess the capability to build their own competitive chips. The chips they do manufacture do not require high precision. Everything I've read about China over the last few years has indicated it is, generally, unsustainable. From their disastrous fiscal policies of internal hyper-finance [0], their weakening navy [1], their aging population that's well on its way through decline [2] and the [3] co…

China has recently developed a low-altitude, hyper-sonic missile platform (DF-ZF) for which the USA doesn't have a great defense against. And this platform is specifically designed to attack carrier groups.

THAAD can theoretically stop these missiles but the range for doing so is extremely limited due to the speed (up to Mach 10) and low altitude these missiles fly at.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#365

Post by georgeecollins »

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.

It's possible for China to attack fabs in Japan but China attacking Japan is a WW3 level escalation without a doubt. Invading Taiwan may or may not be.

Japan is very able to defend itself against China and the Chinese know that. That doesn't mean the Japanese would win a war with China, but who knows? Who would think Ukraine could take on Russia? If China seriously went to war with the US and Japan China could be blockaded.

The history of the last fifty years suggest the Chinese are pretty measured in their use of force. I'm sure they would try to capture Taiwan if they were confident they could with acceptable losses. But they realize time is on their side and they are not crazy gamblers like Putin.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#366

Post by DeathArrow »

kavalg wrote: post #94
mensetmanusman wrote: post #26

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.

But I've always wondered if they need the tech or the land more. If it is the tech only, why not resort to industrial espionage or just kidnapping the key engineers from TSMC? Where does the core value of TSMC line on? It is the know-how, some specific machinery that is hard to replicate even if you have the blueprints or something else?

> If it is the tech only, why not resort to industrial espionage or just kidnapping the key engineers from TSMC

They know how to fab chips, they don't have the tech.

It would be far more useful to kidnap Dutch technicians and scientists from ASML. But that wouldn't be enough as ASML is also dependent on some key chemicals and tools manufactured in other countries.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#367

Post by achenet »

vkou wrote: post #340
MikePlacid wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't wait for the next grocery innovation of having the customers stock the shelves from the backroom before they can fill a sack with onions. Think bolder. As a software engineer in the Soviet Union I had to spend about three weeks each year in the collective farm fields planting, tending and harvesting potatoes and cabbages. Since some of my American friends are very fond of socialism these days - these types…

You were a professional software engineer in the Soviet Union while still being a high school student? Or do you mean to say that you were one in the 1940s, when people were packed into train cars to bring in the harvest, among other things? Something about this doesn't seem to entirely add up, given that workers in government and defense-critical industries weren't exactly rounded up a la carte to work the fields. N…

I'm pretty sure the comment you are responding to was being ironic ;)

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#368

Post by Wohlf »

MikePlacid wrote: post #354
nathas wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out the post by Schiit Audio's CEO (I think CEO?): https://www.head-fi.org/threads/schiit-happened-the-story-of... It looks like the audio sector was hit particularly hard by the war in Ukraine.

I was absolutely confused regarding what kind of “tubes” this guy talks about. But when I saw 6N1P and recognized it immediately. Not the exact name, but the numbering scheme - each owner of a Russian TV would learn a numbering scheme for “tubes” sooner or later. It’s interesting that Russia became (or remained as) an almost single supplier of this “outdated” technology. But still, these “tubes” are rather a niche pr…

Not as niche as you think, it's a decent sized market segment with guitar amps.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#369

Post by agumonkey »

paxys wrote: post #286
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…

There is no such thing as "peak tech". There are simply alternating periods of faster and slower growth, and we are currently in the latter.

In terms of human existence tech is overwhelmingly above the average person need. It's not providing anything beside more addictive paths. You don't need more resolution, more bandwidth, more anything.. you probably need less, or more space to reflect and live outside the networked digital realm.

ps: to add a bit more, from the few chats I have, people are either saying "well I need that to check my bank account or pay taxes" or "well I need that so I can binge on netflix"

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#370

Post by achenet »

snovv_crash wrote: post #356
terminalcommand wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Apparently ASML's internal processes are a mess, with everything consistently blocked by technical debt. I suspect this is the biggest blocker to their ability to scale their production faster.

this makes me wish I were like the Harvey Keitel character in Pulp Fiction, so I could straighten my tie, say "I'm on it", and hop into my vintage Mercedes convertible to go fix it.
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