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Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

nytimes.com

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Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#361

Post by demondemidi »

rhelz wrote: post #132

WRT to lack of a skilled workforce, here is an interesting anecdote. I remember back in the late 90's, Intel had to fire most line workers in their FABS, and hire people with Ph.D.'s in solid-state physics. I actually knew one of these people who were fired: She was our housecleaner. And--like the supper-smart garbage man of the Dilbert Cartoons, she was very smart. Smarter than me. I know because she helped me solve…

Well, I was there in the late 90's and don't recall that anecdote. Most of the people in the fab shuttle the lots from station to station. Some even look at porn and get high while waiting (that's my anecdote, clean room alarms went bananas when he lit up). And robots that zip around the ceiling and drop down in dangerous areas do the rest.

Mind citing your anecdote? I realize I wasn't in every fab, but it's not rocket science, even on 300mm and beyond.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#362

Post by selimthegrim »

x0x0 wrote: post #252
jimbob45 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This short-termism seems like it's been America's chief problem through the centuries. "We need slavery - our economy will fall apart without it!" "We need Standard Oil and US Steel - splitting them apart would be a catastrophe!" "We need universal healthcare - a public option would place undue burden on insurance companies!" "We need Boeing - our foreign competitors would eat us up otherwise!" At some point, it's ti…

1 - not short-termism 2 - comparing a minor economic investment ($8B on a $23T gdp) to slavery, and the economic system built on slavery, is the stupidest thing I've read this week, so, well, congrats. I guess? 3 - not a naive economic policy; US government investment built silicon valley and that's going ok.

Try being a green badge at Intel and then get back to me

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#363

Post by j_maffe »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #210
TremendousJudge wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Globalization is breaking down quickly Is it? I don't know if there's a concrete way of measuring "amount of globalization", but I'd guess that right now we're probably the most globalized we've ever been. "More things that you use are made outside your own country" has only been growing, and with the advent of full remote companies that also includes much more software than before -- it used to be that only huge co…

Global trade as a percentage of global GDP peaked somewhere around 2011 and has been steadily declining. If you look at the US in particular the relative value of imports and exports is down about 30% from the peak 10 years ago. That's a big change for such a short duration

Actually, it peeked in 2008 and I wouldn't say 4% over 18 years a steady decline. In fact, it seems to be recovering from Covid to reach a new high. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/WLD/wor...

Edit: Nevermind, it did reach a new record of 63% in 2022. Globalization seems to be doing fine. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#364

Post by sevagh »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #308
rhelz wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Intel at the time wasn't interested in fabing ARM chips, and the rest is history. Fun fact, in the late 90's, Intel was the biggest manufacturer of ARM chips. I was there at the time, and I wrote lots of software to aid in their design. What happened to Intel was twofold: The first problem was that Robert Noyce, Andy Grove, And Gordon Moore died. Each one was a once-in-century intellect, and it took Intel a while t…

It seems that what happened to Intel was a lot worse than just missing Andy Grove's paranoia... - They missed the mobile market - They missed the gaming market - They missed the AI/ML market - They got multiple generations behind TSMC and Samsung in the fab business - They lost a whole bunch of market share to AMD, including datacenter The NY Times article is paywalled, so I can't read it, but I have to wonder what k…

Actually, Intel has been consistent with their specialized CPU DNN libraries and whatnot for years. MKL and the likes are pervasive in modern deep learning stacks. Pretty sure they've captured as much of the AI/ML business as CPUs possibly can.

Also, by gaming do you mean gaming consoles or gaming PCs? Because Intel is popular in gaming PCs also.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#365

Post by s1artibartfast »

orangecat wrote: post #353
dheera wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dividends don't make you any money because the rest of the passive-aggressive investors downvote the stock price by exactly the dividend amount when dividends are given. If everyone agreed to maintain the stock price when dividends were issued, the dividends would be useful.

the rest of the passive-aggressive investors downvote the stock price by exactly the dividend amount when dividends are given This is the expected result if markets are correctly pricing stocks. The value of a company is its assets plus its future income streams. When a company pays a dividend, its cash assets decrease, so the value of its stock should decrease by that same amount.

I don't know what to make of all these strange objections to completely normal and rational business processes. People describe them as if they are somehow a bad thing.

The only thing your description is missing is that while the total market cap goes down, the individual share price should go up because the number of outstanding shares is smaller. This is how the company transfers value to the shareholder that has not sold their stock.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#366

Post by imgabe »

rhelz wrote: post #132

WRT to lack of a skilled workforce, here is an interesting anecdote. I remember back in the late 90's, Intel had to fire most line workers in their FABS, and hire people with Ph.D.'s in solid-state physics. I actually knew one of these people who were fired: She was our housecleaner. And--like the supper-smart garbage man of the Dilbert Cartoons, she was very smart. Smarter than me. I know because she helped me solve…

You should hire the very smart people to figure out how to make the jobs doable for average people. Surely there must be a way to configure line work to not require a PhD...

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#367

Post by lupire »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #303
bluGill wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't help that the union culture is opposed to promoting smart people. If you work an assembly line you are not better than anyone else on the line, so their position makes sense - smart people are not worth more. However it also means smart people that want to move to management (want - if you are content that is your choice) find things worse: you are required to start at the bottom and your previous experien…

The decline in American manufacturing happened alongside a decline in union membership in manufacturing. If unions were the causal factor, why do these trends coincide rather than oppose? Alternative theory: Protectionism industrializes and trade liberalization deindustrializes. Alexander Hamilton's protectionist policies weren't just successful at industrializing the USA, he and his successors were correct as to why…

Trade liberalization industrializes the world.

Unions were gutted because the labor market grew beyond international borders, but the labor movement didn't (thanks to western capitalists making war on socialists.)

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#368

Post by Aloisius »

mrd3v0 wrote: post #105
bhhaskin wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really a startup kinda business. It costs something like $10b to build a new fab.

Any industry wouldn't be "really a startup kinda business" if only a few players are pumped more than everyone else combined by orders of magnitude. Having to scale to everyone's demand is a lot more costly than if the market was fragmented.

It's not just scale. Even Intel's development fabs cost billions to build.

The equipment and facilities required for cutting edge fabs are very expensive.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#369

Post by s1artibartfast »

randerson wrote: post #329
tgma wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel could have (and has) funded building fabs themselves, but if we are advocating for a free market solution, why would they build it in the US vs somewhere cheaper? Forcing their hand to do it inside the US does not seem like a fair free market solution either. There has to be either a carrot (subsidy), or a stick (tarriffs and embargoes) to nudge them to bring it back home; neither is a clean free-market solutio…

I just question whether the government is backing the right horse. Intel has been losing market share in every segment for years despite once having everything in their favor: a head start, a strong brand, mountains of cash. They failed to capture the mobile phone and tablet market altogether. And the govt thinks Intel can make AI chips that compete with Nvidia?

I don't think the goal is even to compete, even though maybe it's being sold that way. The goal is to have a domestically controlled source of relatively high tech chips. It doesn't matter if they're subpar

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#370

Post by bluGill »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #303
bluGill wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't help that the union culture is opposed to promoting smart people. If you work an assembly line you are not better than anyone else on the line, so their position makes sense - smart people are not worth more. However it also means smart people that want to move to management (want - if you are content that is your choice) find things worse: you are required to start at the bottom and your previous experien…

The decline in American manufacturing happened alongside a decline in union membership in manufacturing. If unions were the causal factor, why do these trends coincide rather than oppose? Alternative theory: Protectionism industrializes and trade liberalization deindustrializes. Alexander Hamilton's protectionist policies weren't just successful at industrializing the USA, he and his successors were correct as to why…

the only cause here is higher wages make other countries more compelling.

The not promoting is a problem but it isn't the cause of decline.

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