Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

datacenterdynamics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 453 posts

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#381

Post by throwaway201025 »

jason-phillips wrote: post #355
throwaway201025 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to see a fellow (former) Samsung employee. What company did you move to? As I've also primarily worked on in-house software only, I'm finding myself less and less competitive in the era of venture capitals and IT services. Did you find a solution?

> What company did you move to? After working for Dell and some small start-ups for a while, I now help the federal government in various ways. I started working remotely full time in 2017 and live in the Hill Country. This is me. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-phillips-2505a0187/ > As I've also primarily worked on in-house software only, I'm finding myself less and less competitive... Did you find a solution? Yes…

It is great to hear about your experiences on what to do to overcome initial career choices. I agree that I might be seeing the grass in the other places greener. I'll have to be more careful when considering moving to other companies. Thanks for your kind and thorough answer!

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#382

Post by FooBarWidget »

fomine3 wrote: post #359
FooBarWidget wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best way to keep China from invading Taiwan is by upholding the One China Policy. With that policy in place, China has plenty of reasons to avoid a war. Unfortunately the US and many other parties are increasingly tearing this policy down, not seldomly without fully understanding why that policy was invented in the first place.

Do you see what's happened/happening in Hong Kong?

Yes and you should read the book "The Other Side of the Story: A Secret War in Hong Kong" by Nury Vittachi to learn what the mainstream media wasn't telling you about the whole Hong Kong situation.

My Hong Kong friend who is pro China lives in an appartment complex where lots of yellow vests also live, and prior to the NSL every day he feared for his life, fearing that his neighbors would find out that he's pro-China and then do something to him. So much for the western coverage of the yellow vests being "pro-democracy, pro-rule of law, pro-free speech".

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#383

Post by FooBarWidget »

politician wrote: post #258
FooBarWidget wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what this is about. The US is sanctioning SMIC. It forced TSMC to release customer data of mainland Chinese customers, presumably with the goal of checking which more Chinese companies to sanction. The US's goal is to prevent China from building a self-sufficient semiconductor industry. Or conversely: to keep China dependent on the US so that the US can sanction China at any time.

Yes, SMIC looks like one aspect of a global reorganization of semiconductor manufacturing. I’m not sure I buy your reasoning though. I don’t understand how effective blocking the use of US technology by SMIC will be given the propensity for IP theft, so I don’t see how it furthers the goal of preventing China from becoming self-sufficient. Nor would I really agree with the assumption that they are not already self-su…

US rethoric says that they are concerned about IP theft, unfair economic practices, etc. But if you look at the sanctions then you see that they target pretty much only R&D-heavy sectors. That should be telling.

The semiconductor industry is extremely R&D heavy. You can't just steal your way into success. It is also heavily dependend on a global network of specialized suppliers and is one of the most complex supply chains on earth.

Even Chinese media says that they are not yet self sufficient. They predict that SMIC will become able to produce 28nm and above using only domestic inputs by the end of 2022, but that's just ability and doesn't factor in manufacturing scale to handle the corresponding demand.

Making 14nm fully domestic takes a bit longer -- maybe 2 years more. Chinese media and experts say that if they scale up 14nm and above, then that satisfies 70% of the demand.

To go further than about 7nm you need EUV lithography, which only has 1 supplier in the world, and the US is blocking that. How long it takes for China to independently develop EUV is unknown. Universities have made small breakthroughs in subfields here and there but they're still far away from the full solution.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#384

Post by tiffanyh »

josaka wrote: post #69

After the TX grid failure last winter, it's probably not a coincidence that Samsung's new facility will be near ERCOT's operation center in Taylor, which manages the TX grid, and will likely be the last load to shed when the grid's stressed. Used to work in the Austin fab, and the amount of money lost per minute in a power failure is mind boggling. The tax breaks Taylor offered ($314m) are not that different from wha…

Location close to ERCOT is not the reason.

Samsung for years has had a major facility outside of Austin.

Samsung Austin Semiconductor https://goo.gl/maps/nX9BFxHoVMCVKBLL7

And ERCOT is also based outside of Austin.

Austin is also the state capital, centrally located & home of one of the nations largest universities (UT), who has a strong engineering & CS program graduating thousands of students per year.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that major companies have a significant presence in or around Austin.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#385

Post by FooBarWidget »

tomatofarmer wrote: post #247
trasz wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that 1. It’s the west (in particular the US) that is strangling the semiconductor supplies in order to hamper Chinese industry, and 2. China is completely uninterested in military aggression, as opposed to US, which just finished a war and is probably looking for another one.

> China is completely uninterested in military aggression Except they increasingly fly their fighter jets in Taiwan's airspace. And regularly engage in deadly border disputes with India. And continue to conduct cyberwarfare. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58794094 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare_by_China

Except that Taiwan's ADIZ is not its sovereign airspace, but a unilaterally decided zone that covers large parts of mainland China.

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/l...

Except that the border dispute with India was caused by the British, who randomly drew some borders somewhere that parties then later disagree with. India also has border disputes with non-China neighbors. China already tried to solve this diplomatically, for example by trading areas that India claims but are defacto China-controlled and vice versa, but India refused all deals so far because they want to claim in all.

Do note that China (PRC) has already given up land in the past as part of diplomatic deals. Check Vladivostok. Check the whole of Mongolia.

Western coverage of China’s border conflicts are extremely distorted. In the ASEAN summit, southeast asian nations are upgrading strategic ties with China.

https://www.france24.com/en/video/20211028-asean-summit-sout...

Many countries are worried about AUKUS. Malaysia planed China consultations as anxiety simmers over defence pact.

https://amp.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3149713/mal...

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#386

Post by throaway46546 »

cdot2 wrote: post #342
throaway46546 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example of something specific that is taught in California schools with regards to CRT that you object to?

https://youtu.be/83b_u5V51U8 Here's a good example

I appreciate your response, but that is just one teacher though not any kind of policy. I am trying to find out what specific part of California's "Critical Race Theory" curriculum you object to. I hear a lot of people who are mad about the teaching of CRT in schools, but thus far no one has provided me concrete examples of any specific teachings that are objectionable.

It seems to me to be more of bogey man rather than anything real.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#387

Post by scottcodie »

grayfaced wrote: post #375
scottcodie wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It remains to be seen if shifting the cost to taxpayers is harmful to the economy or not.

The ONLY reason to care about the "economy" is the secondary benefit it provides the "taxpayers". The health of economy and the people should never be weighed against each other.

Sure, lets analyze who benefits. The US benefits from national security by having a semiconductor plant in the US. The local economy benefits in Taylor Texas. Companies benefit from having a close semiconductor plant. People benefit from low cost chips. I think you may be advocating for more welfare analysis, which I completely agree with.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#388

Post by bytelines »

ineedasername wrote: post #217
nathanm412 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's essential to Taiwan's survival for production to physically stay focused in Taiwan. I don't know if the US would be as willing to defend Taiwan if our own recovery wasn't affected by the chip shortage.

Yep. to use a quote I've heard about another resource: "No one would care as much about stability in the Middle East if they produced toothpaste instead of Oil". Unfortunately at the same time for Taiwan, once the West's reliance on that area of the world for production becomes less of an issue, China's timeline gets accelerated much faster to the "No but really you're part of the PRC" point. Similar to how the PRC r…

> Similar to how the PRC ratcheted up control over Hong Kong in 2020 when the rest of the world was basically "Sorry HK we got COVID issues k'bye"

Little more complicated than that - with HK there wasn't much the west could really do, or any obligation to do anything at all. There were no treaty obligations, as far as I'm aware of.

Obligations to Taiwan have been covered since 1979, and there's the whole matter of the PRC needing to do am amphibious invasion against a prepared foe.

I'd argue they are not similar at all, really. Similar only in PRC's ambitions.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#389

Post by dnautics »

scottcodie wrote: post #369
mmrezaie wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad logic. If the governance e.g., TA is not manipulating market e.g. giving this sort of subsidies in case of failure then market could find the right place. Instead of behind the scene talks, a measurable study would be done and then fabs would be finding a suitable place to establish. I am not saying Samsung has not done studies on the location. Just pointing out the fallacy in the dangerous logic.

That's a lot of what-ifs with the assumption of corruption. There is no fundamental reason why companies and the government can't cooperate for mutual benefit.

even if it's corrupt, although it's rare, sometimes corruption does serve the public interest, even if by total accident of competence.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#390

Post by mschaef »

chrisco255 wrote: post #325
adrianmonk wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, as I understand it, there's another "grid" which failed, which is the network of natural gas wells and pipelines. Natural gas wasn't being pulled out of the ground and pumped to the electric generation plants. Apparently natural gas isn't easy to store, so basically there's not a lot of buffer, and everything needs to stay online or there won't be any natural gas to burn at power plants even if they were winter…

The natural gas load was nearly double it's average load, because the entire state of Texas was below freezing for a week solid and almost nobody has gas heat in Texas. Everyone was pulling on inefficient electric heaters to warm their house. And the Windmills, which power about 22% of the Texas grid, went almost entirely offline.

Natural gas plant outages were around 30,000mw, and there were issues with both coal and nuclear plants going offline also. Wind was only a few thousand MW below planned values.

Not close to being entirely a wind power issue. (Even though wind power could clearly have done better, as it did in Iowa, where it was significantly colder and the wind turbines stayed online.)

Post reply on HN