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

US Intel

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 581 posts

Re: US Intel

#381

Post by doytch »

craftkiller wrote: post #239
themgt wrote: post #7

I’ll be honest: there is a very good chance this won’t work .... At the same time, the China concerns are real, Intel Foundry needs a guarantee of existence to even court customers, and there really is no coming back from an exit. There won’t be a startup to fill Intel’s place. The U.S. will be completely dependent on foreign companies for the most important products on earth, and while everything may seem fine for t…

> over a decade ago but no one thought to find TSMC on a map and ask whether Intel was driving itself into the dirt? Over a decade ago Intel wasn't driving itself into the dirt. Their failure was just beginning approximately 1 decade ago, starting with their failure at EUV leaving them trapped on 14nm.

Huh? He talked about and linked to a series of his older articles, including this one from 2013. [1] It's been a while.

[1]: https://stratechery.com/2013/the-intel-opportunity/

Re: US Intel

#382

Post by ksec »

themgt wrote: post #7

I’ll be honest: there is a very good chance this won’t work .... At the same time, the China concerns are real, Intel Foundry needs a guarantee of existence to even court customers, and there really is no coming back from an exit. There won’t be a startup to fill Intel’s place. The U.S. will be completely dependent on foreign companies for the most important products on earth, and while everything may seem fine for t…

>It's such a stunning dereliction the US let things get to this point. We were doing the "pivot to Asia" over a decade ago but no one thought to find TSMC on a map and ask whether Intel was driving itself into the dirt? "For want of a nail the kingdom was lost" but in this case the nail is like your entire metallurgical industry outsourced to the territory you plan on fighting over.

There were a few of us warning about this well before it all happened in 2013 and 2014. Predicted the death of Intel, and surge of AMD and TSMC before majority of people even heard of TSMC.

I also feel a little sad about TSMC, now that they have invested a lot in US but US is actively and strategically trying to pop up Intel to compete. But TSMC is at least 2 cycle ahead, meaning 5 - 6 years time. Unless TSMC make any mistakes even in the best case scenario I dont see Intel catching up within that time frame. Especially now they have little to no cash cow. Server, GPU, Consumer CPU are all under threats.

Re: US Intel

#383

Post by SlowTao »

bee_rider wrote: post #208
mallets wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trillions of dollars spent just for redundancy? Most wouldn't even succeed in building a working process, forget profitable.

I think it depends on what the goal is. Like, lots of countries (and probably a few US state) could, I bet, do their own foundries for, like, 22nm. Process node names are bullshit of course, but we’re talking about stuff that Intel was doing in 2012, Global Foundries in 2015. 22nm is already overkill for a lot of applications. But, like, if your country gets embargoed, you should be able to make computer chips for ca…

That doesn't sound unreasonable. That is Ivy Bridge/Intel Core 3rd gen capabilities. You aren't running a generative AI but can do all manner of work loads. Combined with some software efficiency gains and you could be fairly comfortable.

This part of why I have been advocating for years that the open source/free software folks should be focusing on optimization and stability/security as long term it will probably be much more useful that adding features that can be dumped on top.

Re: US Intel

#384

Post by Mistletoe »

lawlessone wrote: post #289
bix6 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s ridiculous. It’s so easy to find VC funding for software but heaven forbid you try and make agricultural innovations. Biotech is slightly better but still a struggle. Hardware only counts right now if it’s defense tech but even then people would rather have another SaaS.

So many of the VC's doing the funding got rich of software and web stuff. They don't know anything else.

They should plan more long term. In an economic downturn like after 2000, all these nonsense valuations for vaporware are going to go to the center of the earth. And all signs point to another downturn for the next decade.

https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/s&p500-mean-re...

Re: US Intel

#385

Post by SlowTao »

axus wrote: post #287
mallets wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trillions of dollars spent just for redundancy? Most wouldn't even succeed in building a working process, forget profitable.

The world collectively (mostly the US) spends trillions on national defense, that spending is unnecessary if we all just got along. I think you're right that everyone spending money on local semiconductor industries is even more wasteful.

Unfortunately, that defense allows hoarding wealth. If the wealth was more evenly distributed globally, there would be little reason to defend against raids.

This is how places like the US despite having 4% of the population have about a quarter of the material and energy consumption. Not to single them out, I am in Australia, it is a similar ratio.

I am not defending this situation, just highlighting its role.

Re: US Intel

#386

Post by monster_truck »

troad wrote: post #65
georgeburdell wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may add my view as a formerly high-achieving semiconductor worker that Intel would benefit greatly from having right now, a lot of us pivoted to software and machine learning to earn more money. My first 2 years as a software engineer earned me more RSUs than a decade in semiconductors. Semiconductors is not prestigious work in the U.S., despite the strategic importance. By contrast, it is highly respected and r…

We have developed an economy oriented around selling one another websites, and we are only belatedly noticing that none of our enemies seem to have followed.

I'm p convinced that this push for age verification using govt IDs & debit/cc tx is the death rattle of the rampant ad fraud that has sustained the tech bubble

Re: US Intel

#387

Post by SlowTao »

zoeysmithe wrote: post #15
themgt wrote: post #7

I’ll be honest: there is a very good chance this won’t work .... At the same time, the China concerns are real, Intel Foundry needs a guarantee of existence to even court customers, and there really is no coming back from an exit. There won’t be a startup to fill Intel’s place. The U.S. will be completely dependent on foreign companies for the most important products on earth, and while everything may seem fine for t…

There's a real folly in capitalist countries thinking they can be self-sufficient walled castles. Capitalism by its nature will seek out the lowest cost be it in labor or manufacturing. That means often means outsourcing. Our system has no breaks for this. In fact it works actively for this, hence the neolib ideal of "just move towards efficiencies, and let the chips fall where they may." This is ideal under capitali…

This is why I swing like a pendulum between "a better world is possible" and "let the system burn itself out.".

Re: US Intel

#388

Post by AngryData »

mallets wrote: post #96
minkzilla wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robust and redundant manufacturing spread across the world with more opportunity for innovation?

Trillions of dollars spent just for redundancy? Most wouldn't even succeed in building a working process, forget profitable.

Whats wrong with redundancy? Not having redundant supply of anything is a problem as human history has repeatedly shown. I think this kind of modern "more profit = more better" is just a ticking time bomb for a massive disaster, and it isn't like we haven't had any warning signs about critical supply problems for any number of resources and goods.

Re: US Intel

#389

Post by SlowTao »

scarface_74 wrote: post #52
wat10000 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel was the best until fairly recently. Then they still looked like the best to a non-expert observer, and then still looked at least competitive until even more recently. The modern world changes too fast for our governments to adapt to. Especially when we're talking about state of the art semiconductors and our leader was born before the invention of the transistor.

Intel hasn’t been “the best” since the world cared more about mobile in 2010. There GPUs have always been also ran. It just wasn’t a big deal until crypto and later machine learning. Even for integrated graphics, Intel has been behind Apple’s/TSMC ARM based processor before the Mx based Macs.

Intel dropping the XScale ARM was the beginning of the end. Their iGPU's where fine so long as the peak of usage was google Earth/Maps. But it was wildly under supported and they ended up missing the boat, that could go for a lot of their products.

Re: US Intel

#390

Post by giantg2 »

themgt wrote: post #7

I’ll be honest: there is a very good chance this won’t work .... At the same time, the China concerns are real, Intel Foundry needs a guarantee of existence to even court customers, and there really is no coming back from an exit. There won’t be a startup to fill Intel’s place. The U.S. will be completely dependent on foreign companies for the most important products on earth, and while everything may seem fine for t…

People have been raising this alarm for decades as more of our domestic manufacturing is off shored. Few listened then. It's unlikely we will come back from this.
Post reply on HN