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US Intel

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Re: US Intel

#401

Post by craftkiller »

doytch wrote: post #381
craftkiller wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/

That article is from before Intel started to decline. Quoting the end of that article:

> Intel is already the best microprocessor manufacturing company in the world

Intel was not driving themselves into the dirt if they are the best in their field. Instead, I'd suggest looking at when the process nodes were achieved:

  |      | Someone Else   | Intel | Lead |
  |------+----------------+-------+------|
  | 32nm | 2011 (Samsung) |  2009 |    2 |
  | 22nm | 2013 (IBM)     |  2011 |    2 |
  | 14nm | 2015 (Samsung) |  2014 |    1 |
  | 10nm | 2017 (Samsung) |  2018 |   -1 |
  | 7nm  | 2018 (TSMC)    |  2021 |   -3 |
Seems almost exactly a decade ago that Intel lost their lead and fell behind the competition.

Re: US Intel

#402

Post by mpyne »

twoodfin wrote: post #361
mpyne wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The efficiency gains are a matter of size of the average company, not a matter of the total number of companies. If what you said were true, it would be cheaper for there to be only one flavor of soda (as Bernie Sanders might have put it) rather than dozens. Competition is better for consumers than monopoly, and that applies even when the consumers are nations.

The premise of this thread is that efficient markets and comparative advantage won’t leave even a large nation with enough of the right competitive local industries for national security or whatever objective. Thus to sustain those industries (semiconductor fabrication in this case) industrial policy (subsidies, tariffs, government investment, “Buy American” rules, … ) is essential.

I agree that industrial policy is essential for a nation that wants to ensure that competitive industries exist within the nation's economy.

But the justification I replied to was that the nation must inherently suffer material inefficiencies for a nation to do this, due to how economies work, which is not the case (or at least, no real justification was offered other than the heuristic that larger firms are somehow inherently more efficient, which if anything is opposite to my experience in a very large org).

A nation might well implement an industrial policy so as to pessimize its local industries that survive, but that is not required to happen either.

Re: US Intel

#403

Post by mrheosuper »

epolanski wrote: post #315
scarface_74 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that Intel manufacturing chips in the US wouldn’t have solved the chip problems with cars for instance. What TSMC traditionally does is keep trailing edge fabs online that are fully depreciated and use those to produce chips that don’t need to be leading edge. It wouldn’t make sense to create a new fab for trailing edge chips. Car manufacturers aren’t going to all of the sudden start using 2mm expensive…

Modern cars are powering multiple (as in 3+) screens at the same time, including games, streams and videoconferencing.

which can already be done with >7nm chip.

Re: US Intel

#404

Post by simoncion »

Panzer04 wrote: post #394
downrightmike wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Core was a lucky happenstance for Intel as they were not innovating at all and fell behind, thank goodness their isreal lab was doing something other than P4 work. Even recently, we've seen that all intel can do is increase cores and increase power consumption, and they still can't compete. This is itanium all over again, because that is how intel functions.

This is just doomerism. Intel's current chips are "fine" and competitive with AMD chips. If anything, Intel is trying out more things than AMD is.

I wouldn't call chips that fault and/or fail after mere months of operation when run within Intel-specified power and thermal parameters to be "fine".

Intel may be trying out more things than AMD, but perhaps they shouldn't? Maybe they shouldn't be trying to chase ARM envy with mixed-performance cores and disabling MT and the like and just stick to making reliable CPUs.

Honestly, the only thing of Intel's that I'm interested in are their video cards; and that's not because they're good, but because Intel hasn't (yet) all but abandoned their video card business for "AI accelerators"... so there's room for them to become good.

Re: US Intel

#405

Post by cthalupa »

yyyk wrote: post #268
nonethewiser wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it just me or is the author only making an argument for why Intel is too big to fail? He says hes steelmanning the equity stake but then he doesn't argue why it's necessary. He devotes 2 sentences to CLAIMING its necessary after aruging that Intel is too big to fail. The article is basically like this: > Leading edge domestic foundry companies are a national security concern. Therefor Intel is too big to fail. OK.…

>The US can give them money as grants. Grants put skin in the game for the US because they require Intel to meet the terms. It's not the same as taking part in decisionmaking? Intel could just say 'no' to grants. They don't have to accept the terms.

But they don't get to take part in the decision making with this equity stake either. The shares are non-voting while the government holds them, and revert to voting shares once sold to a private entity.

Re: US Intel

#406

Post by woooooo »

margalabargala wrote: post #59
rich_sasha wrote: post #46

I am torn on this. On the one hand, I strongly agree with this article. This kind of state ownership never brings anyhing good. I don't see how this is different. On the other, it is hard to deny how impressive the new wave of Chinese manufacturing is. No longer are they just making knock offs of Western products with stolen IP. BYD for example seems genuinely innovative, a top product. There are many other examples.…

> On the one hand, I strongly agree with this article. This kind of state ownership never brings anyhing good. I don't see how this is different. There's short term stable and long term stable. Having a BDFL can, when the BDFL is genuinely concerned with the welfare of whatever they are managing, result in something much better than what would be created if designed by committee. This is equally true for software pro…

They've lifted a literal billion people out of third world, no-indoor-plumbing poverty in the last 30 years.

And, to the point of the article, SMIC is already doing 5nm manufacturing.

Political systems are more complex than dictator/freedom, there are lots of stakeholders. The USA stakeholders tend to be short-term focused financial engineers, this is separate from whether we have checks and balances or what color tie the President wears.

Re: US Intel

#407

Post by cthalupa »

davedx wrote: post #162
nonethewiser wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it just me or is the author only making an argument for why Intel is too big to fail? He says hes steelmanning the equity stake but then he doesn't argue why it's necessary. He devotes 2 sentences to CLAIMING its necessary after aruging that Intel is too big to fail. The article is basically like this: > Leading edge domestic foundry companies are a national security concern. Therefor Intel is too big to fail. OK.…

Yeah he could have explained that more, maybe he's assuming familiarity with other public-private ventures around the world? If I was explaining it I would say "a huge equity stake gives you a lot of votes and influence over the company's strategic direction", including what the returns to shareholders should look like. Think of railways in countries where the government has say, a 50% stake.

Except what the government purchased is a block of non-voting shares as long as the government holds them. So what benefit does that provide over grants?

Re: US Intel

#408

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

I didn’t realize steelmanning requires strawmanning the opposing view.

A 10% stake does what? Nothing. The U.S. doesn’t even get decision making capabilities.

OTOH, the CHIPS Act created an incredible amount of semiconductor manufacturing capacity from a wide variety of manufacturers including both TSMC and Intel.

So the real question is what does getting a 10% stake do, that the CHIPS act which Trump is trying to retroactively destroy, isn’t doing much better?

Re: US Intel

#409

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

nine_k wrote: post #321
bix6 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn’t be that way though. Venture capital is only for SaaS? It should be for technology in general. But the IRR demands are too much so it concentrates to SaaS.

VC capital is like a detonator. It seeks explosives, and when it finds them, produces spectacular fireworks that illuminate the entire industry, or even the entire world. It also ends up with a lot of duds, but it's OK by them. What VC capital is not interested in is regular fuel, which can burn steadily and expand gradually, without a shock wave. Such companies can be quite important. Say, GitHub was such a company…

People in this thread act like VC is the only way to raise capital. Ever heard of getting a business loan? Even a lot of companies in the Valley could probably get one more easily than they might think, if they're profitable. You don't have to give up equity either.

Re: US Intel

#410

Post by reenorap »

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…

The reason this pivot happened was because of the Pandemic. As soon as the Pandemic hit and China stopped sending us PPE it was a violent slap in the face and an extremely rude awakening that we are completely dependent on China and other countries for basic necessities. India also stopped sending us pharmaceuticals.

This realization means that no matter what, Americans need to make certain basic necessities, and chips are one of them. I have friends at Intel that have been there for 20 years and they basically say it's dead man walking. They have chip equipment that they paid billions for that is sitting idle because they don't have the demand, but they can't turn them off otherwise it will be destroyed. However, these machines cost hundreds of millions to keep on. Plus they are already out of date compared to TSMC. The entire thing is a disaster, but Americans need an American source of chips so they have no choice but to double and triple down on a bad investment and hope that something happens that will let them become competitive again.

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