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U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

cnbc.com

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Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#411

Post by 8note »

scarface_74 wrote: post #326
charliea0 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can definitely offer subsidies for manufacturing in the US - we've already gotten TSMC to open several fabs.

And it’s still owned by a foreign country and Taiwan is restricting TSMC from manufacturing their most advanced processors from being manufactured in the US. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/ta...

this is not to say that intel will be manufacturing competitive chips to what TSMC is.

are you worried that china will invade taiwan, and then somehow taiwan will still be around to prevent the US fabs from making the best chips?

its a bit far fetched

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#412

Post by anigbrowl »

It's interesting that Trump's announcement of this includes a claim that the government has acquired this 10% stake without paying anything for it. Of course, that's probably just bluster to impress the more impressionable part of his base, but I imagine Intel's CFO isn't going to sleeping well for the next few years.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#413

Post by gizajob »

Nevermark wrote: post #334

If the US had bought 10% of TSMC, with no voting rights - just increased dependency - it would have sent a very strong signal. Its an interesting idea, not a serious suggestion.

That would have cost more than $100billion, not the $10billion for the same sized stake in intel.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#414

Post by viraptor »

gizajob wrote: post #405
JustExAWS wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chip manufacturing is too important for the US. We can’t be completely dependent on Taiwan. Nothing against Taiwan, it’s one attack away from being obliterated by China. No company is going to come out of someone’s garage and build a chip fab.

Nvidia has a market cap of 4.5 trillion dollars and everyone is committing hundreds of billions to AI CapEx in their direction - they can afford to organise chip fabs if it really came to it. Ok TSMC and ASML would need to be on board but it could be done. Should be done in fact because even a simple SWOT analysis would show the risk to their business.

If Taiwan becomes practically inaccessible, is there any way another country can setup a competing fab (for the latest generation of chip sizes) without years of R&D? As far as I understand, the practical knowledge of how to do it doesn't exist right now. (Neither does the prerequisite tooling)

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#415

Post by koakuma-chan »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #400
miohtama wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is only 1 winner and 1 loser: Intel. It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US. The argument is national security: the US expects China to invade Taiwan and this will kill TSMC in the process. Whether this will happen or not can be debated, but this is what the government expects.

I see it different. The loser is the taxpayers. The loser is the market, which is less and less free. When there’s no incentive to run your company correctly… we get another company not run correctly.

How to run a company correctly?

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#416

Post by TacticalCoder »

JustExAWS wrote: post #287
ch4s3 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d really rather we didn’t bail out these companies at all. It clearly creates moral hazard and makes it hard for better run companies to enter markets.

Chip manufacturing is too important for the US. We can’t be completely dependent on Taiwan. Nothing against Taiwan, it’s one attack away from being obliterated by China. No company is going to come out of someone’s garage and build a chip fab.

[dead]

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#417

Post by hajile »

pixelatedindex wrote: post #103
miohtama wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is only 1 winner and 1 loser: Intel. It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US. The argument is national security: the US expects China to invade Taiwan and this will kill TSMC in the process. Whether this will happen or not can be debated, but this is what the government expects.

> the US expects China to invade Taiwan and this will kill TSMC in the process. Would it though? The TSMC foundries are pretty much in every continent. Are they just going to stop operating if this happens? Because that seems akin to killing a golden goose. Also what is up with Global Foundries? I don’t hear a peep about them.

I believe the most modern TSMC fabs outside of Taiwan are in Arizona. They are just moving to 4nm which is nearly 5 years old and just a revision of 5nm which is getting close to 7 years old.

TSMC aims to have N3 in Arizona by 2028 at the earliest which is 6 years after it first released. By that time, TSMC will have released N3X, N2, N2P, N2X, A16, and A14.

TSMC is heavily sponsored by the Taiwanese government and was created with the express purpose of making Taiwan so valuable that the West would be forced to defend them against China. Moving newer processes out of the country is against their national interests and they've made it clear that there's no plan to do that.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#418

Post by bko »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #383
bcrosby95 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If shareholders are losing ownership it's less a pure bailout and more a strategic investment and/or takeover. It also potentially lets the average taxpayer benefit rather than just those its directly propping up.

How does the average taxpayer ever actually end up benefitting point blank?

Not that I agree with bail-outs, but 2008 financial crisis that resulted in a number of bail outs actually netted the treasury a profit.

> In total, U.S. government economic bailouts related to the 2008 financial crisis had federal outflows (expenditures, loans, and investments) of $633.6 billion and inflows (funds returned to the Treasury as interest, dividends, fees, or stock warrant repurchases) of $754.8 billion, for a net profit of $121 billion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#419

Post by roody15 »

The question is can a US purchase help Intel turn things around? As a corporation Intel has really struggled for over a decade and has trouble with its foundry back even at the 10nm level. Will the US purchase have any impact on Intel reaching competitive levels with TSMC?

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#420

Post by gizajob »

viraptor wrote: post #414
gizajob wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia has a market cap of 4.5 trillion dollars and everyone is committing hundreds of billions to AI CapEx in their direction - they can afford to organise chip fabs if it really came to it. Ok TSMC and ASML would need to be on board but it could be done. Should be done in fact because even a simple SWOT analysis would show the risk to their business.

If Taiwan becomes practically inaccessible, is there any way another country can setup a competing fab (for the latest generation of chip sizes) without years of R&D? As far as I understand, the practical knowledge of how to do it doesn't exist right now. (Neither does the prerequisite tooling)

Given there’s fabs doing essentially the same thing elsewhere then yes. Getting down to 3nm and the technology and secrets that involves would take a while though.

TSMC can’t do it either without xUV lithography machines made by ASML in the Netherlands.

Furthermore there isn’t anything magical about about the current generation of chips that couldn’t be replicated at at a scale of 12 or 15 or 20 nanometers - it’s just that scaling down to that small allows for a greater density of transistors per wafer and thus increased power efficiency. An AI supercomputer could be built with chips with bigger transistors than 3nm it would just run hotter.

And investing in intel aside, one of Nvidias great competitive moats is CUDA and that’s software not hardware.

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