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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

#481

Post by creato »

WWLink wrote: post #385
gen220 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't just intel, it was every semi-conductor manufacturer in the valley (hence the inability to find other work). They closed because it was cheaper to build in other countries, or to outsource from contractors who build in other countries (where organized labor doesn't exist). The U.S. lost thousands of high-paying (and tax-paying) labor positions and atrophied the skills that went with them. Intel profited fro…

Honestly it blows my mind they were able to give control of one of the most important industries in the world over to a foreign country like that.

It's amazing to me the number of people ranting at each other about this, when it seems like straight up BS. Intel's current and past manufacturing sites are not in low cost of living locations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si... There are two exceptions: one in China, one in Malaysia, but that is two out of dozens in the US/EU/Israel.

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

#482

Post by tester756 »

aylmao wrote: post #243

I'm a foreigner native to one of the many nations where American influence led to the sale of sate enterprises, free trade, market liberalization, and overall loss of local companies to the hands of USA firms It's wild to see the same thing happen to the USA now, and to see their government be the ones handing out taxpayer money and caring about national sovereignty over liberalization and "market efficiency".

Consider reading Chip War then

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

#483

Post by rebolek »

shiroiushi wrote: post #454
TuringNYC wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Honestly it blows my mind they were able to give control of one of the most important industries in the world over to a foreign country like that. The engines of capitalism only look 1 quarter ahead. And the politicians who support them only look up to the next election. Unless you are majority or largely controlled by your founders, who care about building a good legacy.

Exactly. It's why authoritarian and/or single-party nations have so much more potential to succeed. It's why China did so well for a while. However, in practice, as we've seen with China and others, authoritarianism only works well when the people at the top are really smart and don't have some major character flaws (i.e., the "benevolent dictator"). Eventually, you get a dictator who's a narcissist or moron or fruit…

Benevolent dictator is still just a dictator. As he grows older, he cares more about staying in power than following current trends. China wanted to prevent this with their 10 year rule for the general secretary but Xi changfed that and that was his biggest mistake. Democracy's weakness (politicians focusing just on next election cycle) is also its biggest strength. It allows change and adaptation.

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

#484

Post by tester756 »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #186

> The Biden administration, equipped with $39 billion in subsidies to distribute, IMO this is the major problem in American politics (maybe world too)- That we have the government picking and choosing winners before the game is even played. IMO we should be rewarding the winners in a after a fair game with rules tailored to what we want to incentivize. Eg: A per chip, per TFLOP or other intelligent metric reward AFTE…

This was happening all the time in semiconductor industry

consider reading Chip War

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

#485

Post by Urahandystar »

eddiewithzato wrote: post #450
WWLink wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly it blows my mind they were able to give control of one of the most important industries in the world over to a foreign country like that.

That’s the power of slave labour. Global economy is really modern day slavery. When you are making trillions in USD in the USA, paying someone in china $2 a day would’ve been an Egyptian pharaohs dream.

Yup nowadays we import the product not the slaves.

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

#486

Post by switch007 »

supportengineer wrote: post #212
FredPret wrote: post #123

We're living through the silicon age and Intel has made a total dog's breakfast of it. Stagnant revenues, falling profits. Both should have been growing geometrically. Just compare these companies: https://valustox.com/INTC https://valustox.com/AMD https://valustox.com/AVGO https://valustox.com/AMAT Even Qualcomm has seen good growth: https://valustox.com/QCOM This is how it's done: https://valustox.com/NVDA EDIT the…

>> dog's breakfast Native English speaker here, I've never heard this expression before?

I think dog’s dinner is way more common in the UK

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

#487

Post by znpy »

rhelz wrote: post #320
znpy wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but almost zero roles required even actual engineering background Small anecdote: pat gelsinger, intel ceo, started as a technician at intel (iirc) at like years old or something like that. That entry level job paid enough that he could have a roof on his head and i guess covered his university tuition? I’m not making this up: it’s all in his book he wrote about his life (not sure I recommend the book)

True, but Pat Gelsinger isn't a good example of what public policy we should pursue to help Joe six-packs enjoy a middle-class life. Gelsinger is one of the few people I would follow blindly into the maws of hell itself; his intellect is exceeded only by his ability to lead.

Have you worked with the guy, like, in person or are you just being an enthusiastic fan?

Just trying to understand your point of view.

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

#488

Post by devoutsalsa »

dheera wrote: post #321
JonChesterfield wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, this is intel. They'll spend it on a dividend.

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 same thing happens with a stock buyback. The value of the company (in theory) decreases by the amount of cash distributed.

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

#489

Post by starspangled »

rhelz wrote: post #299
pwthornton wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is way bigger than trade policies. Intel was the world leader in chip-making until fairly recently. Steve Jobs wanted them to build the iPhone chips because they were a generation or two ahead of any other fab in the world. Today, Intel is no longer leading the world in chip fab process. Intel at the time wasn't interested in fabing ARM chips, and the rest is history. Intel and American fabs fell behind for a nu…

> 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…

I don't think it was that Intel didn't have enough capacity to manufacture more. Intel was a manufacturing-first company that beat out "high end" and specialized competitors by economies of scale. Over the long term, the strategy was to build as much high performance silicon as possible.

The problem looks like they went down the typical dinosaurification route that their vanquished high end competitors the likes of DEC, Sun, HP, SGI, IBM, etc., which was to switch from manufacturing as much as possible, to protecting high margin x86 parts. Their x86 PC and server organization out-muscled their manufacturing organization (either that or finance did), and so the ended up being very reluctant to adopt GPGPUs or ARM mobile because those were a threat to x86. By the time they realized they'd missed the boat in those markets, they put out these ridiculous x86 mobile cores and x86 GPGPUs that were costly failures.

This pattern of protecting profit margins on high end products while fixed costs every generation increase and performance increases so low end grows up and erodes high end, causing further retreat and protectionism, is exactly what happened with those aforementioned big iron companies. When the bean counters look at the state of things without an understanding of the technology trends, that's the logical thing to do, but they paint themselves into this corner.

Intel might have just been saved by the bell with Dennard scaling breaking down around the time they were losing their manufacturing advantage. That meant that instead of competitors on a generation or two process lead wiping the floor with them as they did to the minicomputers, it was a much smaller disadvantage and they've been able to somewhat hold on.

That's my non-insider take on it anyway.

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

#490

Post by Abroszka »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #470
echelon wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is US-led, but the US has good reasons. - The US has almost everything it needs in North America to be self-sufficient. Food, energy, natural resources, manufacturing, trade. - The US is tired of being involved in the Middle East. - The US is tired of protecting the oceans and trade for everyone else. - The US is tired of China stealing its tech, being protectionist, becoming an adversary, not being friendly to US…

[flagged]

> US led NATO expansion lead to the war in Ukraine, and Europeans are paying the price.

As an Eastern European, I cannot thank the US enough for pushing NATO. It makes me feel safe. I'm just sad that they could not get Ukraine into NATO before all this madness started.

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