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

Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 734 posts

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#491

Post by jcranmer »

gdy wrote: post #417
jcranmer wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the warning signs were there, but the EU was merrily speeding past them, finding reasons to argue against all of the warning signs. NS2 is one of the most emblematic signs of this: it was clearly going to tie Germany's energy needs closer to an already-proven-unreliable partner (Russia), increase the ability of Russia to use gas transit as politics, countries like Poland and the US were screaming at the top of t…

"already-proven-unreliable" How so?

Russia has switched off the gas before, such as when Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014.

Hell, there's a Wikipedia page listing all of the Russia-Ukraine gas disputes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_gas_dis...). One of the stated motivations for Nord Stream 2 was to improve reliability of gas to Europe in case Russia decided to cut off the gas because of a spat with one of the transit countries.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#492

Post by bluepizza »

heavyset_go wrote: post #406
bluepizza wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is completely unrealistic. Japan is protected by the USA. Any attacks on Japanese territory would lead to nuclear annihilation of Beijing.

This sounds like what was being said about Taiwan a few years ago.

It absolutely does not. Taiwan was never under any sort of agreement, and the USA has always been ambiguous about its policy towards Taiwan.

This is completely different from the mutual defense agreement that Japan has with the USA, where it has been made very clear that the USA will protect Japan.

I understand you want to have a critical opinion, but you need to look at the facts.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#493

Post by toss1 »

Apofis wrote: post #467
nscalf wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it do little to diversify these fabs? The current situation is that if China invades Taiwan, the entire Western world is compelled to engage militarily over Taiwan's high end chip fabs. It cannot be overstated how much we depend on that, if TSMC operates in other countries, we don't HAVE to engage in WW3.

My laptop and iPhone are fast enough… I can’t believe some people would risk a nuclear war over not having the latest iPhone next year.

The latest electronic gadget is NOT what it is about

It is whether the democracies of the world will abandon democracy and allow dictators to take over their societies by threat of force or force.

If we are not both better armed, better prepared, and willing to fight, we might as well hand over the key to Putin, Xi, and Un, and live under their dictatorships.

If we want freedom, we must risk war, and if the threat is nuclear war, then that most of all must be faced down. There is a reason we don't negotiate with terrorists or blackmailers — because if we negotiate and let them gain from terrorism or blackmail, we get a short period of peace before they try it again, along with every other wannabe dictator who can get their hands on some weapons. This all applies even more strongly with nukes.

It sucks, but there is no other choice.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#494

Post by nebula8804 »

bullen wrote: post #32

Everything can be predicted if you understand energy. Companies can't survive in a peak world without manufacturing crap. Sell more because your tools break. So now they are looking at how to do that under the premise of eternal growth: They will try to lock us down in the hardware = deprecate older hardware and force you to move to never software with TLS 1.3. That has never succeded because you can always hack ever…

Using MacOS buys you some more time. Linux is a dumpster fire (no its not the year of Linux nor will I try Linux Mint for the 1000th time). While its not open source, MacOS still acts like an OS from the Win 7 days...for now anyway. They will probably end up going down the road of Win 11 but I think its going to take many more years till they get there.

They also offer excellent support. Their hardware gets like 10 years of OS updates. An M2 Mac today will last well past the next two US presidential cycles.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#495

Post by [deleted] »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #204
nscalf wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it do little to diversify these fabs? The current situation is that if China invades Taiwan, the entire Western world is compelled to engage militarily over Taiwan's high end chip fabs. It cannot be overstated how much we depend on that, if TSMC operates in other countries, we don't HAVE to engage in WW3.

A fab in Ohio, Oregon, or Arizona 10,000 km from China is safe from threats like cruise missiles that the proposed fab 1000 km from China in Japan or South Korea would not be. It's not so much that cruise missiles used on civilian targets in South Korea or Japan would not be a reason to start WW3, more that it would be less tempting.

[deleted]

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#496

Post by Bloating »

Defitio wrote: post #258
nonrandomstring wrote: post #236

We've reached or are approaching "peak tech". The other day we were discussing Pablo Azar, "Computer Saturation and the Productivity Slowdown" (Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics, October 6, 2022) [1] Simply reinventing systems and deliberately obsoleting stuff to create fake demand is over. The metaverse isn't hoing to happen. People are fatigued with tech. We're entering a different era in wh…

I rethought my reaction to Google IO conference: I found it boring because they showed things which do not have an impact on me. Like 'taking better pictures when you a person of non white color's but that's the wrong attitude. They solve great issues like this and I'm probably more underwhelmed that we even had to fix something like this because it wasn't really solved before. Let's see if/when we get a more stable…

Climate Change has been a regular constant since there was a climate

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#497

Post by jandrese »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #395
theptip wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused by this take. Who is threatening Japan with cruise missiles? Certainly not China or Russia. North Korea, perhaps. The primary reason that we're concerned about semiconductor fab concentration in Taiwan is that China has consistently stated that it is going to invade Taiwan at some point (and that could be 2049 or in a few years for all we know). This is completely outside of any hypothetical scenarios of…

> Who is threatening Japan with cruise missiles? Certainly not China or Russia. North Korea, perhaps. China has said that they believe that, in the event of hostilities over Taiwan, they will be obligated to strike US forces everywhere in the region -- and the US Navy still has a strong presence in Japan. Also S. Korea and the Philippines. This means potentially launching missiles at these countries too, and the Chin…

That sounds like saber rattling to me. Trying to scare diplomats with talk of armageddon to secure a better bargaining position. It's a constant of international politics and one shouldn't read too much into it. The same is true of North Korea talking about turning Seoul into a crater whenever they need to ask for food aid.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#498

Post by habibur »

bouncycastle wrote: post #50

Related: There is a massive TSMC factory being built in Japan right now. Take a look at the pictures, I've never seen this many cranes at one location: https://www.nhk.jp/static/assets/images/newblogposting/ts/7P... https://cdn-cw-english.cwg.tw/ckeditor/202205/ckeditor-628ae... It looks like a forest of cranes...

and then what? it will take several years to be operational. and people are afraid things might escalate within months.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#499

Post by [deleted] »

mFixman wrote: post #335

I know nothing about the chip-making process, and news about fabs and the chip industry confuse and scare me. Can anybody link me to a guide with the basics of these topics, like what exactly is a chip (is it a microcontroller? a part of a larger system?), or why the few giant fabs can't be replaced by a lot of smaller and cheaper ones?

[deleted]

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#500

Post by intrasight »

ericmay wrote: post #206
intrasight wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Chinese law" - an oxymoron ;) They said they will retake Taiwan and they can and few will really care. So of course they will.

Whether they can or not is highly questionable. "Few will really care" is certainly false. And in terms of nation states caring, that's also incorrect because Taiwan is a linchpin of US Pacific foreign policy and for the US to do nothing or "not care" about Taiwan being invaded would signal to allies in the region that they cannot count on the United States and that they should find their own defense arrangements. It…

I did mean few American voters
Post reply on HN