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A Texas semiconductor boom on the horizon?

news.utexas.edu

51–60 of 65 posts

Re: A Texas semiconductor boom on the horizon?

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too chaotic. There are many who want peace but there are many who want war and there are many who will flip their opinion and this is on both sides of the line, the US and China. Anything can occur.

What we saw in Ukraine is that arguments about geopolitics, economy, military readiness etc can be completely negated by the person in charge acting on a strategic or emotional whim. Like all the experts in the world can concur that China is better off with peace in the Pacific, but if Xi wants a war, he's getting a war.

Xi already believes he has a war, it’s just in the early stages. See this[1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Warfare

Re: A Texas semiconductor boom on the horizon?

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this your diagnosis? That things are more corporate in terms of outcome? Genuinely curious, as a Bay Area native, why UT/Texas can’t begin to compete given how many issues face SF currently.

Austin's native industry is oil and gas, not internet. The software tech sector is relatively new.

Oil and gas? I haven't met a single person working in that in this town. You have us confused with Houston.

Re: A Texas semiconductor boom on the horizon?

#53

Disclaimer: Austinite here unrelated to UT. UT needs a wider incubation, financing, and entrepreneurial (undergrad/grad-student/community) ecosystem like Stanford. Critical mass of players brings with it more interested parties, and with it, that elusive "innovation". It should be okay to make money, okay to turn a PhD thesis into a startup, okay to launch side projects, and cool to fail and learn lessons. Not all pa…

Is this your diagnosis? That things are more corporate in terms of outcome? Genuinely curious, as a Bay Area native, why UT/Texas can’t begin to compete given how many issues face SF currently.

[dead]

Re: A Texas semiconductor boom on the horizon?

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of rote in Asia, and an over emphasis on classic geometric proofs that have little relevance in today’s world. Yes, we should try as hard as Asia in math, but blindly copying Indian or Chinese education practices isn’t the right way forward.

The goal of learning should be mastery, not memorization of specific cases. With geometry, the style I was taught emphasized explanation of complex problems using proofs but building from first principles.

(Shrug) It depends on what you "master." Mastering symbolic integration isn't going to do much for your career or your country's industrial prospects. Life is short, and there are too many more-useful things to learn.

Re: A Texas semiconductor boom on the horizon?

#55
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my freshman E&M physics course, there was no calculus prerequisite, so when we had to answer a question on a quiz or test that would be solved with an integral, the professor said we could just put the integral without needing to evaluate it and he'd mark it as correct. I think this approach makes a lot of sense; understanding the concept of "summing" the value of an expression across a range by using an integral…

That's ridiculous. When I took the entire undergrad physics series for scientists and engineers, it absolutely required calculus, vector math, and diff eqs.

Why is it ridiculous for an intro-level course to not require people to manually compute integrals? I'm open to the idea that maybe I'm wrong about this being reasonable, but "I had to do it so everyone else should have to too" is not a very convincing argument.

To be clear, I had already placed out of the calculus course that would have taught how to evaluate these integrals, so I wouldn't have been disadvantaged by it being required. There definitely weren't any differential equations in the course though; it seems like you might be overestimating the intensity a 100-level physics course required for people like me who never did physics again after.

Re: A Texas semiconductor boom on the horizon?

#56
If you visit Texas universities 5 years ago, there are many China students there. Their PhD candidates are mostly non white and non Americans. Fast forward today, these have significantly drop. Foxconn had to shutdown their silicon plant because of severe constraint skilled labor. Also, China has just mass produce all the lucrative 14+ nm at a fractions pricing which have started to decimate American revenue income in that market. Already many tech workers in Cali unable to find jobs after layoff 6mths ago. Good luck if Texans able to defy all these ecobomics fundamentals and achieve boom. I know solar and Solyndra failed badly. Even Tesla energy divisions now start to fizzle out.

Re: A Texas semiconductor boom on the horizon?

#57
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Texas? The state currently dealing with a power crisis and looking to restrict the ability to build renewable energy?

They just had a big power crisis (summer AC, maximum GWh usage) and survived.

Is that supposed to be reassuring? Why not choose a state with better energy management, so "recently survived an energy crisis" isn't even part of the conversation?

Re: A Texas semiconductor boom on the horizon?

#58
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Texas? The state currently dealing with a power crisis and looking to restrict the ability to build renewable energy?

They just had a big power crisis (summer AC, maximum GWh usage) and survived.

They've had multiple power crises recently in which survival was in question, so the particular outcome in the last one says less than the expected frequency for more borderline events in the future.

Re: A Texas semiconductor boom on the horizon?

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With LLMs being able to run locally on consumer hardware, I think we’re headed back to hand written tests pretty soon.

Yeah, even before LLMs, the more advanced TI calcs like the TI-nspire can have Calc and Physics apps loaded on them that make tests trivial to cheat on.

That's why they were banned back when I took the tests. Have they loosened the restrictions on the n-spire?

The standard back in the early 2010s was still definitely TI-84 being about the most powerful calculator you could use for most tests that mattered. Those calculators are intentionally kept slow by TI because of these requirements.

My impression of the n-spire was that it had always been marketed much more towards professionals. The first one I saw in person was at an electrical engineering internship where my boss had just bought one.

Re: A Texas semiconductor boom on the horizon?

#60
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's ridiculous. When I took the entire undergrad physics series for scientists and engineers, it absolutely required calculus, vector math, and diff eqs.

Why is it ridiculous for an intro-level course to not require people to manually compute integrals? I'm open to the idea that maybe I'm wrong about this being reasonable, but "I had to do it so everyone else should have to too" is not a very convincing argument. To be clear, I had already placed out of the calculus course that would have taught how to evaluate these integrals, so I wouldn't have been disadvantaged by…

For the same reason not grinding out the code by hand and copying from your LLM is going to result in you being a less competent programmer in the long run.

I really believe there is something to be said for putting yourself through the mental strain of evaluating the integrals (or code) and that doing so contributes to you having a better feel for how it works on a conceptual level as well, you don't just get better at calculating by doing things the hard way.

If you can easily see the solutions and manipulations you can make to an integral by hand, then you are more able to quickly get a feel for what it represents just by looking at it. If you are not as experienced doing them by hand, just reading them is going to sap some of your brain power and energy, and you will be less able to reason about them abstractly as a result.

I think the whole "just learn the concepts" approach to almost anything is fundamentally misguided and not at all how representative of how humans really learn.

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