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

Intel Honesty

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 426 posts

Re: Intel Honesty

#51

Post by tedivm »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #39
nightski wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying you are wrong but personally I'd view the stock as an attractive perk right now since it is so low. Whereas if I were joining a company such as Nvidia I'd honestly be kind of worried. Historical performance isn't really a great indicator here.

You can trade your stock for intel stock when working at any company. Stock grants really should be swapped for income and reinvested how you see best. So ultimately the total take home income is what should matter for any new hire. Take the higher paying and job and buy intel stock if you believe it’ll rise.

Most stock vests over time though. I can't trade it immediately, and the value may drop between when I get the grant and when I can actually sell the shares.

Re: Intel Honesty

#52

Post by onepointsixC »

bee_rider wrote: post #45

I wonder if Global Foundries will become relevant again on the high end. They “gave up,” but they are working on some pretty small nodes now, 12nm, obviously not what TSMC is up to, but maybe they’ll catch Intel in 10 years. I’m sure they are fine for automotive.

They’re 4-5 nodes behind Intel today, with no EUV machines let alone High NA EUV. They’re just not relevant in leading edge in the slightest.

Re: Intel Honesty

#53

Post by Maken »

bee_rider wrote: post #31
api wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Throughout most of the 2010s, EUV lithography was like the "year of the Linux desktop" - i.e., this year will be the year where EUV was suitable for high volume manufacturing. We need to learn to recognize the difference between something that's never going to happen for either physical or economic/social/structural reasons, and something that is just really difficult and takes a long time. I always think of this w…

The main reason there will never be a “year of Linux on the desktop” is that desktops became irrelevant before Microsoft became… whatever it is now.

Another ad company?

Re: Intel Honesty

#54

Post by ars »

Did I misunderstand or did the author advocate a world where the only high-end chip manufacturer in the entire world is TMSC?

Just the one single company, located in a politically unstable area?

And putting aside the politics, if they become a monopoly what do you think will happen next?

Re: Intel Honesty

#55

Post by packetlost »

reaperman wrote: post #27
andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #6

US chip production really needs its SpaceX moment, but it seems like it will never happen, and we're left with the crumbling empire of Intel. By "SpaceX moment", I mean a startup entering an impossible market, where the barrier to entry is billions of dollars of research and manufacturing, a market dominated by industry giants from the 60s, and yet still coming out on top somehow.

> a market dominated by industry giants from the 60s The thing is, the SpaceX moment occurred because of a rare opportunity where the industry incumbents were insulated from any competition or need for innovation for ~30 years. Some domestic industries still operate in an environment somewhat like this (e.g. the steel industry), but still face modernized global competition (albeit whose effects are kept at bay via im…

US Telecom is not as far behind, but it's pretty far behind. Unfortunately, I think it largely competes with cellular networks and Starlink these day.

Re: Intel Honesty

#56

Post by nick238 »

andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #6

US chip production really needs its SpaceX moment, but it seems like it will never happen, and we're left with the crumbling empire of Intel. By "SpaceX moment", I mean a startup entering an impossible market, where the barrier to entry is billions of dollars of research and manufacturing, a market dominated by industry giants from the 60s, and yet still coming out on top somehow.

I think rockets are insanely simple compared to silicon. The amount of research and development it takes to build a light source (hot tin plasma[1]) is extraordinary, and fabs are also probably the most complicated manufacturing facilities in the world. Tesla struggled mightily with integrating disparate auto parts manufacturers some years ago.

SpaceX and Tesla benefited from being helmed by a crazy person (in their nascent stages), who pushed to break norms in the conventional thinking, either "rockets can't be reused/we must spend $10B on a test campaign[2] before any part leaves the ground" and "EVs aren't cool". I don't think if Musk could design a rocket engine from scratch is relevant, but the strategic design patterns of 1) reduce requirements, 2) remove unused things, 3) simplify/optimize, 4) accelerate cycle times, 5) automate. Those points aren't revolutionary, just a more expanded "go fast and break things."

The computers that came out of Silicon Valley in the late 70s-into the 80s were a disruption to the old stalwarts like IBM. Though for silicon maybe I'm just trapped in that pre-SpaceX thinking.

[1]: https://phys.org/news/2020-05-exceptional-euv-hot-tin-plasma...

[2]: https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-sls-and-orion

Re: Intel Honesty

#57

Post by happyopossum »

ohcmon wrote: post #47
nightski wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying you are wrong but personally I'd view the stock as an attractive perk right now since it is so low. Whereas if I were joining a company such as Nvidia I'd honestly be kind of worried. Historical performance isn't really a great indicator here.

You would be surprised, but nvidia’s employee stock plans allow to select the purchase price within the last 2 years https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/benefits/money/espp/

ESPP is completely different from stock-based compensation.

Re: Intel Honesty

#58

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #6

US chip production really needs its SpaceX moment, but it seems like it will never happen, and we're left with the crumbling empire of Intel. By "SpaceX moment", I mean a startup entering an impossible market, where the barrier to entry is billions of dollars of research and manufacturing, a market dominated by industry giants from the 60s, and yet still coming out on top somehow.

TSMC has been spending $15 - $50 billion per year for years to stay on top.

Estimates are it would take $200 - $300 billion just to catch up with them and little to no profitability for a decade while burning $10s of billions every year.

I think the federal govt is the only entity that has that kind of money.

Re: Intel Honesty

#59

Post by crowcroft »

linuxftw wrote: post #29

Intel has $29B cash on hand. Their new fabs are being subsidized. Sure, American labor is more expensive than APAC, but I don't see that being a huge differentiator in such an automated manufacturing segment. My personal rabbit-hole conspiracy is that AI is driving a fire under the national security apparatus, and we're going to see a restriction on AI-chip technology being exported or manufactured overseas. Intel wi…

$29b cash and about $50b in debt. They have a valid business still, but I think you're under appreciating how much of a hole they need to dig themselves out of.

Their current foundries can't just make other chips, and they certainly can't make GPUs for AI (TSMC make Intel GPUs). They are making a new foundry in Ohio, but in Intel's current state and comments they've made to the market it's not guaranteed the foundry will be built.

Intel might make it out of the hole, but it's going to get worse before it gets better. At their current trajectory their is not valid reason for the company to have 100,000 employees. I expect the recent layoffs are the first of a few.

Re: Intel Honesty

#60

Post by manav »

Intel was getting something like $20 billion from the CHIPS act - but it seems like by the time the fabs would have been ready TSMC will already have them beat to 1.4nm/a14 (also using High NA EUV). Intel has just consistently failed to execute whereas TSMC has been fairly close to schedule.
Post reply on HN