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Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

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Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#521

Post by chinabot »

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…

My laptop is a 1000x the power of the one I had 15 years ago yet I am still stuck with the same hourglass due to shit, bloated and over-complex software stacks. Tell me I'm at peak tech when this is no longer the case.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#522

Post by xyzzyz »

iepathos wrote: post #515
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.

The western world would not be compelled to engage militarily over Taiwan. We'd only need to provide money and weapons to Taiwan (rank #21 military in the world) to hold off China (#3) indefinitely given the fact that Taiwan is incredibly difficult to invade due to the barrier the mountain ridges form around it and the narrow straight leading to it for a sea attack. It's a natural fortress. Look at the ongoing failur…

How do you provide weapons to Taiwan if Chinese Navy blockades Taiwan?

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#523

Post by windexh8er »

DeathArrow wrote: post #359
windexh8er wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But China doesn't actually have a lot of technological prowess on their own. The USG might be trying to slow them down but they're not concerned about China militarily. I worked for a defense contractor back in the early 2000s when the USG was selling a lot of arms and systems to Taiwan. I got to see the bullying in person via the ASOC (part of the C4ISR platform) system we were installing. China would routinely fly…

>China can't build its own fab for these types of procs. China can't build fabs for very small lithography processes yet. But 40 years ago they couldn't build almost anything. That changed. The fab situation will change, too.

That's entirely true. They're also decades behind at this point. Chip design and fabrication is an iterative process - if you don't have access to high precision manufacturing capable of building the machines that fabricate the chips you can't fab. China can't build those machines today.

Again, it's simple to say on a whim that China can go from building a lot of cheap electronics to building very complex microprocessors. But that doesn't change the hurdles or the reality.

Also keep in mind that if anything gets in the way of developing these processes - more supply chain breakdown, access to raw materials required to fabricate processors is unavailable or constrained, or China is dealing with any other number of issues along that path it will only take longer. Then realize that during this period of time the rest of the processes are enhanced and iterated leaving China even further behind.

So at the time China can fabricate chips that are outdated today, the world will be 20+ years down the road from where we are right now. The more you dig into all of the things that are needed for China to catch up the more it's apparent that it very well may not happen.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#524

Post by [deleted] »

mordae wrote: post #88
moffkalast wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/production-and-supply-chain... That's from April, but in short there's a huge order backlog that they're still working through apparently, despite producing half a million units per month. With the lockdown gap in production and the Pi 4s getting increasingly integrated into various 3rd party products I suppose that's no surprise. It's quite apparent that there's little demand for the…

People are just not yet used to it. Eventually it will gain more popularity. PIOs are awesome.

[deleted]

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#525

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

sitkack wrote: post #458
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All this talk of China invading Taiwan and attacking other countries in SE Asia is bonkers. Their economy would be cut off from the rest of the world in an instant. Their commercial fishing fleets would probably be driven back to port. It would take a matter of days until they had massive internal protests. Hungry people topple governments in hours.

> Their economy would be cut off from the rest of the world in an instant.

I think you misunderstand deeply the current equilibrium in the world.

Most of Africa, a significant part of South East Asia, some countries in Eastern Europe would definitely align with China. A significant part of South America would be neutral.

The USA is losing allies nearly as fast as China is making them.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#526

Post by throwawaylinux »

kuschku wrote: post #133
throwawaylinux wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DUV seems to be economical down to about 7nm though.

From what Intel put out in marketing materials, even at 14nm they had a very unreliable process with DUV. So, it might not be economical for the type of IC produced in these factories.

TSMC (and Intel) use DUV for their 7nm.

TSMC's DUV 7 processes are reportedly very good.

And I thought Intel's 14 was good too (after some ramping), which is why they stayed on it and iterated on it for so long, it was the 10nm process they had so much trouble with and the problems there are not generally reported to be with lithography but materials (cobalt, among other things, which they dropped in later nodes).

So I'm not sure what you are trying to argue. DUV has _proven_ to be economical down to about 7nm.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#527

Post by [deleted] »

free652 wrote: post #450
whimsicalism wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact remains that if US policies were implemented in China, it would mean the tacit acceptance of killing 4-5 million people.

a) we don't know exactly what would happen if China implemented US policies. So that's not a fact, thats a hypothesis. b) China lies all the time. That's a fact. May be 5 million died from covid there. who knows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_by_Chi...

[deleted]

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#528

Post by throwawaylinux »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #120
throwawaylinux wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And a war indefinitely delayed is a war avoided. You spend the rest of the comment before this talking about how war will happen when they are stronger and probably can't be avoided, so I don't know how this last sentence follows. If you know for sure that someone will wage war on you in future, and that they will get stronger faster than you will, then it could be in your interest to go to war against them sooner…

Xi's China will wage war. It won't always be Xi's China.

So you've reversed your position about the inevitability of war with China then?

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#529

Post by bagacrap »

sabujp wrote: post #153

semi stocks are at all time lows and PE levels. Don't let this doom and gloom piece prevent you from buying more

If you didn't sell semi stocks at their peak last November, when will you sell them?

And if you didn't buy till they were near their peak, did you really care about PE ratios?

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#530

Post by acchow »

agumonkey wrote: post #369
paxys wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as "peak tech". There are simply alternating periods of faster and slower growth, and we are currently in the latter.

In terms of human existence tech is overwhelmingly above the average person need. It's not providing anything beside more addictive paths. You don't need more resolution, more bandwidth, more anything.. you probably need less, or more space to reflect and live outside the networked digital realm. ps: to add a bit more, from the few chats I have, people are either saying "well I need that to check my bank account or p…

> It's not providing anything

The Ancient Greek philosophers used to say this about writing and reading

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