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Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

economist.com

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Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#561

Post by lumost »

tgtweak wrote: post #174

To be perfectly honest, this is still within a 1000km radius circle that encompasses Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. That covers the majority of next-generation fabs that aren't Intel. It's great to legally diversify these fabs, but it does very little to mitigate geopolitical issues that are brewing in and around the east china sea.

As far as I'm aware the US has treaty obligations with Japan which would require a full military intervention should Japan be attacked. Building a Fab in Japan is effectively a hedge against everything except a world war.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#562

Post by permo-w »

vkou wrote: post #383
permo-w wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China recently tested a hypersonic missile that circumnavigated the global and then marginally missed its target

If China and the United States are in a full-on shooting war, the last thing I'm going to be worried about is what country 5nm chip fabs are based in. It's a complete and utter failure state of civilization, and is one hot-headed decision away from going nuclear. If chip fabs are at the top list of your worries, your perspective of war is probably overly informed by being on the side that undertakes imperial adventur…

pardon?

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#563

Post by fnordpiglet »

CydeWeys wrote: post #546
fnordpiglet wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a good thing as a consumer. As a producer it’s what you try to avoid. They’re not charities

It's reasons like this why the DPA and other mechanisms exist. Having sufficient fab capacity in case global supply lines experience disruption is a strategic reserve of high national security importance.

That’s true. But then supply, demand, and price are irrelevant. The challenge is making optimal decisions about investment. Markets tend to be brutal to producers who aren’t efficient, and that leads to a Darwinian process favoring the momentarily optimal producers. Production by fiat leads to weird outcomes. DPA mandated and funded fab facilities will probably in the future be wildly out of date with private producers ensuring we can only produce antiquated processes or using extraordinarily inefficient processes.

I’m no libertarian market wacko, and I think it’s important to have decentralized production and as a planet we probably jumped the shark with centralizing Asia as the production hub for manufacturing and fabrication. But I’m dubious DPA etc are sufficient measures.

My point though was low prices and softening demand is NOT helpful as the prior poster asserted. It hurts the effort because the lack of margin and scale means only fiat production is possible, with poor long term outcomes.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#565

Post by adaml_623 »

chrischen wrote: post #470
whimsicalism wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Braindead from an American perspective, it is also likely those policies have averted upwards of 4 million deaths.

Actually I live in Japan and Japan has implemented exactly 0 lockdowns. While policies have reduced the number of people walking about, there are still more people shoulder to shoulder on a daily basis than anywhere in the US.

Are they wearing masks?

I look around where I am and wonder why aren't more of us wearing masks?

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#566

Post by ROTMetro »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #314
ansible wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. We've already passed the tipping point for tech, and investment will continue to accelerate. This is true for various form of artificial intelligence, and the rest of tech. Businesses in general started to see the appeal around the time that the Google Assistant, Cortana, Alexa and Siri started to become actually useful and desired by the general public. Because of that, there will continue to be a push t…

I disagree current systems can turn a web search that presents results in a pleasing manner. I had a horrible time trying to find a specific musician's work on YouTube just last night. It kept recommending me completely unrelated vids as if I was browsing just to browse. It couldn't seem to comprehend that even though I usually watch cute cat videos today I am searching for music, even when I was exact quoting the au…

You answered yourself in the last sentence. Google's algorithm is designed to maximize their add return not to immediately return what you are searching for.

Imagine this use case. User searches for a video that costs Youtube royalty fees and is not monetized. Do you prioritize that in your return results or some other video that makes your business money instead of costing it?

Same thing with the Spotify Company playlists and recommendations versus user generated ones. Spotify's seems to include lesser quality, lower royalty songs now even though that is not what I want and it knows it. But unlike Google, I only go to Spotify BECAUSE of the quality of the songs it recommends me. Now that it's priority is first lower royalty songs over songs it things I would like the most I have no incentive to stay.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#567

Post by CamperBob2 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #465
rat87 wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you massively overestimate the importance of economics or semiconductor industry. Whatever will happen to Taiwan has nothing to do with Chips. For China it's about nationalism, for US it's about protecting allies/upholding treaties and protecting democracy from the strongest authoritarian regime. Chips are not important. After all chances are high they might be destroyed even in a successful defense of Taiwan. As…

> For China it's about nationalism, for US it's about protecting allies/upholding treaties and protecting democracy from the strongest authoritarian regime. I doubt this is true for China (I very much suspect economic concerns trump any other concerns for them as well), but I am quite convinced you are wrong about the USA - one of the biggest supporters of non-democratic regimes in the world. There is little in US hi…

one of the biggest supporters of non-democratic regimes in the world...

...to fight the spread of Communism.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#568

Post by vagrantJin »

bluepizza wrote: post #379
slickrick216 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If China attempts an invasion on Taiwan it is not unrealistic to suggest they’ll also take a swing at Japan and at least try to destroy the fabs there.

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

What a childish and naive take. I'll be blunt and assert its pretty dumb.

Firstly, completely dismissing Japan as a sovereign state. Complete disrespect.

Secondly, nuclear warfare is the dumbest solution possible. Who ever fires first must accept potentially losing the trust of all nations. No matter who fires for whatever reason. Barring an alien attack or something of that magnitide.

Thirdly, the US power does not come from its military - but diplomacy. Allies in strategic places captured by the flow of capital. The military maintains the status quo but isn't invincible. If it were, Russia would not exist. China would not become a superpower.

These are basics.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#569

Post by theptip »

adriancr wrote: post #510
theptip wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Do you have a source for this? I haven't heard this stated before, but I'm not an expert here. Even taking this as true, I think it's a big leap to go from striking US military bases in Japan, to striking civilian infrastructure in those countries. It seems quite clear…

> China occupies Taiwan They're not even remotely capable of doing that before US intervenes. Taiwan is a heavily fortified island with unfriendly geography and a massive high tech army.

Sure, I'm not making any claims on whether they can successfully do that, just that in this widely-studied geopolitical contest, it's the most likely move that they will attempt to achieve their publicly-stated goals. (And not some crazy all-out war on the US and its allies as GP was proposing.)

FWIW on the likelihood of this specific claim, my impression is that the Pentagon considers it likely that they will try to annex Taiwan at some point in the next decade, e.g. see yesterday's headlines from Blinken (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-17/blinken-s...).

I don't have any particular domain knowledge to judge how hard it would be for China to occupy Taiwan (or how much more military power China would need to tip the balance in its favor), but I'm interested in any hard analysis that you can share on the subject. The general reading I've seen has suggested that they would be able to do so in the next 10-20 years if current trends in military growth pan out.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#570

Post by CamperBob2 »

hayst4ck wrote: post #422
rat87 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan is not a vassal state. It's a powerful country that's an ally of the US.

Japan's constitution prohibits a traditional military as a result of surrender in WW2. Not having the right to solve your own disputes sounds like vassalization to me. From a face saving perspective "powerful ally country" is probably the status of every vassal state. From a de facto perspective they are not allowed to solve their own disputes and house military bases of a country that solves disputes (with the threa…

Japan is free to change their constitution at any time. AFAIK they are no longer bound by WWII-era treaties with the US. (Can anyone confirm/refute that? Google fails me.)
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