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AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

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Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#61

Post by sudofail »

vFunct wrote: post #46
echelon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the government bailing them out then? Is that just good money thrown after bad? Regardless, it seems like the company leadership should be gutted (the same could be said of Boeing) and the company given over to a new technically-grounded leadership team.

I'm surprised the US just doesn't fund a new fab company or consortium, like Japan did with Rapidus. But I guess "too much socialism"

A lot of countries honestly should be taking this approach. Fabrication is just too important for national security. At least some domestic production is critical.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#62

Post by epistasis »

vFunct wrote: post #46
echelon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the government bailing them out then? Is that just good money thrown after bad? Regardless, it seems like the company leadership should be gutted (the same could be said of Boeing) and the company given over to a new technically-grounded leadership team.

I'm surprised the US just doesn't fund a new fab company or consortium, like Japan did with Rapidus. But I guess "too much socialism"

I don't think the current Republican leadership has any opposition at all to handing over lots of government money to large business to do things!

The problem is that they are far too incompetent and have zero clue about tech, and only understand real estate, that simplest of business that can be executed with mere lizard-brain intelligence.

Tech is also about small startups disrupting large giants, which is completely antithetical to current Republican leadership ideals, where the wealthiest get all gains, regardless of who does the work.

It will take many years of full-on Democratic leadership to reconfigure the Republican Party back to a somewhat innovation-friendly business party. Meanwhile the Democrats, under Biden, were by far some of the most business-friendly politicians we have seen in perhaps a century, spurring massive investment in factories and industry, mostly across red states. But because it's a politically incorrect fact, it never gets reported.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#64

Post by cogman10 »

lukevp wrote: post #56
timmg wrote: post #34

What I really want to know, from someone who does know: Is Intel cooked? Like, will they be able to manufacture chips that compete with TSMC? They used to be a crown-jewel of US tech. But it seems like every time I read the news, they are announcing a delay or shutting down some product.

Intel is more than just fabs. AMD spun off digital foundry forever ago and just uses TSMC, no reason Intel couldn’t do the same. At this point their fabs are a liability. They have a new leader who’s from a semiconductor manufacturing background so I have some faith they’ll give up on the pursuit of next gen fabs and focus instead on their IP. There’s a huge opportunity in their GPU segment. They’ve gone from a joke…

> no reason Intel couldn’t do the same.

Intel is doing the same. IDK if they are working on new fabs at this point, but the last few generations of chips from intel have used TSMC.

My expectation is that Intel might still run fabs, but they'll be mostly contracting them out to people who want cheap ASICs and 10 year old fab tech.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#66

Post by sho_hn »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #58
timmg wrote: post #34

What I really want to know, from someone who does know: Is Intel cooked? Like, will they be able to manufacture chips that compete with TSMC? They used to be a crown-jewel of US tech. But it seems like every time I read the news, they are announcing a delay or shutting down some product.

> used to be a crown-jewel of US tech I feel like x86 itself is kinda legacy tech. So while AMD has made advancements, they're somewhat in the same boat as Intel. It seems like NVIDIA and Micron are the real "crown jewels" of US tech

Tech-wise places too much premium on the ISA. Modern processor design is fairly orthogonal to the ISA being exposed.

Intel could make exciting RISC-V relatively quickly if they wanted to; what stops them and other companies like this is the strategic asset they perceive their existing ecosystem as.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#67

Post by Workaccount2 »

chazeon wrote: post #26
seangrogg wrote: post #22

A 5-20% markup on CPUs isn't the worst thing, but those still need a mobo to socket into and as far as I'm aware we still don't have much capability on the availability of boards. Are there any companies that are spinning up board production, or even just broader consumer electronics in general (arduinos, pis, general controllers and the like)?

Boards are low tech and low profit, does American company and workers even want to do it?

Yea, I work in the industry. There are players, but not exactly bountiful. Really the backbone of American electronics manufacturing is military spending. If the defense budget went away, there would be close to zero PCB manufacturers left. China makes higher quality boards, faster and for dramatically less money.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#68

Post by tester756 »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #58
timmg wrote: post #34

What I really want to know, from someone who does know: Is Intel cooked? Like, will they be able to manufacture chips that compete with TSMC? They used to be a crown-jewel of US tech. But it seems like every time I read the news, they are announcing a delay or shutting down some product.

> used to be a crown-jewel of US tech I feel like x86 itself is kinda legacy tech. So while AMD has made advancements, they're somewhat in the same boat as Intel. It seems like NVIDIA and Micron are the real "crown jewels" of US tech

ISA is irrelevant

It's like saying that programming language syntax/keywords are better than the other.

Everything is about compiler, lib, runtime, etc.

https://chipsandcheese.com/p/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-matter

Also some people say that RISC-V is the way to go

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#69

Post by Workaccount2 »

CivBase wrote: post #24

5-20% more expensive? That's way cheaper than I expected. That's pretty good, especially for 4nm.

Even 5% more expensive means 80% of people buy the taiwan version for $475 instead of $500.

20% more expensive and 99.9% of people buy the $500 one instead of the $600 one.

Never make the mistake of falling for people's virtue signalling and pay attention instead to how they actually apply those virtues (spoiler: saving money is the #1 acted upon virtue, being far stronger than any other).

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#70

Post by 9cb14c1ec0 »

cogman10 wrote: post #64
lukevp wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel is more than just fabs. AMD spun off digital foundry forever ago and just uses TSMC, no reason Intel couldn’t do the same. At this point their fabs are a liability. They have a new leader who’s from a semiconductor manufacturing background so I have some faith they’ll give up on the pursuit of next gen fabs and focus instead on their IP. There’s a huge opportunity in their GPU segment. They’ve gone from a joke…

> no reason Intel couldn’t do the same. Intel is doing the same. IDK if they are working on new fabs at this point, but the last few generations of chips from intel have used TSMC. My expectation is that Intel might still run fabs, but they'll be mostly contracting them out to people who want cheap ASICs and 10 year old fab tech.

> IDK if they are working on new fabs at this point

Yes, they are.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/in...

Definitely struggling, but still in the game.

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