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US Intel

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Re: US Intel

#71

Post by jrk »

scarface_74 wrote: post #52
wat10000 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel was the best until fairly recently. Then they still looked like the best to a non-expert observer, and then still looked at least competitive until even more recently. The modern world changes too fast for our governments to adapt to. Especially when we're talking about state of the art semiconductors and our leader was born before the invention of the transistor.

Intel hasn’t been “the best” since the world cared more about mobile in 2010. There GPUs have always been also ran. It just wasn’t a big deal until crypto and later machine learning. Even for integrated graphics, Intel has been behind Apple’s/TSMC ARM based processor before the Mx based Macs.

The OP is talking about fabrication technology, not end products. Even years into their delays getting to 10nm, Intel had more advanced fabrication technology than TSMC until N7 reached volume in 2018.

Re: US Intel

#72

Post by NitpickLawyer »

zoeysmithe wrote: post #15
themgt wrote: post #7

I’ll be honest: there is a very good chance this won’t work .... At the same time, the China concerns are real, Intel Foundry needs a guarantee of existence to even court customers, and there really is no coming back from an exit. There won’t be a startup to fill Intel’s place. The U.S. will be completely dependent on foreign companies for the most important products on earth, and while everything may seem fine for t…

There's a real folly in capitalist countries thinking they can be self-sufficient walled castles. Capitalism by its nature will seek out the lowest cost be it in labor or manufacturing. That means often means outsourcing. Our system has no breaks for this. In fact it works actively for this, hence the neolib ideal of "just move towards efficiencies, and let the chips fall where they may." This is ideal under capitali…

> Nationalism/protectionism and capitalism are fundamentally incompatible

Huh? France and Germany are prime counter examples of your statement.

Re: US Intel

#73

Post by foobarian »

jmyeet wrote: post #30

The short version is: this can work but it won't. Let me just say, for those of us who remember the 1990s and 2000s, Intel's drop off has been something nobody would've predicted. It's hard to overstate just how dominant they were (other than the fairly brief but significant Athlon64 era). And even when they were behind on consumer CPUs, which they were until the Core Duo/Centrino platform (which was really the Penti…

> There are multiple ways to describe China's economy but the most accurate and relevant for this topic is that it's a command economy

That brings up an interesting point. It seems to be a conventional wisdom that centrally planned economies don't work (and did not work in cases where they were tried) as well as Western-style capitalism because of the communication and command bottlenecks.

But what if those bottlenecks have been greatly increased in the information age of Internet, other global communication networks, and data collection? The western-capitalist system has the problem of getting stuck in local minima, being driven as a network of actors. What if the downsides of that are finally greater than the performance hit due to central planning bottlenecks?

Re: US Intel

#74

Post by headcanon »

georgeburdell wrote: post #23
themgt wrote: post #7

I’ll be honest: there is a very good chance this won’t work .... At the same time, the China concerns are real, Intel Foundry needs a guarantee of existence to even court customers, and there really is no coming back from an exit. There won’t be a startup to fill Intel’s place. The U.S. will be completely dependent on foreign companies for the most important products on earth, and while everything may seem fine for t…

If I may add my view as a formerly high-achieving semiconductor worker that Intel would benefit greatly from having right now, a lot of us pivoted to software and machine learning to earn more money. My first 2 years as a software engineer earned me more RSUs than a decade in semiconductors. Semiconductors is not prestigious work in the U.S., despite the strategic importance. By contrast, it is highly respected and r…

Similar, My major in university was computer engineering (as opposed to pure CS or EE) because I wasn't sure if I wanted to go into a hardware or software profession. I ended up going with software since all the interesting opportunities were there, whereas most jobs in hardware seemed to be working for stodgy old companies barely making six figures if I was lucky.

Re: US Intel

#75

Post by webdevver »

bawana wrote: post #61

How is this ‘equity stake’ different than nationalization? (The thing that soviet socialism did to russian property and business a hundred years ago). After all the government prints the money. So instead of just taking control of a company the govt prints the money to buy it. Isnt it the same thing? And where is the example of a successful govt run business? Why dont we encourage businesses here w free trade zones?

I wouldn't read too much into it. I think this is just the Trump administration buying the dip. they're gonna invest heavily into Intel to reduce TSMCs political leverage, the stock will go up 1000%, and Trumps friends & co. (& everyone who 'got the signal') get rich off it, US semiconductor industry is revived (maybe?), and everybody(?) wins.

This isn't unprecedented - I think Trump really set the tone with TRUMPcoin saga, which was very wild-west. a lot of people lost money, and others got awfully wealthy in a flash. but ultimately, it was legal: both winning, and losing.

Then you had Trump dipping the S&P and telling everyone "nows a great time to buy!", which IMO was even more diabolical than the trumpcoin stuff.

I think the signal is clear: the concept of "securities fraud" has become the financial equivalent of arranged marriage & dowries, and in its place we welcome the "free & open market", double edged and all.

hold it carefully or you'll cut yourself!

like it or not it seems to be working. the wealth disparity between the US and everyone else is growing (to the US favour). I think if the US starts arguing 'youre either with us or against us', most people today will go full FOMO into the US - even the most ardent patriots will quietly shift all their assets into the US side.

now we hear that Trump will allow 600k Chinese students to study in the US - has there ever been a greater inditement against the CCP? What does it say about the "Chinese Century", when their brightest minds are clamouring to get into Stanford or MIT?

Pax Americana for yet another century, I'm all in.

Re: US Intel

#76

Post by [deleted] »

rich_sasha wrote: post #46

I am torn on this. On the one hand, I strongly agree with this article. This kind of state ownership never brings anyhing good. I don't see how this is different. On the other, it is hard to deny how impressive the new wave of Chinese manufacturing is. No longer are they just making knock offs of Western products with stolen IP. BYD for example seems genuinely innovative, a top product. There are many other examples.…

[deleted]

Re: US Intel

#77

Post by marbro »

Neywiny wrote: post #8
themgt wrote: post #7

I’ll be honest: there is a very good chance this won’t work .... At the same time, the China concerns are real, Intel Foundry needs a guarantee of existence to even court customers, and there really is no coming back from an exit. There won’t be a startup to fill Intel’s place. The U.S. will be completely dependent on foreign companies for the most important products on earth, and while everything may seem fine for t…

This and everything else. We outsourced manufacturing of almost everything then are surprised when the people doing it for decades are better than we were.

We outsourced manufacturing because it's not very profitable. The Mag 7 make 50x as much money as TSMC. Apple and Microsoft are the most profitable businesses in history.

Re: US Intel

#78

Post by slt2021 »

bilbo0s wrote: post #43
slt2021 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is merging interests of the state and corporations marks a return to good ole fascism ? or is it just an alternative way of taxing capital? instead of taxing wealth and capital, just take an equity stake in it ?

More an alternative way of controlling capital. If you wanted to tax capital via equity stakes, you'd simply have demanded a much larger stake. What we're doing is starting down the road of "capitalism with Chinese characteristics". It's a tacit admission that the Chinese model can be effective at achieving a nation's strategic economic goals. (More effective than the model we previously championed.) The real flip si…

10% is not a controlling stake, and US already controls Intel via regulation.

Most importantly, Intel's market cap is minuscule $100 bln, it doesnt allow control over meaningful amount of capital

Socialism with Chinese characteristics - it reduces private wealth and curbs control of oligarchs like Jack Ma. I feel like US is the opposite, where oligarchs directly control the government already

Re: US Intel

#79

Post by minkzilla »

mvc wrote: post #55
themgt wrote: post #7

I’ll be honest: there is a very good chance this won’t work .... At the same time, the China concerns are real, Intel Foundry needs a guarantee of existence to even court customers, and there really is no coming back from an exit. There won’t be a startup to fill Intel’s place. The U.S. will be completely dependent on foreign companies for the most important products on earth, and while everything may seem fine for t…

If all advanced countries follow this reasoning, where does that leave us?

Robust and redundant manufacturing spread across the world with more opportunity for innovation?

Re: US Intel

#80

Post by cubefox »

Maybe it's worth noting that the new CEO's explosive statement, Intel would give up development of leading edge nodes (14A and beyond) unless they find a large external customer in advance, hardly got any attention on Hacker News or other websites. But that was almost certainly the reason the US administration got involved. This blog post thankfully makes this point clear.

In the past, most people (including myself) just assumed the worst case was merely Intel selling its chip manufacturing division to some other US company which would then continue to develop new advanced nodes like 14A.

But that was not at all what Lip Bu-Tan (the new Intel CEO) suggested at the earnings call. He said Intel would simply stop developing new nodes and just use the existing 18A fabs as long as there is demand. And then, presumably, closing all the fabs and fully switching to TSMC, becoming another AMD.

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