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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>This is awesome! The US needs domestic chip manufacturing, in order to be able to effectively compete, take business from, and vanquish China on all fronts.

Have you forgotten all the intel/GF fabs?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobalFoundries#Fabrication_fa...

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They exist, but Intel doesn't do contract manufacturing and GlobalFoundries is behind the other major contract manufacturers (TSMC and Samsung) by many process node generations.

> Intel doesn't do contract manufacturing

What about Intel Custom Foundry?

Practically nil.

Yep, and it's wonderful that we have important fabs that haven't moved production out of the US. However, other parts of the chip supply chain have been moved out of the US, such as iPhone chip manufacturing and stuff related to data centers & servers. While this can help lower prices, it also increases the risk of the US losing control of IP and having its technology compromised.

Remember when in 2018 SuperMicro servers sold to Apple were compromised by a small chip inserted by a Chinese sub-manufacturer? [1] Or how iPhone designs sometimes get leaked by employees of Foxconn in Taiwan? [2] We've got fabs in the US, but I believe domestic chip manufacture should become central policy to prevent incidents like this.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...

[2] https://bgr.com/2019/08/14/iphone-11-release-date-soon-foxco...

[1] is generally considered an incorrect story. It was denied by every party involved, presented no evidence, and not confirmed by anybody else.

It is possible in theory, but this particular story is considered a BS.

And two years later there has been zero development on this bombshell story which makes the story look even worse.

Did anything ever come of that bloomberg article? Supermicro denied all allegations, but also began moving production out of China from what I can find online. Outside of a tech blog or two I haven't heard anything of it again

The Bloomberg article was a dud.

from TFA:

>... “leading edge” ...

Does Intel have some leading edge fabs? I read they have some coming in the future, but I think the point is it’s good to have more!

Yes, of course. Intel has been shipping 10nm devices for a while now.

If the question is about the definition of the term, this document from a faceless consultancy in Aug 2020 describes leading-edge nodes as 14nm and newer.

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/advanced-electronics/our...

Shipping for a while doesn’t mean much when technology has moved on.

I doubt McKinsey would stand behind that definition now. If they did, it wouldn’t do them credit.

Others are shipping 5nm. I mean I’m typing on a laptop that has a 5nm process cpu right now, and Intel is nowhere inside.

Intel is even having trouble with 7nm.

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