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Comment by kcorbitt | Hacker News Reader

Seems like the biggest news here is Intel committing strongly to its fab business. Walling that division off from Intel's own chip design business is critical to giving it a chance to succeed. Having a third fab with competitive tech (along with TSMC and Samsung) is great for the world!

This is pretty bad for Taiwan geopolitically though... once US chipmakers have a plausible local manufacturing alternative, the US is less likely to risk WW3 by standing up to China if/when it tries to annex Taiwan.

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I don't think a keynote is bad for Taiwan geopolitically. Intel have a ton of cash on their balance sheet, but they still need to execute on this strategy. It astounds me what people take at face value here, considering the incredible momentum Intel needs to turn its ship around. It reminds me of Elon promising coast to coast FSD.

I also think China/TSMC is more of an economic than an existential risk. The US military doesn't need 2nm semiconductors. US manufacturers are more than capable of supplying essential US supply chains. They're just not cutting edge like the East Asian fabs are.

>It reminds me of Elon promising coast to coast FSD.

I don't know why you are surprised as lots of HN users keep saying that we either already have FSD as promised or that it will be here soon (in the Tesla beta?). People believe the most crazy things, especially if they have already bought into the ecosystem somehow (see also Apple Vs. Android discussions).

They don’t need 2nm today, but 10 years from now when they are old they’ll need a supplier who isn’t swayed by China’s ability to apply sanctions

It is unlikely that Nvidia and AMD will want to use Intel as their foundry. It is unlikely that Intel would be willing to offer pricing compelling enough to entice those two to use their foundries.

So long as TSMC and Samsung remain competitive (note, this doesn't mean better, just close enough -- better is also fine), I expect the vast majority of AMD and Nvidia chips to be manufactured by those two.

If the foundry business can create a competitive product that saves Nvidia/AMD manufacturing costs, they'll pay. Business allegiances change all the time when it impacts the bottom line.

If the Intel foundry business creates supply, even for people who are not Nvidia/AMD/Apple, they still win via increased competition on TSMC and Samsung.

Yes. I didn't say that this wouldn't happen. I just observed that none of the three players among AMD, Nvidia, and Intel have an active interest in working together. Practicality will trump, but I suspect that given a choice among Intel and another closely-priced, competitive foundry, both AMD and Nvidia will choose the latter.

Couldn't you say the same about smartphone makers using Samsung's display panels, despite them being a direct competitor?

Unlike Intel, Samsung is first and foremost a component maker. Almost every phone makers use their commodified displays, batteries, memory/storage chips -- Samsung's phone division is just a side business.

> It is unlikely that Nvidia and AMD will want to use Intel as their foundry.

Why not? Nvidia seems to be very pragmatic in their foundry picks on what's available for example.

IIRC TSMC is planning on building fab capacity in the US soon anyway, which adds a new twist to that tale.

To double click on that: TSMC has been playing the geostrategic game for a while. Taiwan wasn't simply a good choice because it had labor, transport access, and a supportive government: it played to certain Cold War issues.

Then as the mainland market developed they increased their mainland footprint as a hedge (makes it harder for the Chinese government to attack TSMC, though as we've seen from Alibaba, Xi appears happy to "move fast and break things"). That did in fact forestall investment in a competitor until recently.

They have also been expanding outside China-Taiwan, distributing their capacity and developing support in the USA and Europe. Worst case (actual shooting war between China and Taiwan) they would have a lot to fall back on.

Hon Hai has followed the same geostrategy (to even greater extreme) with its Foxconn subsidiary.

> They have also been expanding outside China-Taiwan, distributing their capacity and developing support in the USA and Europe. Worst case (actual shooting war between China and Taiwan) they would have a lot to fall back on.

Very unlikely. In case of a shooting war, the industry will run out of consumables sooner, or later. As a fact, 90%+ of them come from the Taiwan/Japan/Korea triangle, and just any military move in the region will be effectively shutting the industry down globally.

Which basically ensures no one will start a shooting war.

> Which basically ensures no one will start a shooting war.

And seeing men thinking so again, 100 years after, only tells that Raymond Poincaré was right.

TSMC builds only 25K/month 5nm megafab in Arizona. I suspect that it's mainly for serving the US defense needs.

TSMC's GIGAFABs (> 100K/month) are used for mass manufacturing bleeding edge consumer electronics. They are still build only in Taiwan.

Another way of looking at TSMC's Arizona fab is similar FAB 68 in Dalian, which still seems to have largely been built for strategic relationship building purposes.

TSMC's plans for Arizona have been increased to start with 100k per month with future phases up to 200k [1]

[1] https://technosports.co.in/2021/03/03/tsmc-to-build-5nm-plan...

I wish TSMC decided to go with the UK. We have ARM here, RPi and others plus very talented people. Hopefully one day it will happen.

With Brexit, it won't.

> This is pretty bad for Taiwan geopolitically though... once US chipmakers have a plausible local manufacturing alternative, the US is less likely to risk WW3 by standing up to China if/when it tries to annex Taiwan.

I doubt it changes much to the demise of modern world. The industry will still go down given that you have many, many, many more things in the semiconductor supply chain that is run by some single vendor in the world from Taiwan, and that includes consumables too.

US may get a modern fab, or two, but it will still eventually run out of many know-how intensive inputs for those fabs.

> Seems like the biggest news here is Intel committing strongly to its fab business. Walling that division off from Intel's own chip design business is critical to giving it a chance to succeed. Having a third fab with competitive tech (along with TSMC and Samsung) is great for the world!

Yes and no. This is also a possible signal that Intel is getting ready to go fabless. AMD made similar moves with Globalfoundries before parting ways.

For the foreseeable future owning Fabs is fastest way to be subsidized by American tax payer.

Intel may make it modular, but Intel will still own those fabs. I do not see them spinning fabs as separate business at least for the decade of 20s.

Going fabless by building new fabs?

Intel already signalled that under their last CEO. Then they signalled something else. Now there's a "best keynote ever" with their latest signalling....

judging from all the recent moves by TSMC with a fab in AZ and opening a Japan subsidiary. i believe the TSMC leadership have the same concern as you. the latest tech is probably going to stay in Taiwan but TSMC is spreading out to reduce the risk.

This is a simplistic view that assumes every other factor and actor remains static.

we (US voters) should be pressing our government to stand up for Taiwan against ccp's bullying.

They are. The last few years have caused a fairly major change in American's attitude towards China and Taiwan. In the past the US gave Taiwan half hearted support, some tech here, old destroyers there etc. Their military was a mix of obsolete hand me downs and domestically developed solutions. But we just sold them the latest and greatest F-16 variant. Just the other day a deal was signed to share technology to help Taiwan develop modern submarines. And there's a lot more going on behind the scenes no doubt.

Trump's policies towards communist china were so bad that rex tilerson is on record as saying that at the end of his time working for trump we were farther behind with china than we were when he took office.

Biden has to repair our US hegemony. Trump sure hurt it a lot in spite of his anti-china rehtoric.

Selling weapons to taiwan doesn't contain china. We will send our own guns if a hot war is brewing there.

Taiwan recognition is not the same thing as meaningfully containing china. The TPP and asia pivot from obama was the last time that america seriously tried to restrain the rise of china.

You mean this? This is what you wanted? https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp

Parent's point was the TPP was explicitly designed to economically isolate China from its neighbors.

Trade deals are ugly.

But if your geopolitical goal is to prevent Asia from moving closer to China, you can, and we have, done worse than the TPP.

Yeah, and then Trump pulled out of TPP, and last year everyone signed this deal, including China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Comprehensive_Economi...

And people still celebrate Trump for being tough on China...

Whoop de do. Yeah the copyright stuff sucks but a hot war sucks worse. Don't lose the forest for the trees here.

I personally oppose the TPP on the intellectual property grounds et al brought up here - but its purpose to contain china is what I was highlighting.

> Selling weapons to taiwan doesn't contain china. We will send our own guns if a hot war is brewing there.

All of these states need to be strong enough to be a credible deterrent to invasion on their own.

US support is neither speedy nor certain. And a speedy capitulation by Taiwan compromises the US's ability to help even if willing.

Original step to help with manufacturing of the subs came when US brokered a deal with MHI 3 years ago. The somehow magically "retired" MHI engineers appeared in Taiwan to help in development

US does not have expertise to make modern non-nuclear subs. China can intimidate anyone in Europe not to sell. It was fortunate for Taiwan that Chinese pissed off Japan enough. Half a dozen of Soryu knockoffs can shut down PRC maritime trade if needed.

Palestine too since we're pretending to care about the small guy.

This isn't an attempt to start a debate, just saying that the U.S. won't intervene unless there's material gain, regardless of what the voters want.

Instead of worrying about Palestine, why not stop our own bullying in Central and South America, first?

Or both..

> This isn't an attempt to start a debate,

It's really more of a petrol bomb, yeah.

Realpolitik is what it is, but in this case standing up for the cause of Taiwanese freedom against (mainland) Chinese aggression aligns fairly well with the current political climate in the US. I'm willing to accidentally do the right thing if we have to.

We should also be realistic about the strategic risks of having such a heavy dependency on semiconductor fabrication that's within easy reach of the PLA. Mitigating that risk is critical, and orthogonal to resisting the PRC's aggression towards the RoC.

Taiwan is already China’s anytime they want to take it. Every time the US games it out they get crushed.

Source?

There is a cost to everything.

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