TSMC's US builds won't make America great at chips again, says Gelsinger
theregister.com
theregister.com
In many cases you have an idea and it take 2-3 weeks to determine if it made any difference, and the feedback loop just gets slower after that. The steps in EUV requires some extreme engineering, and it is that core engineering talent you want to develop. The fabs are complicated, but the recipe is the key.
(Note I worked at Intel in the 90s, funny enough in Pat's group)
> "If you don't have R&D in the US, you will not have semiconductor leadership in the US," Gelsinger said, according to a report this week in the Financial Times.
When I worked with machine engineering there was this gloomy prospect of all these "lifers" who would reach retirement age some day and be replaced by an consultants burning out every 6 months.
Also, the President is not a King, so just because people voted for him it doesn't mean opposition ceases to exist. Opposition and push-back to executive policy been a mainstay of US politics. It's been true of Democratic Presidents (e.g., federal courts blocking Biden's policies), and it remains true of the current President.
If you look at the approval rating for democrats and republicans, as reported by CNN this week, that disagrees with you. People who voted for Trump seem to be happy with what he's doing.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil...
Any alterations that overrule the will of the majority, makes it not a democracy anymore, and you don't want that since that opens a can of worms that can always be used to also override your decision next time.
Which is why the world is never going to view or deal with the US the same way they did before. The current administration and its actions represent the will of the American people; represents their world view, their desires.
Learn history :)
I think most European countries cut down too much on the defence after the Cold War, but it seems we are about to fix that. But it’s not like the US gave away fighter jets and other weapon systems for free. Several European countries spent lots of money buying US planes and other stuff.
Luckily!
> And Europe has an obligation to spend on its own defense
Yes, since the US wants to pivot to Asia. That's fairly recent on the timescale :)
> which they have not fulfilled in some time
Did you know the US, unlike the others, includes pensions as "military spending"? But yeah, now ... They will raise it to the required 2 % (which a lot already do)
It's bizarre and frankly racist to think that that illustrates some immutable property of Germany and Japan rather than forces that can materialize in any country.
I don’t consider it to be at all likely to happen, but there’s a much better chance of Germany going to war against the world than there is for virtually every other country. Feel free to ignore history, I’m not going to.
I've met some lovely, kind, and outward looking people in my time here, but I'd have to be as blind as a bat to miss the dark undertones running through society. If the Americans didn't have their bases here I think we'd be back to a pre end of WW2 Japan quite quickly.
Sounds like you want a completely isolationist trade policy. How has that worked out for the US in the past? The only way to never pay another country to arm themselves against us or any other country is to never give them money, and unless we force them at gunpoint to give us what we want that is not going to happen.
> "we pay for the defense of people who won't pay to defend themselves"
The EU doesn't spend 0% on defense. Many of them are NATO members who are increasing their spending and who have demonstrated that they'll follow us into war after we are attacked (Afghanistan as an example). The US gets far more in soft power/geopolitical benefits out of our European allies and NATO members than we put in.
No. You made this up.
>The EU doesn't spend 0% on defense.
They don't spend their full NATO commitments. And they are only increasing their spending because the current POTUS is bullying them into it.
>soft power/geopolitical benefits
People love talking about this but hard power is better.
Some do and some don’t. EU is not one country. But in general it’s a bit strange that we didn’t start increase spending already around 2014.
If a good chunk of the world turns against the US, such that they refuse to consume our goods and services, then Americans will not be able to continue to enjoy their current standard of living.
This is why "soft power" matters, and it's why would-be contenders such as China have invested as heavily as they have in building up their soft power in LatAm, Africa, and elsewhere.
So yes, enjoy your "hard power," but you'll probably be poor.
China is plenty capable of competing with us in a high-intensity conflict, especially regionally, but also in space, and they can even hurt us in the home front, if we're being perfectly honest.
Sure, the US might ultimately "prevail" such a conflict, but it's not a conflict US war planners or anybody with a clear picture of the situation is in any hurry to jump into.
You should pray that such a war never comes to pass, because it won't be pretty for any side, and has the potential to be especially dicey for the US if domestic politics are as inflamed as they are today.
Did something change? Nearly all of the EU allies in NATO were expected to hit the 2% commitment last year.
And then there's countries like Poland that spend more than the US as a percentage of GDP.
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/6/pd...
> No. You made this up.
Okay - then square the circle for me. How do we buy things that China makes and be 100% sure none of that money goes to buying weapons to be used against us? Extend that to every business we deal with outside the US. The only way to get to the point where we're not know for sure that we no longer "pay for people to arm themselves against us" is to never trade with them.
And when unwanted war became possble in EU came USA ended up allying itself with Russia while trying to extort the victim country for minerals. It did helped initially, but it did not lasted and USA turned into a bully.
All the while threatening annexation of parts of EU and Canada.
Regular reminder that Germany has given Russia more money (for gas) than they have given to protect Ukraine.
Russia expansion is threatening Europe, not just Ukraine. You know it, I know it. And USA is about to help them.
Ukraine was stupid to give up nukes, they should never trust promises about help in case of attack. They should keep the atomic bombs, but it is too late for that.
Yes, we may not be able to out-compete TSMC in 2025, but I feel good about our 2045 and 2065 competitiveness.
Despite that he’s not entirely wrong but he’s also not saying anything that’s of practical use.
True semiconductor R&D won’t return to the US without investment in educating people in semiconductor technologies in US graduate schools. Funding for this type of research has mostly gone into more esoteric materials and processes and hence many people who emerge from these programs are a poor fit for modern industrial semiconductor manufacturing tech. Countries like Singapore and Taiwan do a much better job giving their graduate students a more practical education that better prepares them for industry. In a sense US is too academic and not vocational enough (I see this across the board in HW).
The fact is that advanced nodes being produced in the US is a gigantic step in the right direction.
Decades of commodity HW and SW dominance have gutted the talent base for HW tech development in the US. It’s going to take a decade and smart US government policy (not the Chips act) at least to recover to where we can even begin to have this kind of R&D again in the US.
If Intel had failed, the fabs would have shut down, not been spun off. Intel's fabs are the primary reason Intel has poor financials - continually running on a loss. Intel's Product division makes a profit - always has - and can survive.
The Bailout is all about propping the fabs, not the products. Letting Intel fail really does equate to losing semiconductor capability in the US. There's no other US company that comes even close to Intel's fabs.
The market is harsh to Intel - it's essentially saying "There's no room for number 2"
A break up would force them to get their act together as a commercial fab.
The fabs are substantial capital and would have been spun out in the same way IBM spun out their fabs into Global Foundry. Someone with knowledge of how can turn these things profitable.
The bailout props up a failing mismanaged entity and encourages its moribund status quo.
Moreover the US taxpayer shouldn’t foot the bill for Intel’s mismanagement.
The era of x86 dominating compute is clearly over and hence your last point is anachronistic.
"Gelsinger added on the CHIPS Act: "Supply chains move because they're advantaged. So in that sense, I see chips [making], plus some of the economic inducements, as being a formula that I fully agree with looking forward. But we can't go backward on what we put in place for the CHIPS Act. We need to continue to restore manufacturing. We need long-term research and development." (https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/tech-companies/former-i...)
It is against their interests to outsource too much or outsource cutting-edge nodes. This is exactly what we see.
The recent Arizona fab is N4 which is just N5 with some refinements. N5 was sampling iPhone chips in 2019 and N4P has been available since 2020-2021. That's a half-decade ago.
N3 started up in 2022, but won't be in the US until 2028 some 6 years later. By 2028, TSMC plans their Taiwanese factories to have produced 2nm, 1.6nm, 1.4nm, and 1nm.
If the US wants cutting edge chip manufacturing, it 100% is NOT coming from TSMC.
I do agree that more fabs in the US is better than fewer though.