back to article Here's why prolonged Russia-Ukraine war would be really bad for us, say chip designers

While the top chip and hardware makers may have moved to minimize the impact of Russia's war against Ukraine on their operations, smaller companies are mapping out their worse-case scenarios arising from a prolonged conflict. These suppliers fear they will be rocked by shortages of raw materials, further supply-chain …

  1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "if a chip was stolen or illegally shipped to the Soviet Union, it was very visible"

    And, in the very next sentence, we learn that the Soviets cloned Intel's 8080.

    So visibility is not really a problem, then ?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "if a chip was stolen or illegally shipped to the Soviet Union, it was very visible"

      As was pointed out by James Bond earning the Order of Lenin; where would the Soviet Union be without Silicon Valley?!

      1. David 132 Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: "if a chip was stolen or illegally shipped to the Soviet Union, it was very visible"

        Yeah at that time the Soviets were Walken all over us...

    2. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Confused

      How do you mean?

      C.

      1. TimMaher Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Confused

        Maybe it was a reference to Christopher Walken?

    3. martinusher Silver badge

      Re: "if a chip was stolen or illegally shipped to the Soviet Union, it was very visible"

      A chip like the 8080 is a part you can take the top off, manually read the circuit and replicate it. (seriously, people used to do it -- not for the 8080 but for parts like the 8272)

      I wouldn't try that with a modern part. The geometry's too fine to read and the part's too complicated. You wouldn't bother, anyway. You design a functional equivalent, its much easier.

      The most critical technology isn't processors, anyway. Its FPGAs.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Any war the Ukrainians lose is also the end of Western companies doing business in the physical Ukraine, isn't it?

    Prolonged war or otherwise.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Stop the war!" (Um, which one of them?)

    I haven't heard the stumpy gray-coloured quadruped in the immediate vicinity mentioned directly yet.

    Russia invades neighbouring country because there are Russians there and paternalism and that country was always part of Russia anyway. Hello, China - Taiwan - why heck they even speak the same language also!

    You're worried for TSMC? 'Worried'?!? You're not using the right words.

    Do you think Xi (who has no term limits) just might _not_ be inspired by Putin (who has no term limits)? Hmm, rather, that Putin lost the "who goes first" rock-paper-scissors.

    Germany only now figured out that nothing but the word 'No' will work. Heck, the Swedes, Swiss, Finns are revising their vocabulary!

    If you are only thinking about how to get the Russians to back down, you are not thinking ambitiously enough. It's not just "stop the war", but how to preempt the other war.

  4. a_yank_lurker

    Risks

    When a company places important functions in a country outside of its home country the managlement makes key parts of the company vulnerable to international affairs. While a US or EU company placing key functions within those countries has relatively low risk of disruption because of a war, placing key functions in semi-hostile country or fairly unstable country puts the company at serious risk when things go sideways. Corsair complaining they cannot work with their Russian office deserves the world's smallest violin.

    The issue of raw materials will to some extent be problematic as the geographic distribution of some ores is highly localized to only a few places. I was surprised about the need for Palladium for chip manufacture but that is more about I am not overly familiar with all that is required.

    1. David 132 Silver badge

      Re: Risks

      >Corsair complaining they cannot work with their Russian office deserves the world's smallest violin.

      Actually, Corsair have said that their R&D office is in Ukraine, not Russia. The paragraph in question could perhaps be worded more clearly, it's easy to mis-read it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Risks

        >Corsair Gaming, which sells PC gaming hardware and systems,

        Gee, what will the teenagers do now?

        1. A.P. Veening Silver badge

          Re: Risks

          Gee, what will the teenagers do now?

          Judging by the news, Ukrainian teenagers will enlist/play first person shooters irl.

    2. martinusher Silver badge

      Re: Risks

      Not all skillsets are available in one country these days. Tesla's motor designers, for example, live in Greece (AFAIK). Battery makers are in China. This is what was meant when we signed up for Globalization.

      The problem isn't the bogeymen we've been told to hate, Putin and Xi. The problem started when politicians, having encouraged Globalization when it favored the US, decided to try to control the flow of commerce, work and information to suit their constituency (which is rarely "We, the People"). They did this by unleashing economic warfare on other countries, often using very tenuous pretexts that are chosen more because of how they sell to the often gullible public than for sound long term reasons. This results in a climate where we pick on some countries for often relatively minor reasons but tolerate other countries for being the same or (often) much worse. This artificial Cold War climate then ratchets up tensions which gives an excuse for the arms vendors and the like to move in.

      Looked at rationally, we (the US) are causing the problems because we are troubled by threats to our global hegemony, threats that we blame on external actors rather on decades of bad internal and foreign policy. We're like the kid that's forever provoking the dog behind the fence who acts all innocent when the dog gets loose and chases him. (Of course, these days its never the kids' (or his/her) parents' fault.) We ddin't have to do this. Yes, I think Russia's moves were unwise and unnecessary, war is never the answer, but just going around calling Putin a madman, Hitler or whatever completely whitewashes our culpability in this matter. Make no mistake -- we've got 'form' (to use that UK expression), we can be traced to all sorts of underhand dealings and coups over the last 70 years or more. This might not be general knowledge here but the rest of the world is listening and watching and a lot of it isn't convinced we're the good guys any more.

      1. werdsmith Silver badge

        Re: Risks

        The problem started when politicians, having encouraged Globalization when it favored the US, decided to try to control the flow of commerce, work and information to suit their constituency (which is rarely "We, the People"). They did this by unleashing economic warfare on other countries, often using very tenuous pretexts that are chosen more because of how they sell to the often gullible public than for sound long term reasons

        This is just empire, in a modern evolved form.

  5. This post has been deleted by its author

  6. Piro

    Unless you sell them to..

    .. Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and so on.

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