Asia beat US, EU in chip building because the West didn't invest, Intel CEO claims The COVID-19 pandemic was a decisive factor in Intel’s decision to re-emphasize its own manufacturing prowess, after decades in which US and European nations failed to recognize the importance of the semiconductor industry and allowed Taiwan and Korea to become global leaders, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger told World Economic Forum …
And why that ?
Because The West was interested in having their chips made for less, so that their margins would be better.
So yeah, COVID has taught the industry a few lessons : greed is bad and don't put all your eggs in one basket.
Now to see how long it will take to forget that . . .
Yes. I've lived in SE Asia for years, and seeing is believing.
Throwing shitloads of money at the problem now is just too little too late. Kids need to grow up and both be motivated to study a difficult major (and somehow be able to afford it). Managers needs to learn (often by making costly mistakes) what works and what doesn't, Water resources must be carefully managed to ensure both an adequate and stable supply.
I could go on and on, but El Reg readers undoubtedly understand already.
Same as the manufacturing of stuff the chips put in.
The former employees of IBM, Compaq, Digital, HP, NCR, Nat Semi, Motorola, Raytheon, Timex etc where semiconductors and products were made in Scotland can attest to the sending jobs to Asia 90’s and 00’s and the ‘lack of investment in Europe’.
Intel manufacturing is primarily only in Ireland because of the lower tax rate.
IBM Greenock
https://youtu.be/wOkiNe0-jxw?si=lnHAJnUVpVHYJECE
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Glen
Intel Ireland
https://www.intel.ie/content/www/ie/en/company-overview/intel-in-ireland.html
Certainly rigth the opinion from Intel CEO, but with some new mind shade: to designer today advance IA chips. The cuasi absolut reign from Nvidia it is real peril to convert on total industry monopoly. In these shouting competitive match only sunnyvale Co. "AMD" their had sucessfully innovation path for convert real competition to Santa Clara Co. "Nvidia". Its time to help CEO AMD, Su Lisa on that matter. !!
The West has no choice but to subsidize the manufacturing of chips since levying import duties on Taiwanese and Korean ones would result in frowns in their respective capitals and damage to our relations.
But all this outsourcing is the result of the capitalist system of striving for ever increasing profits. Apple, for example, is extremely vulnerable if China invades Taiwan since most of its manufacturing base is in the Middle-Kingdom and Taiwan supplies it with most of its high-tech SoC's. If an invasion ever becomes a reality I see Apple going under quickly and losing TRILLIONS in market value overnight. This will rock the entire U.S. tech sector to its foundations.
Depends on what you mean by short-term. Apple has been making bumper profits for 15+ years now. Apple may be in its twilight and another AI competitor may be in the wings as we speak.
The West has completely ditched TV and consumer electronics manufacturing (although we're still doing quite a lot of the design since most Chinese sweatshops are merely churning out our Reference Designs) and this hasn't made us the poorer.
In this article, there are too many personal pronouns, too much bending of history, and far too much self-aggrandizing for my liking. One can almost hear these words coming out of the orange-haired Florida man, or the space cadet who builds electric cars. e.g.---
"...We were on the hair's edge of never being able to recover the manufacturing of this industry," he said. "Had I started the rebuilding of Intel a year later, I don't think I could have accomplished it."...
Mr Gelsinger, you stated, about a year ago that Intel would be profitable by 2024.
I just checked my calendar...
Taiwan's government went "what can we do to move on from making cheap T-shirts"
They found one of those lazy immigrants that had moved to America to tek our jobs run Texas Instruments and had recently been downsized.
Offered him the job of creating a national semiconductor company - on a government salary with no share options !
He saw that they couldn't create chips, but could manufacture other people's designs
There is a great episode of the generally excellent "Acquired" podcast on Morris Chang and the founding of TSMC
A certain government decided that if it was going to plunk down taxpayer money to provide capital for an undercapitalized business then it was going to get a big chunk of equity for that money. It seemed reasonable since this is how equity is supposed to work -- you get a chunk of the company which might make you money or you might lose on. Just like normal investing, in fact, and true to the pattern some investments made money, some were useless. A great idea.
The only flaw in this is was that with a change in government the new government, which was ideologically opposed to any form of public ownership, sold off everything, often at scandalously low prices (but it was to their mates so it was probably OK). Not content with selling off equity they also charged ahead and sold off anything else they could -- utilities, transport, housing. This fire sale made a lot of money in the short term but eventually someone had to ante up -- actually, everyone had to pay up. Meanwhile there was still public investment in companies but it was of the preferred sort -- the preferred sort for private capital, of course. Its the "Give us the money and we might create some jobs or even build a facility".
Big business doesn't like competition. Typically it consolidates to two or three quasi-monolpolies and then fights like hell to make sure that no competition comes close. These day's its big enough to control government. I think it should play by the rules it advertises -- there's plenty of money out there to inflate property prices or whatever so it should be able to get money on the capital markets. Too bad it will dilute its shares in the process. That's capitalism for you.
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