With its Ohio fab under way, Intel's next challenge: Keeping its promises As Intel breaks ground on its Columbus, Ohio mega fab, the company’s Foundry Services (IFS) President Randhir Thakur’s biggest concerns have less to do with finding workers to build and run the fabs and more to do with keeping the chipmaker’s technology roadmap on track and the cost of manufacturing chips in check. Speaking …
The chipmaker not only needs to find nearly 10,000 workers, it has to deliver a competitive product NONSENSE
The Chipmaker only needs to build an empty building that it can rent to others. THE FOXCONN JOB WAY.... Foxconn never built a single LCD panel. FOXCONN was going to bring 15,000 jobs to Wisconsin...What did they deliver? Rental Property!
Two of the largest FOXCONN buildings it built are now fully rented to other businesses. Thanks to Federal Tax Credits, and local tax incentives, these rental properties are essentially Free to FOXCONN and the rental buildings pay no property taxes or State Income Taxes. This is better than Section 8 real estate. Such a big thing... Trump was at the FOXCONN groundbreaking ceremony...
The Chips Bill and this Clown Technology bill will not produce a single chip fab. It has already been determined that Chip Fabbed in Murica will cost 300% more than chip fab from Taiwan. But the best part is why build in the RUST BELT? INCENTIVES. FOXCONN built in Wisconsin and Intel in Ohio. Why Ohio? The Automotive industry wants 200nm chips... and BEST OF ALL NAFTA requires 60% of all hardware be built in North Murica... This was the TRUMP PELOSI NAFTA2 USymca... treaty... It is a protectionist scheme for inferior UNION MADE US AUTOS. to soak the Amerian Taxpayer and Automotive consumer.
Truly pathetic... BTW Mexico now wants some Fab plants.
Not just in 'murka -- how many failed "will deliver 'x' jobs' initiatives has the UK been through?
Its what you get if you run a company by the numbers -- just by the numbers. The actual product is just a tool to generate cashflow with the real action being hiding profits, minimizing tax liabilities and maximizing tax credits. Its not good for business but it's the system and it makes those profits.
Intel does have at least one fab in the US, my daughter lives near it. Its undergoing some expansion at the moment but one of the problems with working there is that you just don't know if and when the plant will be reduced, sold off or even shuttered. I believe it primarily makes Flash memories.
I, for one, am glad to see Intel expand its manufacturing in the US. While the company is way too quick squeeze money out of governments or underpaid employees (I'm a former engineer there), the fab managers and engineers are data- focused do have a good focus on basic science, manufacturing and engineering. I wish the expansion goes smoothly. The company was lead by a bean counter for long enough to lose its main focus. We should all be thankful that AMD has a great chip design and that TSMC can make them. However competition is good for all of us and fabs outside of Taiwan are critical.
The process node names nowadays are symbolic rather than literal anyway. So while much hay is made of Intel finally doing 10nm while tsmc is on 5nm, the proof is in the chip performance per watt. Tsmc marginally has the edge for now but hopefully that lead will be challenged and it will be for the benefit of us all.
Build plant, extract subsidies from government; delay opening until the news calms down and then transfer the equipment to a much cheaper location to operate.
This was exactly the fate of MG Rover in the late 90's when a whole bunch of new machine tooling were shipped off to operate in China instead.
I'd mostly like to be proven wrong on this because there are warfighting and economic security reasons to have this capability within friendly borders.
You can't "win" against China just as they can't "lose". The analog of this situation is a sports league. Everyone is familiar with, for example, Manchester United. Big, powerful, successful, a global brand that's used to being at the top of everything. Some global fans may know of their crosstown rivals, City, that have always been a bit of an underdog. A few years investment in players and facilities have turned the tables, though -- City's now on top and United is looking a bit tattered and tawdry. The takeaway is that you're only on top for as long as you work hard to stay there.
The situation with China is similar. We have squandered our position over decades by assuming that because we invented the game we have the right to make all the rules. We don't need to invest in new facilities and developing players, we can simply use our accumulated resources to poach what we need and change the game's rules to our advantage when we feel threatened. The problem with that approach is that the smaller players will put up with it while they're dependent on the gate revenues but as soon as they're big enough they'll start playing their own game -- and if they play fair then they'll drag all the other teams off with them.
We need to rebuild our team. We've passed the point where fiddling the rules is going to work. I -- and others -- have been pointing out this problem for years but like any other problem (e.g. climate change) its always been easier to kick that can down the road, squeeze a bit more profit and put off doing anything about it. We've now run out of road. (...and the Chinese 7nm process should bring this home to us, along with planetary rovers, space stations -- you name it, how big do the signs need to be for us to read them?).
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
