* Posts by Platinum blond(e)

24 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Dec 2020

Hundreds of workers to space out from NASA's JPL amid budget black hole

Platinum blond(e)

They won't be off long

Does SpaceX have an office in Pasadena? Sure, I know they have in Hawthorne. But the commute would be awful.

Mobileye shares crash after warning of automotive customers' chip glut

Platinum blond(e)

Interesting math

Hm, they shipped ~37M units in 2023 and had a loss of ~$36M? And that's a good year???

Broadcom to divest VMware's end-user computing and Carbon Black units

Platinum blond(e)

The classic sausage game

The thing to remember about AVGO is, their playbook has been the same through each and every acquisition. Target an entity who's dominant in a slowing market. Keep the groups with biggest profits and discard the rest. Jack up the prices while continually shaving heads to meet the AVGO margin requirements. In this way, squeeze every drop out of the acquisition as it slowly dies on the vine (looses customers and talent/employees). Line up the next target as soon as the last acquisition closes. Lather, rinse, repeat to generate buzz and keep fueling the margins and prop up the stock price.

For those employees retained, AVGO dangles lots of RSUs. But the remaining heads will have to work harder and harder to cash those in. That works for many but not for all. For the other employees, AVGO provides reasons to consider moving on. Like currently for the VMW folks, get them upset about RTO.

AVGO have done this for every acquisition. Why fix what ain't broke? And WallSt likes good margins, they dont look too closely how it gets done as long as it gets done.

Source: I worked for an outfit before it was pulled into this meat grinder. Heard from many what it was like to be cast off. And retained.

Elon Musk finally finds 'someone foolish enough to take the job' of Twitter CEO

Platinum blond(e)

All cash, 100% up front deal for her, is the only thing that makes sense to me. $100M for up to 1 year of service. Nonrefundable. Maybe with a free ride to the ISS thrown in.

If she's as good as her reputation, that's the sort of deal she got.

Because she will be made a scapegoat and she knows it.

BOFH takes a visit to retro computing land

Platinum blond(e)

SoS was also very rad-hard.

The company i worked for out of college had a SoS line. It never yielded better than 0.5% though....

Oh the halcyon days of misspent government funding!

The US would sooner see TSMC fabs burn than let China have them

Platinum blond(e)

Re: Foresight

Wait, don't uproot the Taiwanese. Just make Taiwan the US' 51st state!* Hey if it works for Hawaii, why not?

*: ¡Lo siento, Puerto Rico! You'll have to wait. Again.

Semiconductor industry: To Hell with the environment, start building fabs already

Platinum blond(e)

Re: Short cuts are bad

Immediately i was wondering if a minor league ballpark was erected on the site, after cleanup.

Scientists pull hydrogen from thin air in promising clean energy move

Platinum blond(e)

Re: Just wondering

And yet, there's i15 galloping across that desert expanse already. How did our forebears manage it?

Trees may help power your next electric car

Platinum blond(e)

Yes as noted Stora Enso has oodles of lignin from their pulp and paper making processes. So this is finding a use for a byproduct. BTW they have many mills and pulp plantations around the world. If this works out there could be many others to source the lignin from, too.

Source: bro, relatives and many friends work(ed) at Stora Enso plants in central Wisconsin.

VMware president sees some 'anxiety' at customers who've seen Broadcom at work

Platinum blond(e)

Re: Good old Broadcom

That was under the original Broadcom. The wolf in sheep's clothing that is AVGO is much more intent on feeding its meat grinder. Good for shareholders I guess. But not good for anyone else.

Intel to sell Massachusetts R&D site, once home to its only New England fab

Platinum blond(e)

Another End of an Era moment

Sorry to hear this, DEC were formidable.

I hope there are no contamination issues with the former fab site....

Intel to get $7.3b for Germany fab site as TSMC dismisses Europe plans

Platinum blond(e)

Re: Long range vs smash n grab

Fair point! May we explore this a moment more?

If TSMC chose to build fabs in Europe, the Community would be even more interested in Taiwan's security at least until those fabs and required supply chains are producing products there. This could be 3 to 5 years, more if the supply chains depend on TSMC's expertise. So they could have increased protection (if you can call it that) and some subsidies to help.

If Taiwan were seriously concerned about an imminent threat, it seems to me they would work a deal. They aren't making the short term play.

This could be an early bluff while all await the river card. But I still think they're playing a longer game.

Platinum blond(e)

Re: Long range vs smash n grab

Thumbs down without reply/rebuttal dont mean much to me. <shrug>

Platinum blond(e)

Long range vs smash n grab

TSMC's comments suggest they have the long view firmly in their sights. No supply chains in Europe which meet their needs *, and no big consumers (e.g., contract manufacturing houses) of the parts they ship. So even if they set up shop it would take many billions of euros more to keep from shipping the products halfway around the word to make finished goods. And then ship them back to end consumers. So with higher European labor costs to make things, and shipping stuff to and fro, this model is unsustainable once the subsidies run out.

Intel OTOH is selling the Field of Dreams story, both to Europe and the USA. And quite likely to themselves.

*: with the exception of ASML of course.

Western Digital open to spinning out flash, hard disk businesses

Platinum blond(e)

Think you nailed it. Then after the scraps of this deal are rooted through, repeat with Seagate. The end of hard disk drives quickly follows. * **

*: except for cold (storage) niches I guess.

**: I know many fine engineers who have spent most/all their careers at one or another of these firms.

Taiwan bans exports of chips faster than 25MHz to Russia, Belarus

Platinum blond(e)

Broadcom uses TSMC primarily for their current chip fabrication. The Singapore facilities are mostly for packaging.

Plus, Broadcom moved their HQ to the US to grease the skids on their takeover of... Broadcom IIRC. So they are already required to adhere to any US sanctions.

Broadcom to buy VMware 'on Thursday for $60 billion'

Platinum blond(e)

AVGO 's plabook: grab and squeeze

Reposted from yesterday's note on the topic:

Avago's playbook:grab and squeeze

Broadcom has now a pretty long track record in both SW and HW acquisitions. Always plays the same: reduce staff, pressure clients with exclusive contracts, raise prices; all to hit their target margins. Repeat with next acquisition as the prior carcass is squeezed dry.

This is good for shareholders and senior execs obviously. Bad for everyone else. Even the remaining staff: I cant imagine those RSUs can somehow pay for a decent work/life balance.

VMWare's many customers should/will raise strong concerns and the ruling bodies worldwide would likely give such an acquisition the electron microscope treatment as a result.

This requires a new popcorn machine.

ETA: the squeezing doesn't stop when the deal is done. It is constant and continuous. Staff can expect multiple waves of reductions. Best of luck to all.

Broadcom in talks to buy VMware: multiple reports

Platinum blond(e)

Avago's playbook:grab and squeeze

Broadcom has now a pretty long track record in both SW and HW acquisitions. Always plays the same: reduce staff, pressure clients with exclusive contracts, raise prices; all to hit their target margins. Repeat with next acquisition as the prior carcass is squeezed dry.

This is good for shareholders and senior execs obviously. Bad for everyone else. Even the remaining staff: I cant imagine those RSUs can somehow pay for a decent work/life balance.

VMWare's many customers should/will raise strong concerns and the ruling bodies worldwide would likely give such an acquisition the electron microscope treatment as a result.

This requires a new popcorn machine.

Boeing's Starliner CST-100 on its way to the ISS 2 years late

Platinum blond(e)

Re: Rushing it, much?

After such a severe failure, I think I'd want more than one good test before I put the monkeys in the tin can.

^^^^^^^^^^ This!

Growing US chip output an 'expensive exercise in futility', warns TSMC founder

Platinum blond(e)

Chang would say that-and he's right!

Certainly, Morris Chang may be viewed as having vested interests to protect with these remarks. Even I believe that.

But that doesnt mean his assertions are wrong. If anyone in the world knows how difficult it is to staff, fit out, and run leading edge fabs, it's him. I'm pretty sure he has hundreds if not thousands of tales he could tell of hard won learning at the school of hard knocks. Stuff rarely mentioned in academia (though perhaps hinted at for awhile in Harvard Business' Ad Prac back in the day). Stuff that is considered 'secret sauce' and will never be described in patents or papers, for example.

Similarly, much can be learned in schools to start a young Engineer on the desired path. And there will be some brilliant minds devising new methods. But the physical details need a lot of hands-on work to get the part right every time and thus robust. This type of expertise is expensive to gain, along any metric one wishes to measure.

From the 60s thru the 00s, American firms have shown they couldn't find the value of these practical lessons, and divested themselves of nearly all the stateside fabs they had. Since then American firms have not stood up new fabs unless there are government funds and government goading to do so. The firms still do not see this value if it's standing by itself.

I predict (again) that American fabs will wither away once the government funds dry up. And the funds will dry up because Congress critters dont have much longer vision than the quarterly-profit driven champions of industry.

Intel boss presses Congress for manufacturing subsidies

Platinum blond(e)

When the Feds bailed out the Big Three automakers, they took stock IIRC. And also IIRC the stock was sold shortly after and the funds were repaid in this manner. It worked then, why not now?

And as far as long term, I predict that US businesses will once again allow the manufacturing to move to wherever is cheapest just like they did since the 50s. Yes kids, going back to the middle of last century. Same as it ever has been in industry, of course.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

AMD to Intel: Take our GPU talent? Two can play that game

Platinum blond(e)
Joke

Re: Intel Graphics....

When we have weaned ourselves from gas or heating oil, we will wish we had these!

Northrop Grumman throws hat in the ring to design NASA's next-gen Lunar Terrain Vehicle

Platinum blond(e)
Coat

21st century problem now

How soon before Uber and Lyft place ads for drivers to man the existing rovers and provide ETAs to the new lunar landing sites? Transport to rover sites provided by SpaceX.

Note: The autonomous rovers will likely beat the drivers to the rendezvous site(s).

AMD, Arm, non-Intel servers soar as overall market stalls

Platinum blond(e)

Sales calls are the thing

My take is that selling big iron to classic enterprise customers is usually done in person, with plenty of wining and dining to help grease the skids/seal the deal. This might help explain downtrend in that class of machine. Meanwhile, cloud builders are already marching to their own Cadence, and enterprise-class schmoozing has much less effect. Will the gallery please correct me if I'm wrong?