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How much more expensive would it be to build chips in your own country? I would think that early in the lifetime of a new CPU/GPU, the manufacturing cost is a

• Tuna-Fish 8y ago
  The cost of a top-of-the line fab has nearly doubled every generation, with TSMC now estimating that a single 3nm fab costs ~$20B to build. The manufacturing costs of a single CPU are small once you already have a working fab, but the fabs are now the most expensive factories ever built.
  • cabalamat 8y ago
    > a single 3nm fab costs ~$20B to build Then counties -- or groups of countries -- that can't or won't fork out $20bn are going to effectively lose their independence.
    • WJW 8y ago
      It could be argued that true independence on a nation-state level has been impossible for most countries ever since a small group of larger countries started building nuclear weapons and ICBMs.
      • tempodox 8y ago
        Still, I'd expect the scales to be vastly different. Computer chips are getting ever more pervasive, while not every household / office / factory has nuclear weapons and ICBMs.
      • cryptonector 8y ago
        Nukes have nothing to do with the independence of nuke-free countries. It's not like either any of the nuclear club countries can threaten, say, Chile, with nuclear attack if they don't do whatever it is they want. Limited-scale nuclear war would still be a disaster in many ways (political, ecological, economic, cultural, risk of becoming a wider nuclear war, ...), so it can't happen. Small countries lose independence mainly by having to participate in the larger trade and global economy: others, especially bigger countries, have enormous leverage. Pick a small country, any small country outside the nuclear club. It will be a lot easier to force that country to do something it'd rather not using economic threats, or at most the threat of conventional warfare, than threatening nuclear attack.
        • coldtea 8y ago
          >Nukes have nothing to do with the independence of nuke-free countries. It's not like either any of the nuclear club countries can threaten, say, Chile, with nuclear attack if they don't do whatever it is they want. No, but it's the opposite. The countries not having nukes can be easily pushed aside and be invaded (like Iraq, Libya, and so on) in ways countries with nukes cannot.
          • cryptonector 8y ago
            Maybe. You need a big nuclear arsenal and credible delivery vehicles. A few nukes is not enough, as NK is finding out -- a few nukes just makes you a bigger target. A few ICBMs with a few nukes is not enough because we have missile defense. For nukes to buy you independence you need lots of them, lots of ICBMs/SLBMs, and if you don't have quite enough then you need some allies who have many more. NK doesn't really have allies. Russia won't be defending them. China likes to use NK as a bargaining chip, but they won't again go to war over it.
            • mschuster91 8y ago
              > A few nukes is not enough, as NK is finding out They are enough. With showing to the world "we can blow shit up if we want, especially the very near South Korea", they have the leverage to do whatever the f..k they want. If the US (or other Western countries) attempt to repeat Iraq/Libya, they'll blow up Seoul. Basically, they liberated themselves from any kind of pressure from the USA. That, in turn, allowed NK to actually think about meaningful peace talks with South Korea. Of course, the US will still participate in the talks, but with a lot less leverage over NK - so NK will not feel coerced by the US. (Of course, SK will feel coerced a bit more, but at least in terms of nuclear weapons they're still on the upper edge given the US-SK alliance) At least, that's what I hope: that both countries find a way back together (or at the very least, a durable peaceful coexistence), and that the NK civilian population will no longer be suffering for their leadership.
              • cryptonector 8y ago
    • Tuna-Fish 8y ago
      It's only $20B for the next one. It's probably going to be double that for the one after that. High end chip manufacturing has been consolidating since it started, and this is the reason. There will be a time when only one company in the world can afford to have the very best fab, against which the others can then no longer compete.
  • Zigurd 8y ago
    Not only that, it costs many years and billions more to build the cadre of expertise it takes to run the fab at more than zero yield, and you also need billions more invested in making huge silicon monocrystals and incredibly pure chemicals. Chips are a strategic technology, though parts of that ecosystem have become more of a commodity, it's still not the sort of thing where Russia, say, could build more than a few trailing edge chips.
  • shubb 8y ago
    A lot of that technology is secret and needs to be developed in house, or with closely partnered companies. So a big part of that cost is the r&d needed to keep current. In any given generation, one fab will have the best tech, and another the second best, and all the other fabs have compete on price at a tiny margin or just sit that generation out and make cheap chips with thier existing machines while hoping to catch the next wave. That means it's an industry got the deep pockets. You need to be able to take a huge loss and keep investing to stay in the game. So it's basically Intel, and sovereign wealth funds teamed up with interventionist states like Singapore and Taiwan ... The US and other western countries had and lost this industry because of free market idealism.
• mankash666 8y ago
  It (apparently) takes one rogue employee to enable this. How's the country going to offer deterrence, against lone bad apples?