4 ms·

Brief History of Semiconductors: How the US Cut Costs and Lost the Leading Edge

15 points by simonpure 6y ago

sharemywin 6y ago
So, the public should subsidize capitalism? So, the government/public should rent the land, plant the trees, water them, pick the apples, put them in bushels so the capitalist can paint the bushels, sell them at basically a guaranteed profit back to the government and the public and complain about their taxes? And don't get me wrong if your a bushel artist or a capitalist its a pretty good gig.
- pixl97 6y ago
  Welcome to game theory. If one country subsidizes their capitalism, then all countries that want to compete at a level playing field, unless they have a significant advantage in some area, will also need to subsidize.
  - missedthecue 6y ago
    Or you could just let foreign taxpayers fund a higher standard of living for yourself
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > So, the public should subsidize capitalism? That's where TSMC came from. Probably SMIC too.
DisjointedHunt 6y ago
Well, the premise of the entire article is on questionable grounds. Stratechery had a good write up on a few angles, but there's more: https://stratechery.com/2021/intel-problems/ https://stratechery.com/2021/intel-problems/ tl;dr on the above link: Willingness to work on mobile chips (We all know how that played out), Server leadership and Manufacturing. There is more than one angle to the "decline" of the semiconductor industry though - The composition of the American companies with the leading technology shifted from heavy on engineering and research to one of . .well, something else. There's plenty of commentary and tribal knowledge available online about walking into Intel HQ for interviews in this day and seeing the culture of sheer incompetence on display. They are a H1-B shop. - While TSMC has invested in R&D, Intel has laid off hundreds in their R&D departments and over the past three years has spent AT LEAST $10 Billion per year on stock buybacks: https://www.intc.com/stock-info/dividends-and-buybacks https://www.intc.com/stock-info/dividends-and-buybacks - Last year, when they were wayy behind on their latest promise to the server market and facing a rising competitor in AMD, guess what they did . . $12 Billion in buybacks. It's a joke. This isn't a question of "Cost cutting" being the focal root cause, that's a symptom. The bigger issue is that companies are good as the intelligence of their decision makers and culture that enables innovation. In Intel today, imo, the intelligence of their key decision makers isn't in their core business and neither do they indicate leaning on people with that expertise from the looks of their public comments. The culture, i'm not going to comment on, there's enough chatter and anecdotes floating around for that.

15 points by simonpure 6y ago

So, the public should subsidize capitalism? So, the government/public should rent the land, plant the trees, water them, pick the apples, put them in bushels so the capitalist can paint the bushels, sell them at basically a guaranteed profit back to the government and the public and complain about their taxes? And don't get me wrong if your a bushel artist or a capitalist its a pretty good gig.

pixl97 6y ago
Welcome to game theory. If one country subsidizes their capitalism, then all countries that want to compete at a level playing field, unless they have a significant advantage in some area, will also need to subsidize.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  Or you could just let foreign taxpayers fund a higher standard of living for yourself
redis_mlc 6y ago
> So, the public should subsidize capitalism? That's where TSMC came from. Probably SMIC too.

DisjointedHunt 6y ago

Well, the premise of the entire article is on questionable grounds. Stratechery had a good write up on a few angles, but there's more: https://stratechery.com/2021/intel-problems/ https://stratechery.com/2021/intel-problems/ tl;dr on the above link: Willingness to work on mobile chips (We all know how that played out), Server leadership and Manufacturing. There is more than one angle to the "decline" of the semiconductor industry though - The composition of the American companies with the leading technology shifted from heavy on engineering and research to one of . .well, something else. There's plenty of commentary and tribal knowledge available online about walking into Intel HQ for interviews in this day and seeing the culture of sheer incompetence on display. They are a H1-B shop. - While TSMC has invested in R&D, Intel has laid off hundreds in their R&D departments and over the past three years has spent AT LEAST $10 Billion per year on stock buybacks: https://www.intc.com/stock-info/dividends-and-buybacks https://www.intc.com/stock-info/dividends-and-buybacks - Last year, when they were wayy behind on their latest promise to the server market and facing a rising competitor in AMD, guess what they did . . $12 Billion in buybacks. It's a joke. This isn't a question of "Cost cutting" being the focal root cause, that's a symptom. The bigger issue is that companies are good as the intelligence of their decision makers and culture that enables innovation. In Intel today, imo, the intelligence of their key decision makers isn't in their core business and neither do they indicate leaning on people with that expertise from the looks of their public comments. The culture, i'm not going to comment on, there's enough chatter and anecdotes floating around for that.