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Modern semiconductors were invented in America, literally why we call it Silicon Valley. We used to have the best fabs in the world but 80's and 90's corporate

Modern semiconductors were invented in America, literally why we call it Silicon Valley. We used to have the best fabs in the world but 80's and 90's corporate American business culture decided it was better to shut down all that manufacturing and move it overseas for more short-term profit. They're now coming to the hard realization that maybe that was a massive mistake.

Gibbon1 6y ago
20 years ago I had the line, American businessman and political leaders are stupid. Because they think they own those factories in China and the far east.
cbozeman 6y ago
> but 80's and 90's corporate American business culture decided it was better to shut down all that manufacturing and move it overseas for more short-term profit This is a very non-confrontational way to say, "Greedy ass Boomers who were given practically everything by the events surrounding the end of World War II - manufacturing destroyed across all of Europe, Asiatic nations still mostly third-world places, second world at best, managed to fuck up so badly due to greed and incompetence while growing up in a world with, literally, no competition, sold their children and their grandchildren down the river so they wouldn't have to be even slightly uncomfortable in retirement, unlike their parents." This just furthers my belief that if you couldn't make an above-average life for yourself as a Boomer, you were just a pathetic fuck-up who would have probably starved to death 100-200 years ago.
iopq 6y ago
Huh? Samsung and TSMC are home-grown in their respective countries and Intel still makes chips. Together, they make the majority of the world's chips.
rcxdude 6y ago
The story is not anywhere near that straightforward for semiconduction fabrication. A huge portion of that fabrication, for example, just moved out of california to other places in the US. Also there's been a general consolodation of fabrication plants over time as more and more advanced nodes put the price of a plant up by orders of magnitudes. There just isn't enough money for the same number of fabs at the bleeding edge. Also, intel are still US based manufacturing and they have only quite recently been toppled from the throne of most advanced process. They have simply lost to the advancement of overseas tech companies (generally it seems because they made a bad bet on their strategy for further shrinks to their process), nothing to do with US companies outsourcing overseas.
- sfifs 6y ago
  > There just isn't enough money for the same number of fabs at the bleeding edge. There definitely is but it will come at the cost of share buy backs and keeping share price up which affects compensation of management. Failure to keep the share price up by investing in manufacturing in US will also invite predatory share holders to topple the management. The cult of "free" markets driving wealth growth at the top of the society seems to have trumped strategic common sense.
  - astrange 6y ago
    Tech employees get share compensation too, even though HW engineers get paid less than SW.

Gibbon1 6y ago

20 years ago I had the line, American businessman and political leaders are stupid. Because they think they own those factories in China and the far east.

cbozeman 6y ago

> but 80's and 90's corporate American business culture decided it was better to shut down all that manufacturing and move it overseas for more short-term profit This is a very non-confrontational way to say, "Greedy ass Boomers who were given practically everything by the events surrounding the end of World War II - manufacturing destroyed across all of Europe, Asiatic nations still mostly third-world places, second world at best, managed to fuck up so badly due to greed and incompetence while growing up in a world with, literally, no competition, sold their children and their grandchildren down the river so they wouldn't have to be even slightly uncomfortable in retirement, unlike their parents." This just furthers my belief that if you couldn't make an above-average life for yourself as a Boomer, you were just a pathetic fuck-up who would have probably starved to death 100-200 years ago.

iopq 6y ago

Huh? Samsung and TSMC are home-grown in their respective countries and Intel still makes chips. Together, they make the majority of the world's chips.

rcxdude 6y ago

The story is not anywhere near that straightforward for semiconduction fabrication. A huge portion of that fabrication, for example, just moved out of california to other places in the US. Also there's been a general consolodation of fabrication plants over time as more and more advanced nodes put the price of a plant up by orders of magnitudes. There just isn't enough money for the same number of fabs at the bleeding edge. Also, intel are still US based manufacturing and they have only quite recently been toppled from the throne of most advanced process. They have simply lost to the advancement of overseas tech companies (generally it seems because they made a bad bet on their strategy for further shrinks to their process), nothing to do with US companies outsourcing overseas.

sfifs 6y ago
> There just isn't enough money for the same number of fabs at the bleeding edge. There definitely is but it will come at the cost of share buy backs and keeping share price up which affects compensation of management. Failure to keep the share price up by investing in manufacturing in US will also invite predatory share holders to topple the management. The cult of "free" markets driving wealth growth at the top of the society seems to have trumped strategic common sense.
- astrange 6y ago
  Tech employees get share compensation too, even though HW engineers get paid less than SW.