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Intel gets up to $7.9B award for U.S. chip-plant construction
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoOfficial Commerce release: https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2024/11/biden-harris-administration-announces-chips-incentives-award-intel https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2024/11/biden-h...
- acomjean 2y agoThe x86 companies (and/intel) do better with competition. I’ve had my last laptops (work/home) with amd and it’s much better battery life and performance then my (9th? Gen) intel notebook with nvidia (the battery life was Terrible but it could game). I think Apple puts a lot of pressure on too, which helps. I guess intels “ultra” notebook parts are better. There is some x86 advisory group now to keep the instruction set in sync between the 2 companies. Linux is involved and is Linus so it should be at least a little fun.
- binkHN 2y ago> ...had my last laptops (work/home) with amd and it’s much better battery life and performance then my (9th? Gen) intel notebook with nvidia... It's well known that an integrated GPU will give you a better battery life compared to a discreet GPU.
- theoreticalmal 2y agoIt’s true, discretion is the better part of gaming
- binkHN 2y agoI guess I have voice dictation to thank for that one. ;)
- jmspring 2y agoI ended up with a 3090FE card, decided to build the first tower I’ve built in years. Opted for and 7800x3d, didn’t realize what a dope chip it was. It was just a better price point than intel - I think 2022 or 2023
- sundvor 2y agoThe 7800X3D is absolutely awesome. That L3 cache is God-tier. At barely any power consumption whatsoever. (Compared to Intel CPUs at the time of release).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- someothherguyy 2y agohttps://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-foundry-arm-announce-multigeneration-collaboration-leading-edge-soc-design.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-...
- mattmaroon 2y agoI’d really love to know more about deal terms.
- mikeyouse 2y agoStarting on page 26 here: https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2024/04/19/Amended%20CHIPS-Commercial%20Fabrication%20Facilities%20NOFO%20Amendment.pdf https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2024/04/19/Amend...
- valeg 2y agoYou need to hedge with all these fabless companies. It is perfectly understandable.
- dyauspitr 2y agoGod I want intel to win, I hope they’re able to pull it off.
- nextworddev 2y agoTheir internal culture hopefully has been rejuvenated by now
- ilikehurdles 2y agothey're finally allowed free coffee in the office again
- bloodyplonker22 2y agoAs a former employee, I can say it isn't. It's worse. A lot more of the great people Intel used to have left because Intel tanked and went nowhere while they watched AMD, Nvidia, Broadcom, and a whole bunch of other hardware companies go through the roof. It's basic economics for these people who have the ability to leave. Put yourself in their position.
- branko_d 2y agoWhen did you leave, if I may ask?
- ls612 2y agoIntel circa 2025 is the new AMD circa 2015 and for all our sakes I hope their story turns out similarly to last decade’s story.
- ac29 2y agoWhile a nice story, people maybe forget just how bad AMD was doing then. Intel, even in its currently weakened state, earns >10x as much revenue as AMD did in 2015.
- ks2048 2y agoI would have done it for $6B
- vachina 2y agoAffirmative action but for companies
- chii 2y agothe US wants to stratigically diversify away from TSMC, in case a war does start. Not to mention that having more competition in the fabrication industry can't hurt. The only question is whether taxpayers will get the value and benefit from this investment. I would hope so, but i can't tell from the past whether such an investment have netted benefit overall.
- tbrownaw 2y ago> The only question is whether taxpayers will get the value and benefit from this investment. Do I get a benefit from keeping a fire extinguisher in the kitchen if I happen to never actually need to use it?
- KennyBlanken 2y agoThat's pretty funny because per-taxpayer we're each just about paying the cost of two fire extinguishers each to pay for that corporate welfare.
- tyre 2y agoYes, because you can't predict the future.
- sadeshmukh 2y agoDoes anybody benefit from insurance? You'll be glad if a fire actually breaks out for a relatively low cost.
- remarkEon 2y agoBetter to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
- chii 2y agodecisions dont stand alone - opportunity costs have to be taken into account. What else could you have spent the money instead of on fire extinguishers, and would that have been more benefitial? Resources are always limited, and so not choosing the optimal spending would be considered a loss.
- light_hue_1 2y agoFrom 2005 to 2020 Intel spent $108B on stock buybacks. 7.2B per year. They also just fired 15,000 workers. Now, we're rewarding them with 7.9B of our taxpayer dollars. This is just disgusting. I'm a liberal, but how are people surprised that Trump won?
- mikeyouse 2y agoWhy would this random deal of all things tip any scale for Trump? He's not some unknown quantity that's opposed to this kind of thing, he had tons of similar efforts, many of which crashed and burned.. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/foxconn-plant-once-touted-trump-13-000-job-juggernaut-will-n1264793 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/foxconn-plant...
- jpalawaga 2y agoIntel is the only hope for relatively short-term microprocessor fabrication on the continent. TSMC is trying to do fabs here but that's going to take ages to scale. The real question is, how do you subsidize this sort of development from scratch while not hamstringing or ignoring already developed abilities. For promoting advanced chip fab inside of the US, intel is america's best bet. The only other option would have been AMD, but they closed their on-shore fabs like two decades ago afaicr.
- psyclobe 2y agoI'm just happy as part of this deal they must keep their fab. I believe Intel will be in a good position in the future, we will have a need for a domestic fab! And they are perhaps now going to rock the graphics card scene with their launch of Battlemage gpus!
- MisterBastahrd 2y agoWonder what the economic benefit of giving away 20K median priced homes would be for the economy versus giving Intel's stockholders an incentive to build the bare minimum in the US.
- janalsncm 2y agoProbably goes in the same category as other defense spending. Short term plan is to defend Taiwan and hope nothing goes down. Long term is to ensure that we won’t have to in the future.
- Sparkyte 2y agoI would prefer some other competitor enters the market. Oh wait Intel killed them before they could be rivals like AMD. - VIA - IBM - Cyrix I mean IBM is around but I doubt they'll touch x86 ever again.
- coliveira 2y agoYes, they're complaining about the obvious result of a monopolized market. If these companies were around, we would certainly have options and Intel could die quickly and without problem. Now we need to throw new money at a bad investment (Intel will continue to be a bad company unless they replace the whole management and change their culture).
- Sparkyte 2y agoMy belief on this is that if a business received grants before the Government itself should take acquisition of the company almost like PBS thing and get it back to a functional state. The Government can later sell it off. I think grants don't solve problems they enable them unless threatened with a Government take over.
- coliveira 2y agoYes, that's the minimum they should do. Take over and fire the whole management.
- Sparkyte 2y agoYep and most of these large industry leaders are dying not because of the engineers but the quality of the management orchestrating the success and failures of the engineers rather than letting them work their magic.
- BeefWellington 2y agoIBM is barely touching Power, and that's their baby.
- monero-xmr 2y agoI’m a fairly traditional libertarian but I’ve softened a bit on my definition of “essential industries”. If other countries make essential goods we need, and they become hostile to us or get conquered politically by those hostile to us, in a war we would be in a lot of trouble. We saw a bit of this during COVID when we couldn’t even make basic products. No matter the subsidies they will still lose if their products suck. But we need some minimum ability to build things here if it all goes to hell.
- abrookewood 2y agoYes, it's something that all governments should be thinking about. Globalisation is amazing for delivering the greatest production efficiencies, but it can easily break down in times of pandemic or war.
- palmfacehn 2y agoInstead of subsidizing, perhaps there are areas where the state could reduce regulatory overhead.
- ikiris 2y agoAllowing intel to use child labor or sweatshops isn’t going to enable them to magically gain the 50 billion needed to build a modern fab.
- palmfacehn 2y agoNot sure how the top-hat tropes apply here. US workers are highly competitive in terms of productivity/compensation. >The Cost of Federal Regulation Aug 4, 1999 2 min read >The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the White House's own budgetary agency, puts the price of existing regulations at approximately $300 billion annually. Others, such as Professor Thomas Hopkins of the Rochester Institute of Technology, say it's closer to $700 billion. This means regulations cost somewhere between $3,000 and $7,000 per household every year. https://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/commentary/the-cost-federal-regulation/ https://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/commentary/th... >Regulation is frequently described as one of the drivers of falling entry, rising industry concentration, and underinvestment in the United States... https://www.cato.org/research-briefs-economic-policy/cost-regulatory-compliance-united-states# https://www.cato.org/research-briefs-economic-policy/cost-re... >$3.079 trillion Cost of federal regulations to the U.S. economy, $465 billion Increase in aggregate regulatory compliance costs since 2012, $277k Avg. annual compliance costs for a U.S. firm, $29,100 Avg. per employee cost of regulations for manufacturers, $50,100 Avg. per employee cost of regulations for small manufacturers (<50 employees) https://nam.org/issues/regulatory-and-legal-reform/cost-of-regulations/ https://nam.org/issues/regulatory-and-legal-reform/cost-of-r...
- tokioyoyo 2y agoThat's actually pretty cool. Chip companies can't complain that Chinese companies are ramping up faster just because of their subsidies anymore. This should level the playing field, hopefully?
- jmspring 2y agoAnd will likely disappear on January because anything one party does must be undone. Politics in the US.
- throwaway984393 2y ago[dead]
- tbrownaw 2y agoI'd think any such flip-flopping would have to be limited to whether to issue additional grants, rather than trying to cancel ones that were already issued?
- hackernewds 2y agoPolitics in the US is why Intel got these grants despite them being unworthy of it and not even meeting the milestones
- interludead 2y agoThe question now will be whether Intel can turn that funding into tangible results
- Iulioh 2y agoI don't think Trump will touch this one to me honest.
- nyokodo 2y ago> And will likely disappear on January because anything one party does must be undone Trade policy, especially towards China, has been quite bipartisan the past two Administrations so your pessimism isn’t entirely warranted. Trump doesn’t like the CHIPS Act but it’s unclear how serious any opposition will be once they get in and how much discretion they even have given the circumstances.
- EcommerceFlow 2y agoThis is why Trump wants to repeal the chip act. A company like Intel should not survive in the free market, and now will be propped up by the government while remaining inefficient.
- janalsncm 2y agoI don’t think the fault line is forming on free vs non-free market. Tariffs aren’t free market either. Both parties have shown some openness to putting their finger on the scale. JD Vance even likes Lena Khan. It’s hard to understand tbh.
- Cornbilly 2y agoYeah, I believe that coming from the guy that pushed the Foxconn scam deal in Wisconsin.
- 2c2c2c 2y agothere's an obvious national security angle to this
- energy123 2y agoThis has nothing to do with bailing a company out. Intel, along with every other chip company, do not want to build any chip plants in the US. It makes no business sense for them. But this is bad for the US given that chip making is a critical defense industry. That's why the CHIPS Act exists, to onshore a critical defense industry so that if war breaks out, at least it's secure.
- edflsafoiewq 2y agoWhy is chip making a critical defense industry?
- ikiris 2y agoBecause literally everything modern needs chips.
- 2y ago
- coliveira 2y agoThey're throwing money away. Actually, I would be glad if this money was entirely used for research, because Intel and other US companies badly need it. But they will waste it on plants that are already outdated in the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is Intel giving this money to investors directly or indirectly in the form of stock buy backs. And nothing of this would be necessary if Intel had invested their profits in research, instead of sending money to investors to keep the stock price high and, consequently, their executive compensation.
- tbrownaw 2y agoThis isn't a "to big to fail" thing, it's a "we want you to do something, so we'll pay you to do it" thing.
- porknubbins 2y agoIntel had to agree not to buy back stock for 5 years when they accepted this money. They went from 50 to a low of around 20 during a huge bull run in semis too so whatever they are guilty of I don’t think they can be accused of “keeping the stock price high”. I believe they have smart people doing research but extremely poor incentives and siloing so no engineers can make any headway. I don’t think Gelsinger has gone hard enough in correcting this so maybe fresh leadership would help.
- hackernewds 2y agoAnd they'll run from 50 to 20 because they could barely me their obligations to cash in on this 100% margin-free government hand out to them
- wbl 2y agoIt's called bleeding edge for a reason. If execution was guaranteed it wouldn't be worth spending that money.
- coliveira 2y ago> Intel had to agree not to buy back stock for 5 years Sure, but have you heard of creative accounting? That's how they manage to move money from one place to another without breaking any contracts...
- pokstad 2y agoDon’t give tax payer money to a profitable company.
- robotresearcher 2y agoIntel lost $16.6B last quarter.
- 015a 2y agoWell: Don't give taxpayer money to an unprofitable company. After all: There's a reason why they're unprofitable.
- adastra22 2y agoSo, which is it?
- j_bum 2y agoWhy can’t it be both?
- adastra22 2y agoTaxpayer money can’t be spent on profitable companies, and can’t be spent on unprofitable companies. Would you rather taxpayer money be spent on inefficient government agencies instead of a free market solution?
- j_bum 2y agoYou’ve posed another false dichotomy fallacy. No, I wouldn’t.
- discardedrefuse 2y agohttps://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1716/intel-reports-third-quarter-2024-financial-results https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1716/... The biggest difference from 2023 Q3 is a massive loss in "Cash flows provided by (used for) operating activities". Too many pizza parties I guess. This feels more like creative accounting to justify the layoffs and other cut backs.
- anon291 2y agoSometimes I think they should have just offered this money as startup capital to new ventures. What's the advantage of Intel here versus just going with Intel engineers?
- wmf 2y agoA startup would need $50B or more to develop a 2 nm fab.
- asdasdsddd 2y agoDoesn't every foundry scale up from easier chips anyways.
- piva00 2y agoVery likely more if applying Gall's law, no startup would be able to create a complex system like a 2nm fab from the ground-up, it'd need many intermediate simpler systems (aka other fabs) to research, and learn how to apply those processes to scale up into a complex system like that.
- LittleTimothy 2y agoYou need to look at how this market really operates. You have massive massive up front capital investment, you spent tens of billions of dollars designing a chip plant, and then billions more actually building one, and at the end of that 10 year long multi-billion dollar process you get 1 chip out of it. If that chip is better than your competitors the entire fabless semi-conductor industry is going to trip over itself bidding up your capacity and turning your investment massively profitable. If your chip is worse than your competitors you have to sell capacity at practically any price to recoup any possible return. And whoever did a good job? Well they've got billions to plough into the next process node. The company that did a bad job? Well now they need to go out into the market and try and get funding to make that entire bet again - but this time with a track record of failure. What's the likelihood a company coming from 0 can make all that work, with no existing assets to secure debt financing for the investment? It's also important to understand what the US is paying for here. They're not paying Intel to make chips, they're paying Intel to make chips in the US as a geopolitical strategy. Intel will make these chips either way, but this action from the US means that Intel is continuing with their US fab plans whilst for example, dumping their EU plans.
- max_ 2y agoThis is so disappointing. It reinforces the adge that capitalism is about private profits and socialised losses. Capitalism is about letting failed companies fail. Not propping the up with tax payer money.
- robertlagrant 2y agoNo, this is being done for political reasons, to hedge against China capturing Taiwan. > It reinforces the adge that capitalism is about private profits and socialised losses. This isn't a good adage, although I agree the people saying it have a very low bar for reinforcing it. Profits are the things that are taxed, and thus socialised. Losses are absorbed by a business' owners.
- qtwhat 2y agono one mentions market manipulation?
- ulfw 2y agoSo will there be a tariff on the US now for subsidising a company?
- bufferoverflow 2y agoHow is it fair to just give so much of taxpayers money to a specific company? Why not to AMD or Nvidia?
- tpetry 2y agoBecause AMD and Nvidia don‘t have their on Fabs.
- bufferoverflow 2y agoBut they would build them with that money. That's what it's for.
- LMYahooTFY 2y agoNo, they wouldn't. That wouldn't even build them one fab, let alone summon all of the talent and supply chain out of thin air.
- high_na_euv 2y agoLol? No, wtf Also 8bn is like 1/3 of modern fab
- fourfour3 2y agoI’m not convinced either of them would even want to. AMD used to have fabs - they spun them off a long time ago as GlobalFoundries. They’re no longer competitive with TSMC, Samsung, or even Intel for modern nodes.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cduzz 2y agoPeople are comparing intel vs AMD here, but in this context -- AMD doesn't actually make the chips do they? They've designed the chips and other companies such as TSMC make the chips. A chip plant / "fab" is the thing that makes the chips, and the point of the chips act is to bring some of that manufacturing back to north america in case we end up in or watching a big fat war in asia that may impact TSMC or samsung's capacity to make chips. Efficient is a synonym of "brittle" and some important things are better if they're inefficient and robust.
- naveen99 2y agoX86 throws away half its computing power on antivirus bloatware. And what other performance is left is hidden behind opaque instruction caching and look ahead. If they had actually given the end user access to speed, they might have chased speed themselves. As it was, the end user gave up on getting performance out of x86.