Tuesday, August 15th 2023
Intel Wants More Than its Fair Share of CHIPS Act Money
During the Aspen Security Forums 2023, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger spoke on the topic of semiconductors and national security. During his speech, Gelsinger mentioned that Intel should get the lion's share of the US$52 billion US CHIPS Act money, simply because Intel is a US company. In Gelsinger's opinion, it appears that TSMC and Samsung don't deserve as much, despite both companies manufacturing semiconductors for US companies, with Samsung already having a foundry in Texas, while TSMC is still struggling with the construction of its Arizona foundry.
Admittedly, Intel has far more foundries in the US, but it also seems like Gelsinger forgot about other foundries, such as GlobalFoundries, but also companies such as Micron, Texas Instruments, Qorvo, NXP, On Semi, Analog Devices and so forth that all own foundries that produce their own chips on US soil. We'd expect all these companies to be eyeing the CHIPS Act cash and without many of those companies, Intel wouldn't be able to sell any of its chips, as many of them produce much needed components that are used to build motherboards, laptops and what not. Gelsinger was obviously pointing fingers at the current US China trade war and how the export controls are causing concerns with regards to the global semiconductor business. As such, Gelsinger wants Intel to have fewer restrictions from the currently imposed trade regulations, largely due to China being some 25 to 30 percent of Intel's market, with Intel being busy expanding in the country. Make what you want of this, but it's clear that Gelsinger is expecting to eat the cake and have it at the same time. Video after the break.
Source:
via Tom's Hardware
Admittedly, Intel has far more foundries in the US, but it also seems like Gelsinger forgot about other foundries, such as GlobalFoundries, but also companies such as Micron, Texas Instruments, Qorvo, NXP, On Semi, Analog Devices and so forth that all own foundries that produce their own chips on US soil. We'd expect all these companies to be eyeing the CHIPS Act cash and without many of those companies, Intel wouldn't be able to sell any of its chips, as many of them produce much needed components that are used to build motherboards, laptops and what not. Gelsinger was obviously pointing fingers at the current US China trade war and how the export controls are causing concerns with regards to the global semiconductor business. As such, Gelsinger wants Intel to have fewer restrictions from the currently imposed trade regulations, largely due to China being some 25 to 30 percent of Intel's market, with Intel being busy expanding in the country. Make what you want of this, but it's clear that Gelsinger is expecting to eat the cake and have it at the same time. Video after the break.
34 Comments on Intel Wants More Than its Fair Share of CHIPS Act Money
In the meantime,
1) Intel let TSMC catchup and overtake.. while intel is at 10nm, TSMC has already moved to 3nm.
2) if they had started making GPU at 2010+, they would easily been an 3rd player and as Good as AMD/Nvidia..Also could have taken the profits during Cryptomining + pandemic wfh sales. Intel started making GPUs right after crypto crash and world returning to normal after pandemic.
3) when intel was safely riding at 14nm CPUs for 7 years.. they let AMD bring the best and almost they are equally Good as intel CPU and sometimes even better.
So Intel have only themselves to blame.. and now they bant the Big money by playing the "WAR" or "US home company" card.
if US GOVt had said it earlier.. then samsung or TSMC wouldnt have bothered making 1 fab in US
/s
In this kind of programmes, the state should get voting shares in exchange of every dollars spent, the government is spending citziens' money stands to reason they must have a say on how the money is being spent.
Companies then have a choice, continue their inefficient wasteful ways, or get help and focus on developing products, create more jobs.
And if there is nothing special about this money, why should the company sell shares to USA? If USA is overpaying and the voting shares is comparatively just a token sum, then how is it functionally different from plain subsidy?
- they never were that good in CPU, AMD in multiple occasions showed them they're better and at least competitive,
- Athlon was the first CPU to break 1 GHz
- Athlon 64 revolutionised CPUs by integrating memory controller, something which Intel copied later
- AMD developed x64, not Intel. Intel's "version" of it was a utter failure (wasn't compatible and only 64 bit)
- Ryzen is the first ultra efficient core design, with smaller cores on x86-64 that are able to do what only Intels bigger core's barely can.
- Intel to this day couldn't catch up with the efficiency of ZEN core arch, over 6 years later
- AMD adopted AVX512, while Intel abandoned it (in consumer) because their CPU designs are sub-par.
Intel GPU:
- was a huge failure from the beginning (two decades ago)
- it's a failure now
- they never had the chops to do it, so saying they "would've catched up to Nvidia and AMD" is a mere fantasy
- basically who's too bad to work at Nvidia and AMD, goes to work for Intel, the corporate structure there is just toxic from what I heard in multiple articles and videos over the years
- they concentrated for way too long to just meet the numbers ($$$$), had regular managers as CEO, instead of engineers how it should be. After they realised money isn't everything, they brought in a engineer in Pat Gelsinger, after a long time, but the dude's a bit delusional and arrogant, thinks Intel is still the big player it was 10-15 years ago.
AMD on the other hand successfully revamped their structure and brought in one of the best CEOs possible with Dr. Su. The exact opposite of what happened at Intel. They also never resorted to corruption when their CPUs weren't good enough.
This (news) is another example of Intel trying for corruption / manipulation.
And of course, like the $52 billions the airline industry got during covid or the bailouts of 2008, Intel will mostly use the money to inflate stock price and short term earnings by laying off employees, stock buy backs, and executive bonuses.
From everything that I've read the current market didn't become what it is solely because of money, but also because of a literal "skill issue" that ended up putting once successful companies in the red with no means of recovery.
Intel is in their current situation because they made bad decisions about the node design, and took too long to figure out that their old closed Fab business model wasn't going to be sustainable to keep up with TSMC.
TSMC and Samsung are the most skilled founders at the moment so it seems logical to invest more in their American branch. Intel is a distant third.
www.enr.com/articles/54776-intel-ohio-fab-breaks-ground-leading-chip-plant-project-wave
or prior to that, the massive amount of cash plus nearly a decade wasted on the world's only 450mm fab:
www.tomshardware.com/news/intels-long-awaited-fab-42-is-fully-operational
semiwiki.com/semiconductor-services/techinsights/311026-the-lost-opportunity-for-450mm/
TSMC's success is on the backs of the brilliant and hardworking Taiwanese people and culture. They cannot replicate to the naked watermonkeys that inhabit the rest of the planet.
Intel is a close third with lazy westerners and clever Israelis -- they are far easier to scale than TSMC in reality, as we are seeing.