Thursday, December 2nd 2021
Intel CEO Asks US Government for More Backing, Calls Taiwan Not Stable
Since Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger joined the company earlier this year, the messaging language from Intel has changed radically, as it has become a no-nonsense message of Intel going back to its roots as a leading foundry and a leading chip maker. However, Gelsinger might've overstepped a little bit as of lately, as during a conference in California, he went on record saying that Intel deserves special treatment by the US government, in favor of some of its competitors.
At the same time, it's not hard to see why Intel thinks the US government should favor it and other US companies like Micron and Texas Instruments, over Samsung and TSMC. However, Intel's selling argument here is that investing in non-US companies means that the R&D money and IP ends up abroad, which isn't entirely true when it comes to foundries. Gelsinger also complained about the fact that Samsung and TSMC was getting large government subsidies in their home countries and claimed that because of those subsidies, Intel was competing with Korea and Taiwan, rather than with Samsung and TSMC.
As if that wasn't enough, Gelsinger went on to call Taiwan "not a stable place" due to the current situation between the PRC and Taiwan. He also highlighted the fact that the PRC is infringing on Taiwan's air defence identification zone (ADIZ) on a regular basis, with as many as 27 military aircraft encroaching on a single day. It should be noted that the Taiwan ADIZ actually stretches well inside the PRC, although the areas that the PRC normally enter that are being reported are quite close to Taiwan, rather than flights over PRC territory.
The US government still hasn't reached a conclusion on the CHIPS Act, which is meant to set aside as much as US$52 billion for chipmakers in the US. There's no secret that Intel wants a large share of that money, deservedly so or not. As Intel is slowly moving towards offering foundry services, it makes sense that they would need to invest even more heavily into building foundries, since as we know, there simply aren't enough cutting edge foundries at the moment and too many companies are fighting over the cutting edge nodes these days. That said, scare tactics isn't the way forward, instead Intel should show that they can operate a foundry business just as well as its competitors and try to win over business from them, as that's how you show that you deserve both the business and the investment.
Sources:
Taiwan News, image courtesy of @PGelsinger
At the same time, it's not hard to see why Intel thinks the US government should favor it and other US companies like Micron and Texas Instruments, over Samsung and TSMC. However, Intel's selling argument here is that investing in non-US companies means that the R&D money and IP ends up abroad, which isn't entirely true when it comes to foundries. Gelsinger also complained about the fact that Samsung and TSMC was getting large government subsidies in their home countries and claimed that because of those subsidies, Intel was competing with Korea and Taiwan, rather than with Samsung and TSMC.
The US government still hasn't reached a conclusion on the CHIPS Act, which is meant to set aside as much as US$52 billion for chipmakers in the US. There's no secret that Intel wants a large share of that money, deservedly so or not. As Intel is slowly moving towards offering foundry services, it makes sense that they would need to invest even more heavily into building foundries, since as we know, there simply aren't enough cutting edge foundries at the moment and too many companies are fighting over the cutting edge nodes these days. That said, scare tactics isn't the way forward, instead Intel should show that they can operate a foundry business just as well as its competitors and try to win over business from them, as that's how you show that you deserve both the business and the investment.
128 Comments on Intel CEO Asks US Government for More Backing, Calls Taiwan Not Stable
Ukraine was always separate from Russia. It was no different than Poland or Czech in that regard to its relationship to the USSR. Crimea was separate, part of Russia going back 250 years, but got thrown into Ukraine when the USSR broke up.
Taiwan on the other hand, was part of China. In point of fact, that train of logic you are using justifies China taking over Taiwan (if we don't care about who lives there today, only who used to live there 300 years ago). Taiwan is a break-away province of China, occupied by forces loyal to a now deposed government. Crimea's inclusion in Ukraine and removal as part of Russia is an event that has happened in the mid 1990s, somewhat arbitrarily.
In my view the destiny should be decided by people who live there today. That would mean Taiwan should be Taiwan, not China. Crimea should be Russian, because that is what those people want.
But if you go by some arbitrary point in the past, perhaps Crimea should be Chinese too. That's the time frame you're using.
Here's what should be Mongolian using that thought from the time frame you chose :
Not just for chips, need to re-industrialise the west generally.
Did you even look at what is going on in terms of the ADIZ?
It's funny how everyone here, who's most likely never set foot in Taiwan, knows so much about what's going on.
Kind of regret I even wrote this news post, since clearly I have no understanding about what's going on....
The history from WW1 and WW2 has no relevance today -- because the US had the technological advantages at the time. That's not the case anymore and hasn't been for a long time.China already owns and produces all of the tech the US has had and also owns all of the voluntarily handed over instructions/plans from the US in how to manufacture and assemble it (from the likes of Apple, Tesla, etc) On top of that, the Chinese government is pumping their most advanced domestic companies full of state owned money to overtake the US even further.Yeah right -- you mean the same way Ukraine is being defended against Russia by the US and Eurocrats? Let's face it -- when Taiwan gets attacked by China, the US and Europe are going to stand by, watch and do absolutely nothing as they wag their finger in disapproval with some nothing-burger sanctions. Even more so now that Dementia Joe is in the president's seat (who we all know is already bought and paid for by China). China knows the US and the rest of the world needs them more than they need the US -- you can already see this by the way corporations are licking the Chinese boot. It's just a matter of time until they use it to their advantage.
I do fully agree with you on the rest of what you said about the US collapsing under its collective debt -- that's absolutely going to happen, one way or the other.
That being said, I think its exactly the entanglement of all these countries and interests that keeps the peace. As long as China is talking, its not shooting, and the TL DR there is: they know shooting will only cause damage, loss and creates a situation they cannot control.
So let's keep talking and let's keep those interests entangled. The only other path, which includes trying to go national, is setting up for WW3. You can rest assured you're not buying your fancy GPU then.
That being said, healthy competition alongside entanglement is also very good.
One country monopolizing semiconductors is like having one CPU or one GFX company -- horrible for the consumers.
We've seen Intel taking its sweet time, and this was fully, entirely their own strategic planning at work. And going forward what they have design wise right now, is yesterday technology. None of their ideas are their own, they just iterate on them, which is a nice way of stealing. Not exactly a forward-looking company if you ask me, and definitely not leading anymore.
Push those millions to AMD or even let them compete by giving both half the bags of money.
The world is going to end. Reagan and Chernenko will push the buttons ... No, it will be Saddam's weapons of mass destruction ... I mean Cuban missiles ... Or climate change ... caused by the amount of energy we spend on making chips because everyone we want the latest cpu or gpu even though the one we have works fine. I am 52 years old. I was raised with the idea of a thermonuclear war fairly present. Humanity has survived. Don't tell me chinese tales, please. Mr. Money is a powerful gentleman.
Sounds like wishful thinking to me.
Might want to look up what the highest grossing movie in the world is this year, and what it's subject matter is.
You might want to look up about china's new aircraft carriers, and when they're expected to be completed.
China is preparing itself.
No the government isn't giving intel money so they can sit around and make more lakes. It's to build chip fabs. They're actively working with outside clients and IBM specifically to start fabbing other people's designs. They know how to port, how to switch nodes, they're actively working on disaggregation and packaging tiles across different nodes.
AMD mismanaged their fabs into the dirt as well, by the way, as have most US semiconductors, while Asian countries subsidized theirs. I don't love intel monopolizing all US side fabs, and I hope we subsidize other competitors, but at this point we are in a bit of a pickle.
What I do know is that the US has been first on every conflict post-WW2 and that their strategy is called Full Spectrum Dominance.
That strategy is now under active pressure and much like Intel, the US has been asleep at the wheel, soaked in money as it was. It echoes in the quality of its national systems. Healthcare, the overall state of hypercapitalism fueled by the dollar, its failing moral high ground, and its failing society at large. A political system that is in permanent limbo because even there the winner takes all mentality means progress gets killed every time. The fact that they're surpassed in military technology suddenly seems to spark all sorts of new initiatives.
This is as much China as it is the US. Don't get me wrong - I'm partial to democracy over autocracy. But the winner takes all mentality is EOL. With regards to climate and all other problems that far surpass national borders, its time to start sharing our problems and fix them together. Its the inevitable outcome because we've built a world on economy of scale. The scale is now beyond national and continents.
That's why China will win.
Remember - just because they don't acknowledge their problems, or don't tell you about them doesn't mean they don't exists.
We used to have parades with smiling children while people were starving in camps... it's the same thing.
Obviously. There isn't a perfect system, but democracy sure as hell is the best imperfect version we have.You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want real allies you give up some independance. If there is no mutual benefit, there is no alliance.
They turned a battle where they lost 60,000 soldiers vs less than 11,000 US/UN/ROK (S. Korea) into a victory. They still achieved their goal, with N Korea the result. China can lose 5:1 and still win.
That movie is funded by the CCP. #1 in the world, only released in China. They are grooming their people for this type of battle / war.
And the grooming is exactly why they can't win. This is not 1500. Its the information age. Autocracy leads to tunnel vision and Xi is already showing the signs, frequently, of that. Liberated thought processes are going to win. As long as China is heavily reliant on success in its economy to keep citizens happy, you know the national balance is fragile. Grooming might work on part of the population, but they also have internet, even despite a great firewall, and nobody likes repression.
Who needs a few million soldiers if you can turn everything off online? Size has gone abstract.
Some do like to learn, get involved set it right I know I would appreciate the context based input.
It's not as if people are expecting an impending invasion.
Right now, what seems to be going on at least, is the PRC punishing Taiwanese companies that have investments in the PRC, by making sure they follow the PRC line of thought. Likewise for artist and just about anyone else that is famous in the PRC, but hails from Taiwan.
The ones that are talking about war, are all white people that sit in an office in a different part of the world.
It's not that Taiwan isn't concerned, but it's not affecting day to day life here and people aren't freaking out about it.
As someone mentioned to my significant other, if the PRC told the Taiwanese that they would have the money in they bank accounts converted to RMB at a one to one ratio, most people here would gladly join the PRC in an instant. Sadly the PRC wants to make a show of power and diminish Taiwan to the rest of the world, which has lead to the current situation. It obviously doesn't help that Xi has gone power crazy and is causing a fair share of issues "back home" by trying to undo the last 20 years of softer totalitarianism.
At the end of the day, it's impossible to predict what will happen, but scaremongering isn't a good look on Pat imho. He should focus on his job instead of getting involved in politics.
Well, interesting for me is this - how we achieved that demand for chips are higher than we can make them????? I highly doubt that if for EXAMPLE: TSMC can make 100 million chis a year I just dont want to believe that they have overbooked their capability... not to mention that there are other vendors which sell too...
A lot of these are actually made in the US, Japan, and S. Korea. Most of the shortage is on mature nodes, not the new ones. I have yet to figure out why there is so much focus on TSMC, their capacity constraints + crypto / home demand is definitely affecting GPUs but that's not too relevant vs cars and microwave ovens.
I'll guess because people are not aware of all the other fabs on the planet and talking about a TI fab in Texas doesn't generate clicks.
Not too many people are going to google for "Power Management Integrated Circuit Shortage". Lots will look for "GPU shortage" though.
Yeah, we here care about GPUs and CPUs being made by TSMC, but that's not our country's "strategic chips". Our strategic chips are power-management ICs, MOSFETs, and other such chips required to make cars or other industrial equipment work at all.
You can remove the touchscreen from a car, its not really necessary. You can't remove the power-management or microcontrollers that provide you the logic for antilock brakes. You can't remove SiC MOSFETs that allow an electric car battery to turn on or off.
The on/off switch (aka: SiC MOSFETs) are far, far more important to EVs / Hybrids than anything else.