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U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

(www.cnbc.com)
607 points givemeethekeys | 26 comments | 22 Aug 25 21:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.427s | source | bottom
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cuttothechase ◴[22 Aug 25 21:31 UTC] No.44990065[source]▶
Genuine question-

How does Govt picking winners and losers going to help?

Intel is no Too big to fail Bank. Why save Intel of all chip manufacturers? Wouldnt it be like 25 years too late, with Intel and its heydays !?

Would Govt now ensure parity by investing in "marquee" entities across different industrial domains?

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miohtama ◴[22 Aug 25 21:52 UTC] No.44990294[source]▶
There is only 1 winner and 1 loser: Intel.

It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US. The argument is national security: the US expects China to invade Taiwan and this will kill TSMC in the process.

Whether this will happen or not can be debated, but this is what the government expects.

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1. ac29 ◴[22 Aug 25 21:57 UTC] No.44990357[source]▶
> It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US

Global Foundries, Micron, and Texas Instruments all come to mind

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2. jongjong ◴[22 Aug 25 22:02 UTC] No.44990391[source]▶
Yeah terrible position to be when your own government is investing in your competitors' company using your own tax dollars.

As a software engineer, this isn't an entirely new concept.

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3. kragen ◴[22 Aug 25 22:05 UTC] No.44990413[source]▶
I think all three of those other companies are also getting CHIPS-act subsidies?
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4. jongjong ◴[22 Aug 25 22:08 UTC] No.44990452{3}[source]▶
I suppose it could be worse. Still, now the US has a vested interest in seeing Intel crush AMD and others.
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5. Spooky23 ◴[22 Aug 25 22:14 UTC] No.44990504{4}[source]▶
They just need to bribe POTUS, and everything will be fine.
6. adgjlsfhk1 ◴[22 Aug 25 22:25 UTC] No.44990628[source]▶
GF hasn't gone past the 12nm node. TI is at 45nm. Micron is on relatively recent processes, but they make RAM, not logic (which are totally different processes). Intel is the only chip manufacturer left that is working in logic at anything like the leading edge.
7. chneu ◴[22 Aug 25 22:26 UTC] No.44990646[source]▶
GF is a few nodes behind. Micron doesn't make semiconductors, they mostly make flash and whatnot. TI doesn't have the capacity or knowledge to expand to Intel's size/capacity
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8. tbrownaw ◴[22 Aug 25 22:50 UTC] No.44990879[source]▶
> doesn't make semiconductors, they mostly make flash and whatnot

Um.

All that stuff is still semiconductors, just with different patterns printed on them.

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9. hangonhn ◴[22 Aug 25 23:02 UTC] No.44990985[source]▶
re: Micron - Memory is very different from logic chips. You vast number of repeating cells in memory. If any of them are bad you can just turn them off and bin them as lower capacity. You can do that to some extend with logic chips but not nearly as much as memory.
10. bink ◴[22 Aug 25 23:14 UTC] No.44991104[source]▶
> TI doesn't have the capacity or knowledge to expand to Intel's size/capacity

I mean, they might if Intel were allowed to fail.

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11. ◴[22 Aug 25 23:18 UTC] No.44991136{3}[source]▶
12. JustExAWS ◴[22 Aug 25 23:20 UTC] No.44991157{4}[source]▶
AMD is not a chip manufacturer and what “others”?
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13. ◴[22 Aug 25 23:32 UTC] No.44991242{3}[source]▶
14. kragen ◴[22 Aug 25 23:45 UTC] No.44991341{5}[source]▶
Right, AMD sold off their foundry business as GlobalFoundries in 02009 to the Mubadala sovereign wealth fund of the UAE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobalFoundries

The others would probably be GlobalFoundries, Micron, Microchip, and TI.

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15. johnecheck ◴[23 Aug 25 01:39 UTC] No.44992177{3}[source]▶
You're right but also wrong. Flash is just semiconductors etched in a different pattern than logic, but you don't print on semiconductors. Semiconductors are 'printed' on wafers via photolithography.
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16. kragen ◴[23 Aug 25 01:45 UTC] No.44992216{3}[source]▶
Much more likely that SMIC would, because TI isn't just 15 years behind; it also has the disadvantage of being in the US. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_industry_in_Chin... for a look at what it looks like where conditions are more favorable.
17. kragen ◴[23 Aug 25 01:49 UTC] No.44992245{4}[source]▶
Intel's wafers are made of silicon, which is a semiconductor. Silicon on sapphire hasn't been widely used for a long time, if that's what you're thinking of. Photolithography prints resists on semiconductor wafers which are then used to pattern the next process step, such as wet etching, plasma etching, oxide growth, epitaxial polysilicon growth, ion implantation, etc. These mostly remove semiconductor from the wafer or alter its properties.
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18. onepointsixC ◴[23 Aug 25 02:47 UTC] No.44992625[source]▶
GF is a zombie company. Micron and TI are both far far away from leading edge. There is only one American company which is both developing and manufacturing leading edge nodes.
19. B1FF_PSUVM ◴[23 Aug 25 03:00 UTC] No.44992697{6}[source]▶
"Real men have fabs" (no more, no more).
20. tbrownaw ◴[23 Aug 25 03:37 UTC] No.44992923{4}[source]▶
The linked ppt here has a lot of details: https://fabweb.ece.illinois.edu/
21. johnecheck ◴[23 Aug 25 05:28 UTC] No.44993441{5}[source]▶
Interesting, I hadn't known that silicon is itself a semiconductor before all the circuits are added. Am I correct in saying that the etching process transforms a single semiconductor into billions?
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22. ◴[23 Aug 25 07:47 UTC] No.44994116{6}[source]▶
23. kragen ◴[23 Aug 25 13:42 UTC] No.44995935{6}[source]▶
No, silicon is still just one semiconductor, just like water is just one liquid. The substrate is still just one piece of silicon, despite having many silicon semiconductor devices fabricated in it. Polysilicon layers may or may not be additional pieces of silicon.
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24. johnecheck ◴[26 Aug 25 00:37 UTC] No.45020899{7}[source]▶
I see! Thanks for the info.
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25. kragen ◴[27 Aug 25 00:59 UTC] No.45034233{8}[source]▶
Happy to help!
26. chneu ◴[27 Aug 25 18:24 UTC] No.45043150{3}[source]▶
This is a very wrong take.

Fabs run on data. It takes years to gather that data.

Fabs can't just be repurposed overnight. Yields must be good, which takes data, equipment, etc which is all extremely specialized.

Very ignorant take.