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US Intel

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539 points maguay | 2 comments | 26 Aug 25 10:47 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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onetimeusename ◴[26 Aug 25 17:21 UTC] No.45029567[source]▶
The other day when the US's stake in Intel was announced, people assumed it was a political stunt. I suspected it was because of national security interests. The CHIPS act probably didn't get the result US Defense wanted quickly enough. Some details that were glossed over include that there was a chip shortage a few years ago as a result of COVID and TSMC supply chain disruptions that led to a shortage in electronics and automobiles even. This started to look like a national security interest back then.

Second, there is an AI race going on. US intelligence is taking it very seriously and views supremacy of our AI as very important. Recently, the US was pushing NVDA to start using Intel's foundry. I assume it's for national security reasons.

Finally, a couple of details from the Intel deal that were not widely discussed is that the US is taking a passive seat[1]

The government’s investment in Intel will be a passive ownership, with no Board representation or other governance or information rights. The government also agrees to vote with the Company’s Board of Directors on matters requiring shareholder approval, with limited exceptions.

There are also warrants being given whose status is based on Intel's foundry. That suggests the foundry was the interest all along.

[1]: https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1748/...

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scarface_74 ◴[26 Aug 25 17:37 UTC] No.45029778[source]▶
The issue is that Intel manufacturing chips in the US wouldn’t have solved the chip problems with cars for instance.

What TSMC traditionally does is keep trailing edge fabs online that are fully depreciated and use those to produce chips that don’t need to be leading edge. It wouldn’t make sense to create a new fab for trailing edge chips.

Car manufacturers aren’t going to all of the sudden start using 2mm expensive chips for their cars.

Even for TVs, the BOM for the “smarts” need to be under $10.

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hedgehog ◴[26 Aug 25 18:26 UTC] No.45030360[source]▶
14nm is mature and would suit this purpose fine, and they have existing capacity. The business, tools, and everything else around would need to get built out.
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1. scarface_74 ◴[26 Aug 25 18:34 UTC] No.45030469[source]▶
Yes. But Intel doesn’t have any customers and do they even have 14nm fabs online and how long will take to move customers to it in the case of a disruption?
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2. hedgehog ◴[26 Aug 25 20:44 UTC] No.45032084[source]▶
To have customers they need to do the actual work of closing deals, building the customer-facing support teams, building all the tooling integrations (PDK, simulation, etc). On the manufacturing side they have to figure out who will do all the stuff besides fab, I think they have 14nm currently in the US and Ireland but the packaging might all still be Asia. It's not something to be done in case of disruption, it's essentially starting 80% of a new company to serve customers who want a US and Europe based supplier. Government customers could work, or public/private joint venture to build commodity parts, but either way they need patient customers who can help work out the problems and pay a premium to do it.