Comment on Taiwan refuses to move half of U.S.-bound chip production to American shores — trade discussion to be focused on Section 232 investigation for preferential deal on semiconductors

• dogslayeggs@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  What’s sort of incredibly about America’s Intel is that they haven’t done any of this shit, clinging to their dead-end chip design long after its expiration date and missing the boom in demand for high end chips entirely.

  This is the most baffling thing to me. How could Intel leadership be so incompetent? They had the inside track to hundreds of billions in revenue and just decided to coast.

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  • BakerBagel@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Because modern western business is about cashing out the business to squeeze out a couple extra bucks each quarter. They aren’t interested in making a product, just cutting costs, raising prices, and issuing stock buybacks

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  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    How could Intel leadership be so incompetent?

    For the leadership, it was a cash cow. They got a fat dividend doing very little, even as upstarts blasted past them.

    They had the inside track to hundreds of billions in revenue and just decided to coast.

    At some point, the effort to get from $10B to $100B isn’t worth the pressure. How many extra yachts do I actually need?

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    • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Your points are exactly why it is surprising. Most executives don’t think like me and you. If you give them a million dollars, they say they need 10 million. If you give them a billion dollars, they say they need 10 billion. There is no end to their greed. Look at how Google and Amazon are still trying to strong-arm their industries to get even more billions of dollars. Musk is out there demanding a trillion dollars.

      CEOs and execs at large multinational corps like Intel don’t usually coast. They might make strategic blunders, but they usually push to make as much money as they can. If they fail, they fall back on their golden parachutes. If they win, they get shitloads more money.

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      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        If you give them a million dollars, they say they need 10 million.

        Sure. If you show up with a bag of money, they’re going to tell you they need two bags.

        But if you ask them to work twice as hard to get that second bag? Suddenly, you’re asking too much.

        CEOs and execs at large multinational corps like Intel don’t usually coast.

        They do. They’re just not the companies people get excited about. Tons of US business is conducted by C-levels who are barely more than figureheads, commanding massive salaries to glad hands a few friends in between golf games.

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      • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Your points are exactly why it is surprising. Most executives don’t think like me and you. If you give them a million dollars, they say they need 10 million. If you give them a billion dollars, they say they need 10 billion.

        I think hidden in there is a misconception about capitalism, that its about competition and being the best. While its a nice myth for grade school civics about why we are capitalist its just not the case. Capitalism is about profit. As long as you have it and its growing you are doing well. Intel did get very complacent, but it was still projected to grow and be profitable.

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  • LemmyThinkAboutIt@lemmy.zip ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    If I remember correctly, but it’s been awhile since I read the discussion about Intel so I could be misremembering, the problem with Intel started when the C-Suite stopped being engineers that moved up in the company.

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• gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Interesting, thanks. And yeah, I too find it utterly baffling at how Intel is turning into a has-been before our eyes. They were The Chip Guys for ages, and then the fucking quants got put in charge and carved away so much of the engineering leadership and underpinnings that it’s a husk of what it was in the 80s and 90s.

  I would, however, point out that TSMC’s whole deal is “define, and produce at scale, the bleeding edge of integrated circuit designs”, so the bit about them cribbing off of people hasn’t really been a variable in their equations for at least a couple decades. They have been major (arguably, the predominant) pioneers in chip lithography for a while now.

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  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    so the bit about them cribbing off of people hasn’t really been a variable in their equations for at least a couple decades

    That’s meant to say they can’t do that from the front of the pack. There’s not much to crib from that they don’t invent.

    That’s a burden on TMSC that guys like Samsung and SMIC don’t suffer from, at least until they can match pace. For the time being, other firms can close in on TMSC by following in their footsteps (or, at least, avoiding their errors).

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    • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Ah, yes, fair point 🍻

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• Rentlar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Intel: did I hear somebody say we should announce our newest 14nm+++++++++ platform?

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  • humanspiral@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    14a =1.4nm. Given that they cancelled 18a to leap frog to 14a is not a confidence builder.

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