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this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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Technology
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Nvidia is such a stupid fucking company. It's just slapping different designs onto TSMC chips. All our "chip companies" are like this. In the long run they are all going to get smoked. I won't tell you by whom. You shouldn't need a reminder.
Designing a chip is something completely different from manufacturing them. Your statement is as true as saying TSMC is such a stupid company, all they are doing is using ASML machines.
And please tell me, I have no clue at all who you're talking about.
The Chinese? I think their claim to fame is making processes stolen from TSMC work using pre-EUV lithography. Expensive AF because slow but they're making some incredibly small structures considering the tech they have available. Russians are definitely out of the picture they're in the like 90s when it comes to semiconductors and can't even do that at scale.
And honestly I have no idea where OP is even from, "All our chip companies". Certainly not the US not at all all US chip companies are fabless: IBM, Ti and Intel are IDMs. In Germany IDMs predominate, Bosch and Infineon though there's of course also some GlobalFoundries here, that's pure play, so will be the TSMC-Bosch-NXP-Infineon joint venture ESMC. Korea and Japan are also full of IDMs.
Maybe Britain? ARM is fabless, OTOH ARM is hardly British any more.
Amazon is fabless for their chip design unit, there all little mini design units for shit like datacenters.
It's hilarious you're saying that because Intel labelled itself an investor in USA foundry projects you think they are exempt from this. Okay man, go work at the plants in Ohio and Arizona. Oh wait, they don't fucking exist bruh
Intel, Ti and IBM all made chips before pure-play and fabless were even a thing, and are still doing so. Intel has 16 fabs in the US, Ti 8, IBM... oh, they sold their shit, I thought they still had some specialised stuff for their mainframes. Well, whatever.
Of all companies, the likes of Amazon and Google not fabbing their own chips should hardly be surprising. They're data centre operators, they don't even sell chips, if they set up fabs they'd have to start doing that, or compete with TSMC to not have idle capacity standing around costing tons of money. A fab is not like a canteen which you can expect to actually be in use all the time so there's going to be no need to compete in the restaurant business to make it work.
And that's only really looking at logic chips, e.g. Micron also has fabs at home in the US.
None of those companies even make a blip on global chip production though. Are they for research or something? Why should I give a shit about a tiny technically existing fraction of production that will never expand?
Go look at where there has been actual foundry production for decades. None of the companies you mentioned even exist in foundry. Who cares if they have A facility or two? That's just part of figuring out what they're going to order from TSMC.
Your goalposts, they are moving.
The US has the know-how to produce modern chips at scale, or at least not too far behind in strategic terms. You could bring all production home if that's what you wanted, it'd cost a lot of money but it's simply a policy issue. And Amazon wouldn't suddenly start to run fabs they'd hire capacity from Intel or whomever.
...you'd still be reliant on European EUV machines, though. Everyone is, if you intend to produce very modern chips at scale. But if your strategic interest is making sure that the DMV has workstations and the military guidance computers that's not necessary, pre-EUV processes are perfectly adequate.
You are the one moving the goalposts with your boasts about how these companies make up LITERALLY an INFINITESIMAL portion of global chip production. Even if you cut out Samsung and TSMC they wouldn't be global players.
No, we can't just bring all production home lol. We've been saying we will for years. Where is the foundry in Ohio dude? Where is the Arizona foundry that's supposed to bolster TSMC production?
Lol yeah sure go ask ASML how their business is doing rn in light of the US chip war sanctions. European manufacturing is in as dire a state as the US now due to financialization and now the skyrocketing energy costs.
People said this about our military production too. "Oh, Russia messed up now, we're going to get serious and amp up our military production." 🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🗓️🗓️🗓️🗓️ (time loudly passing and nothing happening)
How many times is it going to take for people to learn it gets transmuted directly into stock buybacks lmao? We don't have the electrical grid to build up our manufacturing base in the modern world yet. The US is a giant casino for the elite of our empire full of slums.
Except what NVIDIA is doing can be done by numerous other chip design firms, TSMC cannot be replaced.