[HN Gopher] Economist: Chipmaking Is Being Redesigned
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Economist: Chipmaking Is Being Redesigned
Author : klelatti
Score : 75 points
Date : 2021-01-22 17:50 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| mywittyname wrote:
| > But the logical endpoint of the relentless rise in
| manufacturing costs is that, at some point, one company, in all
| likelihood TSMC, could be the last advanced fab standing.
|
| Most established, capital-intensive markets are winner-take-all,
| where a few big players control the bulk of the market. And they
| usually remain at the top of the market until some fundamental
| paradigm shift occurs that causes the market to shrink.
|
| TSMC will be top dog for a while, until something happens that
| causes the market for custom made silicon to collapse. Just like
| Intel was top dog until something came along to replace the
| market for x86. Or like Microsoft was King Dingaling until people
| moved to mobile computing.
| noizejoy wrote:
| ... and IBM was King Dingaling until people moved to desktop
| computing
|
| p.s. and thus we have doxxed ourselves just a little bit: age
| group :-)
| 2sk21 wrote:
| You're correct - at one point in the late 70s or even the
| early 80s, IBM was the biggest chip manufacturer in the world
| but all of the produced chips were used in their own
| products.
| amelius wrote:
| > but all of the produced chips were used in their own
| products.
|
| Sounds like something Apple would do.
| 2sk21 wrote:
| IBM was _the_ prototypical vertically oriented company
| back in the late 70s before the PC - manufacture chips,
| build boards, build computers ranging from desktop to
| mainframes, develop the OS, provide finance for
| customers, offer integration services. Apple is nothing
| compared to IBM in its heyday.
|
| When I joined IBM in 1991, it was still a very inwardly
| focused company. Although it was clear that things were
| going to be changing rapidly in the industry, it was hard
| to get employees to understand how precarious things were
| - until the big layoffs of the mid 90s.
| noizejoy wrote:
| there was even a kind of "cloud computing": "time share
| computing"[0], since mainframe computers were financially
| our of reach for anyone but the very largest companies.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing
| singhrac wrote:
| This is too aggressive a take. Yes, TSMC is 50% of all EUV
| production right now. But it's only 50%. Samsung has huge
| resources and is on track to build a 3nm process by 2022/2023,
| which is not very far behind TSMC (though I don't know if their
| 3nm processes compare).
|
| Besides just diversifying global chip production, Samsung has
| the (geopolitical) benefit of being in a country with large US
| bases and plenty of internal demand for their chips (if the
| Exynos designers can produce something exceptional).
| ianai wrote:
| Or a third party decides to enter the market and go for
| position number 2. Apple could probably do it with the cash
| they roll - but they don't want to do so. A country could. It
| sure seems like chips are important enough to warrant a
| national supply - so international pressures can't weigh on you
| politically through chip supply.
| na85 wrote:
| I've long held the opinion that chip making will eventually
| go the route of uranium refining and become national
| strategic capabilities that all great powers will pursue. I'm
| continually surprised that this doesn't seem to be taking
| place outside th defence sector.
| mywittyname wrote:
| This is the case, actually. It's just this article is
| talking about chip production at the bleeding edge instead
| of the pedestrian chips used in the bulk of electronic
| devices.
|
| The boring chips made for use in American military
| equipment are largely produced domestically.
| ianai wrote:
| Honestly I'd blame governments being staffed by people who
| make their money in more traditional areas. Aka we need a
| generational change.
| bluGill wrote:
| Chip making is still advancing too fast for that. If the
| current processes are about the limit of physics, then
| eventually yes. Right now it is better to hope your country
| just does the next leapfrog of technology.
| ianai wrote:
| The TSMC model seems appropriate: Don't specialize in the
| design. Focus on the hardware and take designs from
| customers.
| lwneal wrote:
| > Today's state-of-the-art is five-nanometre chips (though "5nm"
| no longer refers to the actual size of transistors as earlier
| generations did).
|
| It's refreshing to see this mentioned. I'm no semiconductor
| expert, but it seems weird to me that although node size is
| measured in a physical unit, nanometers, it does not correspond
| to any real measurement that exists [1]. Each transistor in a 5nm
| chip is actually between 28 and 36 nanometers in width. It's
| called 5nm because of a theoretical calculation based on
| transistor density [2].
|
| If Tesla advertised a new "200kWh" battery, I would be very
| disappointed if it turned out that the battery only held 95kWh,
| but the marketing department had decided that improvements in the
| charging network have made it "like 200kWh" compared to earlier
| models.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process
|
| [2] https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Meaning_lost
| nyunai wrote:
| Interestingly, there is one dimension that still tracks the
| node number fairly closely.
|
| In fact, the node number has never referred to transistor
| dimension, but the length of the gate electrode. A transistor
| would typically be about 4 times larger than that.
|
| The reason to refer to the length of the gate electrode is
| because that was always the smallest feature printed on the
| chip. And that is what defined the required resolution of the
| lithography process.
|
| So, a lithography process with a resolution of 32nm would be
| able to print chips with 32nm gate lengths.
|
| Much has changed, and now transistors are no longer planar,
| they are 3-dimensional fin structures (FinFETs). The gate
| length scaling has slowed down, and now is not the smallest
| feature on the chip anymore.
|
| The smallest feature in a modern FinFET process is actually the
| with of those 'fi s' that form the transistor channels.
|
| And as if by magic, they correspond pretty well to the node
| names, i.e. a 5nm process will have a fin width of about 5nm.
|
| You will likely not find that mentioned anywhere, it's just a
| fun fact that I noticed as a VLSI technologist.
| kayson wrote:
| It's still a little disingenuous because most performance
| parameters are directly related to transistor lengths,
| whether finfet or not. There used to be a concept of
| "scaling" where you could roughly estimate that going from a
| 40nm process to a 28nm process, for example, would save you
| (28/40)^2 percent power. Finfet disrupted that to some
| extent, but it partly held true as physical lengths actually
| continued to decrease with node names. By now, though, it is
| generally understood that state-of-the-art process node
| numbers doesn't mean much in that regard.
|
| I also just checked a handful of processes I have access to,
| and at least in these cases, the fin width doesn't scale with
| the technology name (e.g. 5nm and 7nm has 8nm fin width drawn
| in layout, and model indicates 27nm "width" per fin). This
| isn't much of a surprise to me, because foundries are just
| decreasing the number with newer generations of the tech,
| even if the lithography (the method by which features are
| etched into the silicon) hasn't significantly changed. For
| example, 3 generations of a single process were called 7***,
| then 5***, then 4***.
| analog31 wrote:
| Similar story with audio amplifiers and "Watts." Also, I think
| that small gas engines like lawnmowers went through some kind
| of scandal related to their horsepower ratings.
| klodolph wrote:
| Yes, some amplifiers would be advertised with nonsense like
| "watts RMS". The concept of "watts RMS" makes no goddamn
| sense.
| analog31 wrote:
| Actually in the US, the term "Watts RMS" specifies that the
| measurement is done according to the FTC Amplifier Rule.
| Now that rule has its own pro's and con's of course, but at
| least it's pretty definite. With all of these things,
| there's a corresponding European rule as well.
|
| Whether the measurement method is appropriate to your use
| of an amplifier is of course anybody's guess.
| amluto wrote:
| How about vacuum cleaners with HP? I guarantee that there
| isn't a 3HP motor that works on a 120VAC (RMS) 15A (RMS)
| circuit.
| m-ee wrote:
| A friend worked on a blender. The wattage number was
| derived from the inrush current when first turned on.
| amelius wrote:
| I can see how an average consumer would fall for "5nm". But
| this is targeted at engineers ...
| emteycz wrote:
| Remember when Mercedes E230 meant 2.3 litre engine? I feel this
| is similar. Indeed a long history as another commenter points
| out.
| noncoml wrote:
| Yup. Similar with BMW. 330 meant 3 liter engine. Now it's all
| the "equivalent" game.
| GoOnThenDoTell wrote:
| 230 deci-litre?
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I bought a 1 Terabyte hardrive, and it only contained 1000GB.
| It compares well against all the competitors because they pull
| the same trick too
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| I thought the 5nm referred to the smallest dimension in a
| FinFet device. Specifically, the fin: "In theory, the finFET
| hits its limit when the fin width reaches 5nm, which is close
| to where it is today." [0]
|
| https://semiengineering.com/5nm-vs-3nm/
| xxpor wrote:
| I feel that stuff like this has a long history in engineering.
| It's like how TVs are in the 55 in "class", or a 2x4 is
| actually something like 1.75x3.5 now.
| wfleming wrote:
| 2x4s _are_ 2x4 before they 're seasoned, though. The lumber
| is dried after dimensioning and shrinks as it loses moisture.
| But we still label it by the original dimensions because
| lumber is priced by the board foot (which is itself a weird
| archaic measure) of the lumber when it was cut.
|
| For comparison, sheet goods aren't priced this way. A 3/4"
| sheet of plywood really is 3/4", because the plywood was
| manufactured that way and as a manufactured product there is
| no seasoning.
|
| You're not being ripped off because a 2x4 is actually
| smaller. A sawmill had a tree, and they cut off a hunk of
| that tree, and they charge by how much wood they cut off. The
| dimensions of that piece of wood changed after they cut it
| (which in and of itself is a service they provide - it would
| be a hassle if you had to buy green lumber and dry it
| yourself).
| highfreq wrote:
| I work in sawmill technology. Way back in history 2x4 were
| cut to 2" x 4". In a modern sawmill 2x4s are never cut to
| 2" x 4". They are cut to a thickness and width such that
| given saw deviation, and variable drying shrinkage nearly
| all boards will cleanly plane down to 1.5" x 3.5". The
| exact target dimensions will depend on how well the mill
| can control their saw deviations and the statistical range
| of shrinkage they expect for the wood they are cutting.
| Reducing dimension targets by controlling saw deviation and
| understanding drying shrinkage is a big part of sawmill
| efficiency and profitability.
| wfleming wrote:
| Fair enough, thanks for those details. Out of curiosity,
| do you know roughly what the target dimensions usually
| are now a days? I'm curious how much the efficiency gains
| are.
|
| It's interesting that lumber kind of _looks_ like
| shrinkflation (what the comment I was originally
| responding to suggested), but it 's more that technical
| improvements have allowed producing the same finished
| product with less input material. But we still label the
| stuff by the amount of input material it _used_ to take
| for historical reasons, which at a glance looks like
| shrinkflation.
| peteradio wrote:
| 2x4 in old houses will measure 2x4 and is "rough cut".
| Modern milling will turn rough cut true 2x4 into the clean
| cut "2x4" you use today by running them through additional
| planing process. I don't think any shrinkage is significant
| though.
|
| 3/4 plywood will measure less than 3/4.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| 3/4 inch plywood is usually actually about .7 inches
| wfleming wrote:
| Does this vary more depending on the plywood grade,
| maybe? I have some shelving I made from AB birch, and it
| looks pretty close to .75. Maybe 1/64 scant. (Although I
| don't have calipers handy and just used a tape measure,
| so I'm not being super precise.)
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's not new: CRT TVs and monitors were marketed by the size
| of the tube, rather than the size of the visible part (the
| screen itself).
| joshualross wrote:
| I don't think we should limit to just engineering; you see
| this stuff in media, politics, finances, statistics, etc.
| Anything that is not well understood by the public at large
| is ripe for misuse.
| gumby wrote:
| "Building" (or worse "designing") a computer is assembling
| lego bricks. Serious language inflation.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| On the plus side, MT/mm^2 seems to be gaining steam as a
| metric. It removes one dimension of cheating _and_ has the
| whole "bigger is better" thing going for it.
| [deleted]
| acidbaseextract wrote:
| A nice approach I'm hoping will gain traction when discussing
| density across different types of logic is the "LMC" metric,
| as put forward by some TSMC and Stanford folks:
| https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9063714
|
| _Improved semiconductor device density directly translates
| into benefits for more advanced computing systems-- the
| primary driver for progress in semiconductor technology.
| Thus, we propose the use of the following three-part number
| as a metric to gauge advancement of future semiconductor
| technologies: [DL, DM , DC ], where DL is the density of
| logic transistors (in # /mm2), DM is the bit density of main
| memory (currently the off-chip DRAM density, in #/mm2), and
| DC is the density of connections between the main memory and
| logic (in #/mm2). As an example, today's leading edge
| technologies that are published in the literature [15]-[17]
| can be characterized by [38M, 383M, 12K]. As another example,
| 3-D stacking of multiple logic and memory dies can increase
| DL, DM, and DC ._
| jjoonathan wrote:
| I love the idea of having that information readily
| available, but I don't think it will ever be a banner spec.
| Three numbers is two too many and who wants "density" when
| you can have "MEGATRANSISTORS"? I know, I know, but
| marketing is what it is and I think it's better to lean
| into it.
| elihu wrote:
| That's "mega-transistors" per mm^2?
|
| Perhaps it would be better to go with "6502s per square
| millimeter" or something like that that would probably be a
| closer approximation of real-world density, since it accounts
| for wire routing and so forth.
|
| SRAM density is sometimes used I think.
| amelius wrote:
| Today's chips have many more layers of interconnect than
| the 6502. Also the aspect ratios of transistors are
| different.
| kingosticks wrote:
| > And whereas designing your own chips once meant having to make
| them as well, that is no longer true.
|
| This hasn't been true for what, 15-20 years? Longer? If you had a
| digital design and enough cash you could have gone to one of many
| vendors, who in turn worked with an external fab such as TSMC (or
| in other cases, the fab division of the same company) to create
| your design. When working with a vendor like Broadcom, Agere,
| Toshiba, IBM, Intel, Marvel you can be entirely isolated from the
| physical aspects of making chips, if that's what you want. What
| has happened over the last few years is massive consolidation of
| these vendors so now the options are far more limited. It's
| basically just Broadcom or Marvel at the cutting edge. I don't
| think this goes anywhere to explain why more companies are
| designing their own chips but it's a more accurate description of
| reality.
| gitowiec wrote:
| Yes, we put chips in everything, and if this occurs
| https://youtu.be/hESunUuFrzk what then?
| adityar wrote:
| Non-paywall: https://outline.com/NTubwj
| nindalf wrote:
| Strange. Copying all of the content - is what they're doing
| legal?
| mmastrac wrote:
| IANAL, obviously, but it's probably not.. I don't see this as
| being very transformative. You'd probably have a tough time
| convincing a judge.
| curiousllama wrote:
| "It's not a lockpick, your honor. All it does is interact
| with the pins inside of certain types of locks to grant
| entry. Just like a key. They basically left the door open"
| worker767424 wrote:
| Like Elon Musk's definitely not a flamethrower.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/19/elon-musk-said-it-was-
| not-...
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| They haven't copied any content. Outline is a javascript app
| that changes the way your browser renders the website.
|
| It's your browser contacting economist.com and fetching the
| webpage. The javascript app then changes how it is rendered
| by removing stuff most people don't want to see.
|
| Outline is available as a browser extension, if you don't
| want to load it by visiting outline.com.
| trhway wrote:
| >It's your browser contacting economist.com and fetching
| the webpage
|
| chrome devtools->network tells different story.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's not true. It doesn't load the content through your
| browser, it loads it through its servers. They indeed copy
| content, and it's up to you to develop your own opinions as
| to the legality or ethicality of that. :)
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| Huh, I stand corrected. I should've looked more closely
| before commenting.
| ThisIsTheWay wrote:
| You could see the same with a quick Ctrl+U, Outline is just
| nicely formatted.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| I tried to find some numbers on the relative amount of chips in a
| standard ICE car vs. a BEV. I'd have to guess BEVs have perhaps
| even an order of magnitude more chips. Certainly, they have chips
| that are far more advanced, looking at the Tesla FSD computer[0].
|
| The chip industry, and the chip equipment industry are still
| capacity limited due to demands of remote work and school. That
| may level off and revert somewhat towards the end of the year.
| BEV sales may take up the slack, but also may demand a somewhat
| different chip supply chain and drive demand for different
| segments in the industry. We may well see the typical crash in
| equipment sales in 2022 as those two market drivers transpire.
|
| [0] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-fsd-computer-
| retrof...
| peter_d_sherman wrote:
| >"On january 13th Honda, a Japanese carmaker, said it had to shut
| its factory in Swindon, a town in southern England, for a while.
| Not because of Brexit, or workers sick with covid-19. The reason
| was a shortage of microchips. Other car firms are suffering, too.
| Volkswagen, which produces more vehicles than any other firm, has
| said it will make 100,000 fewer this quarter as a result. Like
| just about everything else these days--from banks to combine
| harvesters--cars cannot run without computers."
|
| https://www.auto123.com/en/news/the-devastating-effects-of-a...
|
| >"While car enthusiasts the world over are worried about assembly
| plant closures following the earthquake that ravaged Japan, many
| are still unaware of the significant role played by companies
| working at the start of the colossal logistical chain that
| results in the production of a vehicle.
|
| _Did you know that a single vehicle uses from 30 to over 100
| chips_
|
| to control things like the parking brake, stereo, power steering
| and safety systems such as stability control? Development of
| these components is extremely complex, and only a handful of
| companies are able to meet the demands of the world's automotive
| giants."
|
| PDS: _The world 's automobile manufacturers, that is,
|
| the world's carmakers --
|
| would, or should have, a collective interest in IC/Chip
| fabrication -- especially in light of the most recent
| shortage..._
| trhway wrote:
| >Did you know that a single vehicle uses from 30 to over 100
| chips
|
| trying to sell extended warranty the dealer made sure to repeat
| that again and again ( i still didn't buy and as of now, 5.5
| years later, no chip nor anything else has failed so far :)
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| I used to work at an automotive electronics supplier back in
| the 1990s. The "typical" mainstream car crossed the 30-chip
| over 20 years ago. It would have had more than 10 in the
| early 1980s.
|
| _Most_ of this stuff is extremely reliable!
| kaonwarb wrote:
| Reminds me of the time a dealer tried to convince me with
| "math" that I was guaranteed to save money by buying the
| extended warranty. I asked if that meant they were guaranteed
| to lose money, and if so, why they were trying so hard to
| sell it to me. They moved on pretty quick from that.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| It's really a kind of insurance, and like insurance it's a
| gamble. On average dealerships must win, or they would't
| offer it, but that's not to say that some customers don't
| "win" if they got unlucky with their car.
|
| That being said, I opted out of it with my last car.
| gumby wrote:
| I did buy an extended warranty for one car, never had a
| warranty claim until it broke down with only about three
| or four months left on the warranty. That one paid off.
|
| In another car (same mfr) I looked into getting one when
| the regular warranty was about to run out. Sales guy
| looked and said: main thing that happens to these older
| cars is X and Y and you already replaced X so it's not
| worth it. I always wondered if what he really meant was
| "main thing that happens is something expensive and I'd
| rather get paid retail to fix that". Either way I skipped
| it and never had a problem.
|
| I do consider it insurance.
| llcoolv wrote:
| I don't really believe that such thing as a shortage exists in
| a free-market economy. Executives who complain of shortages are
| just way too rigid with their planning and are not willing to
| pay the increased price. Exactly this goes for VW.
| npunt wrote:
| Your faith in free markets may be a bit misplaced. There's a
| long history of semiconductor shortages followed by markets
| being flooded due to lack of demand predictability and the
| capital costs and lag time of scaling manufacturing. DRAM
| manufacturers have several times illegally colluded to avoid
| these circumstances (and thus maintain profit margin).
| jariel wrote:
| Structural barriers are 'real things' even in free market
| economies. The size, complexity, barriers to entry, massive
| government subsidies, geopolitics are all part of the
| equation at that level. If this was about 'wheat' or 'shoes'
| then yes, but at this level the equation is different.
|
| Also, these execs are not dumb, if they could just 'adjust
| their price and sell 100K more cars' ... well, they've
| thought of that.
|
| Probably what needs to happen is Merkel, Bojo, EU leadership
| (and same in other countries) might need to pipe in with
| something to facilitate the economy, but that's also fraught
| with risks, it's not like Norway Statoil whereby they just
| have to 'get the Oil from under the sea and it's bank'.
| ahepp wrote:
| Auto companies cut the orders because they anticipated
| falling demand[0]
|
| >Mr Duesmann described the problems as "a crisis upon a
| crisis". Demand for cars slumped for much of last year
| because of the coronavirus pandemic, prompting auto suppliers
| to cut their orders for the computer chips that manage
| everything from a car's brakes and steering to its electric
| windows and distance sensors.
|
| >But demand for cars jumped unexpectedly in the final three
| months of 2020, as buyers became more optimistic. Audi had
| its best quarter ever, largely because of a rebound in China.
|
| [0] https://on.ft.com/39V7w9h (paywalled after 3 free
| accesses)
| bluGill wrote:
| Car makers are big, but to a chip maker they are a tiny
| customer. I suspect more than one car maker has considered
| making their own fab, but the costs are just too high. (My
| company has in fact done that, we didn't open a fab last year
| because of the costs - I'm not sure that was the right
| decision given the costs we have spent porting working
| software to the replacement instead, and we have a fraction
| of the volume of the big auto makers)
|
| Manufacturing is a core competency of any car maker (second
| to supply chain). I wouldn't be surprised to see a fab
| partner ship between automakers in the future just to ensure
| they can get the chips they need. This will be at least as
| much about ensuring old chips don't go obsolete as about
| supply.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| I don't think that is right in the short term, which is the
| time horizon the article discusses. Eventually, baring an
| actual physical resource constraint, the market will take
| care of it but in the short term something will have to give.
| ahepp wrote:
| According to the news sources I've been reading[0], this is a
| management failure by auto companies rather than some kind of
| structural issue with the chip industry. So it doesn't really
| make sense to me that automakers might build their own fab.
| They're the problem, not the fab. They're crying to the
| newspapers because it looks bad to admit they were cheap and
| will have to furlough workers. Politicians are playing along
| with the shortage angle, because when you save a worker's job
| they tend to vote for you. I predict the end result will be
| politicians spending taxpayer money to make filling these
| orders worth the fab's time.
|
| >Mr Duesmann described the problems as "a crisis upon a
| crisis". Demand for cars slumped for much of last year because
| of the coronavirus pandemic, prompting auto suppliers to cut
| their orders for the computer chips that manage everything from
| a car's brakes and steering to its electric windows and
| distance sensors.
|
| >But demand for cars jumped unexpectedly in the final three
| months of 2020, as buyers became more optimistic. Audi had its
| best quarter ever, largely because of a rebound in China.
|
| You say that development of the chips in cars is extremely
| complex, but I was under the impression car chips are generally
| outdated, semi-rugged processors that might have some
| additional safety features like lockstep cores. The control
| systems algorithms for the functions you describe aren't
| particularly complicated as far as I know.
|
| Auto manufacturers are infamous for cost cutting. I assume
| selling them chips is a low margin high volume business, in
| which case I would be glad to replace their orders with higher
| margin ones at the earliest opportunity.
|
| [0] https://on.ft.com/39V7w9h (paywalled after 3 free accesses)
| ahepp wrote:
| (if anyone wants to read the article but can't, feel free to
| comment and I'll reply with a new link)
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| How much of the cost is in the design of the fab factory vs its
| physical manufacture?
|
| My hunch is now that chip design and chip manufacturing are
| separate, the cost of chip design is going to be revealed as a
| lot lower because the opaque accounting of before allowed for
| stupid inefficiencies.
|
| But in this case, I have no idea whether funding the basic
| materials engineering, scaling it up, or building the scaled up
| design, is the hard part.
| hctaw wrote:
| The two can't be separated at birth. Design is an iterative
| process that requires feedback loops with the manufacturing
| teams (including testing and packaging, which may or may not be
| a part of the fab).
|
| Just an example, the design has to be altered to maximize
| yields. You don't know what the yields are like or what to
| alter in the design until you make a few chips and test them,
| which means you need to design the test harnesses, tape out a
| prototype, and get both to where they need to be. And then try
| again.
|
| If the testing, fab, and design people/materials are in
| different places you have to move things and people around as a
| part of the process.
|
| It's just an expensive endeavor that's difficult conceptually
| and logistically, with a lot of institutional knowledge
| required.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I'm not necessary agreeing with that. Chip fab, jet engine
| fab, etc. are all at the limits of what Capitalism can
| handle, as the geopolitics, protectionism, and cronyism
| attests. The solution is less than clear:
|
| - Because of the enormous costs of duplicated effort. I'm not
| sure anti-trust will work.
|
| - Nationalist duplication might, but I am not sure whether it
| will hinder or hasten WWIII.
|
| - Radical IP disembargo with institutional cross pollination
| works better for codified then opaque-institutional
| knowledge.
|
| What is nice about vertical disintegration is is forces the
| the institutional knowledge to by codified. So maybe things
| can work in tandem, too.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You don't need to put the name of the publication in the title,
| HN does it automatically.
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