[HN Gopher] How real is America's chipmaking renaissance?
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How real is America's chipmaking renaissance?
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 174 points
Date : 2023-08-08 13:41 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| javajosh wrote:
| When these types of things are funded one always gets the sinking
| feeling that the money is just getting stolen and/or wasted by
| savvy insiders who know how to write grants or who know the right
| people. In fact, I think that's a reasonable assumption and some
| proof is required to show that it is not the case.
| addfgionio wrote:
| It's hard to fake a building going up.
| jgeada wrote:
| The building is the easy part, almost trivial part.
|
| Getting the enough ASML machines to supply a fab for an
| advanced process (and they have a backlog that is almost a
| decade long), starting up the whole complex logistical
| process to feed the fab (with lots of single source suppliers
| that are already committed to the existing fab capacity),
| getting all the necessary personal and skillsets started and
| getting the fab working, creating all the little feeder
| companies that are necessary around the fab, all that is
| _hard_ work. It is is something that the US has largely lost
| most knowledge of how to do with all the outsourcing of
| industrial capacity.
|
| And all this has to be done agains the upwind pressures of
| our service economy. Our politicians are largely lawyers, our
| financial sector focuses on short term returns, and our
| companies are rife with lawyers and MBA layers taking their
| cut out of the necessary investments in manufacturing and
| engineering. None of this is encouraging for the necessary
| long term slog to bring back industrial capacity,
| particularly something with as complex and deep logistical
| tail as semiconductor manufacturing.
| adventured wrote:
| The solution to what you mention is to turn the big levers
| that have an outsized impact.
|
| Such as slashing the corporate tax rate (and the offset is
| to raise the individual tax rate on higher incomes). Which
| is the Ireland model, and it works extraordinarily well
| (even more so if you already have a desirable foundation).
| Cut it far enough and it'll lure more companies and jobs
| than you can absorb. And meanwhile the corporate income tax
| is an increasingly trivial component of the US Government's
| funding, it's no longer very important. If anything we
| should cut it further (~15%) and very aggressively pull
| companies, investment, R&D, manufacturing out of foreign
| nations and into the US. The corporate tax rate is a
| magnet, the lower you go the stronger it is (and there is
| no doubt a significant diminishing of returns as you go
| below a certain % figure).
|
| Increase the standing incentives (not only one-off programs
| like the CHIPS Act).
| rsynnott wrote:
| While that's true, what _can_ happen with these sorts of
| subsidised projects is that the building goes up, but...
| that's about it, and nothing much ever happens in the
| building (this was essentially the case with that Foxconn
| Wisconsin thing, say). That said, that does _not_ seem to be
| the case in this instance, but, in general, a building going
| up isn't great evidence for anything.
| barelyauser wrote:
| They profited offshoring now they will charge you to bring it
| back so they can profit some more. The wheel will continue to
| spin and nothing will come from it. Just enjoy the ride.
| bitsage wrote:
| This is exactly how I feel which is conflicting because my
| company gains from such funds. My multinational employer, based
| outside of the US, has been expanding into the US for years due
| to shrinking growth opportunity in Asia and Europe. In recent
| All Hands, the NA head has mentioned we're applying for
| millions in grants through the IRA which is essentially
| subsidizing what we were planning to do all along.
|
| I hope this at least means there's no excuse to cut bonuses in
| upcoming years though.
| epistasis wrote:
| While skepticism is good, the skepticism should go both ways.
| What other types of funding like this are you thinking about?
|
| It's been a long time since the US did industrial policy.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > When these types of things are funded one always gets the
| sinking feeling that the money is just getting stolen and/or
| wasted by savvy insiders who know how to write grants or who
| know the right people.
|
| That's definitely the feeling I get when I see the grants that
| get given out for Broadband to underserved areas. So much money
| gets spent on infrastructure for not much actual benefit.
|
| Hopefully these fabs don't follow down that road. If nothing
| else, it'll be a lot easier to check and see if the objective
| were achieved, compared to broadband which is inherently much
| more decentralized.
| javajosh wrote:
| It would be cool if there was a neighborhood watch but for
| projects and/or money. Like, a couple dozen people in the
| community who watch that specific money like a hawk, to make
| sure it benefits the community and moves along at a good pace
| and the actors don't take advantage.
| nordsieck wrote:
| One good thing with broadband is that the FCC is making
| companies publish service maps.
|
| I've heard from multiple people that they've looked at the
| map and forced companies to make amendments when they claim
| to offer service in an area but don't actually.
| merman wrote:
| Good thing there are $200B worth of proof already. At what
| point would you be satisfied, if 100% of semi manufacturing
| took place in the US and 0 chips were manufactured elsewhere
| the instant the grants were handed out?
| crote wrote:
| The big question is what _exactly_ is being built.
|
| The CHIPS Act was marketed as an "AI cold war", and needing
| to bring high-tech research and production back to the US. Is
| is actually doing that by incentivizing companies to build
| leading-edge fabs in the US, or are companies just using it
| as free money to expand the production capacity of their
| trailing-edge processes?
|
| Sure, having locally-sourced trailing-edge chips is still
| better than getting them from overseas, but it doesn't
| exactly do anything to reach the intended goals.
| javajosh wrote:
| It's odd but comments like yours would normally elicit
| something like anger, now elicit sadness. Why do you take
| this tone? Why do you willfully misunderstand my point? Why
| not take a charitable view?
|
| I'd be happy if even half of that money actually went into a
| fab, and only half was wasted on lawyers, fees, studies, and
| wherever else free money manages to go rather than to
| actually building things. The timeline doesn't matter, nor
| does the fraction of on-shore chips made. You created those
| measurements out of thin air.
| merman wrote:
| I took a very charitable take of your comment, that at best
| can be interpreted as "this policy was completely useless"
| when the evidence is staring you in the face. TSMC was
| clearly motivated by CHIPS to build fabs in the US for
| dozens of billions and pocketed a fraction of that as a
| handout. The fact that I'm writing this obvious information
| down is charitable.
| ptero wrote:
| While not specific to chipmaking, Lyn Alden's latest public
| newsletter on reshoring is, as always, excellent:
| https://www.lynalden.com/reshoring/
|
| The relevant point is that while the manufacturing portion is
| real, successful reshoring also requires skilled labor. Skilled
| labor for fab production is not something US has now and it takes
| many years to grow; and it is not clear if the US has the desire
| and the will to foster this growth.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Those are good points, and there's one more. If we want supply
| chain security, we need to scale up the rest of the ecosystem
| to go from chips to a packaged products on a shelf. That goes
| back to your point about fostering the growth... we need to
| foster the rest of the vertical too.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I think we have to wait until the buildings are out outputing
| merchandise and making some $$$.
| psd1 wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't fabs need plentiful water?
|
| Why Arizona and Texas...?
| bagacrap wrote:
| Don't mean to alarm you but Texas is a coastal state
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| But Texas is also the size of the four states to its east.
| Georgia is a coastal state. If you pull from Brunswick, GA
| and send it to just outside St. Louis, that distance is
| covered within the single state of Texas.
|
| That said, we don't pull sea water to supply water for
| industry - desalination is too costly.
| rendang wrote:
| There's enough water in Arizona that pecans and cotton are
| grown there, undoubtedly less $/H2O industries than
| semiconductors
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| The populated areas of Texas have plenty of water.
| tylerfontaine wrote:
| Texas is quite large and only a small part of it, relatively,
| is desert.
| robgibbons wrote:
| Most likely, the fabs got competitive tax incentives from those
| states.
| sprynr wrote:
| > State leaders had helped persuade the companies to open the
| facilities by offering big tax breaks and water and other
| infrastructure grants. > Intel soon announced a $20 billion
| expansion in Chandler, with two additional factories that would
| bring 3,000 new jobs to the state. Chandler also approved $30
| million in water and road improvements for the new plants.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/22/technology/arizona-chips-...
|
| Basically just told them "Don't worry about it, we'll foot the
| bill for any infrastructure needed to get you your water"
| riskable wrote:
| Fabs need _ultra_ pure water and it 's cheaper to recycle the
| water they use than rely on city water supplies. So they need a
| _ton_ of water initially but once they 're up and running they
| don't need much water after that. Because of this, even a
| desert environment like Arizona is fine.
| s_dev wrote:
| What about the vast energy required by fabs? Do you have a
| special tax to reinvest and maintain the grid or do they pay
| the same rates as a normal Arizona grocery store? Texas is
| hardly a paragon of a stable grid given the blackouts the
| past few years.
| bluGill wrote:
| Despite the headlines, Texas has a fairly stable grid. They
| have work to do, but all grids do. In the end it doesn't
| matter too much as you cannot make a grid stable enough to
| rely on without backup power onsite and once you have that
| you can ride out most unstable events.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Despite the headlines, Texas has a fairly stable grid.
|
| Have the power generators applied any of the
| recommendations in the report commissioned by ERCOT after
| the 2021 blackouts? When the 2021 blackouts happened,
| they had not implemented any of the winterization updates
| recommended by the another report a decade earlier
| (2011). The outcome of the 2021 blackouts was the
| legislature allowing utility companies to claw back their
| "losses" from customers' bills over 10+ years - with no
| obligation to make changes or investing in equipment to
| ensure there same cascading failures won't happen again.
| boringg wrote:
| How much of this chipmaking renaissance can be compared to the
| American Factory Netflix documentary having some of the same
| challenges? I understand that shows the difference in culture
| more than anything but underneath it also speaks of efficiency
| which is of high importance.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| I think a few key differences compared American Factory is the
| Chinese glass factory effectively replaced the automotive
| factory, China doesn't have strong relations to the US, and the
| factory was framed as the project of one Chinese businessman.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Given the issues tsmc had already had with Arizona, I personally
| doubt much will come of this. But who knows?
| gostsamo wrote:
| Surprisingly few people engage with the main points of the
| article. It is pointed out how much money are spent, but the
| article is about how profitable those fabs will be. The author is
| conservative in judgments, but they ask a few questions worth
| considering, mainly: are the fabs big and efficient enough to
| offset the slower build, which is also more expensive, for lower
| volumes of production.
| User23 wrote:
| The real question is how unprofitable will it be to remain
| dependent on Taiwan in the face of the inevitable conflict
| coming with China. US and Europe based fabs could literally
| lose money and require subsidies and still net out as less
| expensive.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| I wouldn't talk of a conflict with China as inevitable.
| Competition is fine but no one in their right mind should
| wish for military conflict with China, it would be a tragedy
| for humanity.
| Beached wrote:
| wish for and expect are two different things. I wish the
| war in Ukraine would end tomorrow, I don't expect it will
| though.
|
| while China invading Taiwan is not a guarantee, it is
| certainly highly probable. this risk should be taken into
| account by the us government
| isykt wrote:
| Why do you think it's highly probable?
| bee_rider wrote:
| Competition is inevitable, conflict, no at least I hope not.
| Of course, we (the US) can't make them decide not to attack
| Taiwan, but our countries have managed the tricky situation
| so far.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Profitability on the fab level is the wrong metric. Producing
| semiconductors, like producing vaccines, has large positive
| externalities. It enables basically the entire rest of the
| economy to function. These fabs could lose billions, kept alive
| by government subsidies, and _still_ be a great deal for the
| country as a whole.
| boringg wrote:
| Macro economic arguments are pretty big here.
| twoodfin wrote:
| It's hard to believe anything at the scale and complexity of
| a modern semiconductor fab industry could remain competitive
| without actually facing competitive market pressures.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| I think this applies to manufacturing in general (it is good
| for a society to build things).
|
| The trouble is that capturing government subsidies can become
| a business by itself.
|
| As long as the subsidies are there to restart involvement I
| think you get the benefits without profitability. If real
| profitability isn't a medium-to-long-term goal, things could
| get messed up.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think most of us only can reply to the first paragraph or so,
| and the first plot, because of the paywall. So most of the
| conversation is about the headline.
| gostsamo wrote:
| there is an archive.is link posted in the comments and at
| least firefox has extensions for circumventing paywalls.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think many people are just clicking on the main shared
| link, rather than using those tools.
|
| For me personally--in general, I read the story that the
| author/publisher intentionally posted for public
| discussion. While it is possible to circumvent paywalls, I
| wouldn't want to go against the will of the author and
| their publisher.
|
| I think it is weird that we allow discussion of
| unauthorized copying of text here, but we don't seem to
| allow (at least as far as I've seen) links for unauthorized
| copying of, say, movies or music.
| overtomanu wrote:
| Below extension will be useful
|
| https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'd have to check and see how it works. I'm happy to block
| ads (I'll render whatever I'm sent however I want), but I
| wouldn't want to access content that the publisher didn't
| intend to send.
| burkaman wrote:
| It works for sites that set a cookie to limit how many
| free articles you can see without logging in, or sites
| that let search engine scrapers bypass the paywall to
| read the full content.
|
| I would say it's a little more ethically questionable
| than ad blocking. Ad blocking is like buying a paper from
| a newsstand and duct taping over the ads - totally fine,
| it's my paper and I'll do whatever I want with it. This
| extension is like hanging around the newsstand reading
| all the front pages until the owner shoos you away, and
| then coming back with a fake mustache to keep reading.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Yeah, it feels vaguely more grey-area than ad blocking.
| Although that's just a gut read, not very reliable.
|
| I'm very much ideological about being in the camp: you
| can send me whatever you want, and I'll render it however
| I want, and anyone who has a problem that is the problem.
|
| I'm not sure how I feel about impersonating a scraper or
| switching around my cookies so that the site sends me
| something else.
|
| Actually, this is legitimately the first question in this
| area that has gotten me confused in a while; if the tool
| was impersonating somebody, a specific person with
| account, that's just be straightforwardly unauthorized
| access. Impersonating a category of user that has no
| actual specific identity, but that they default to
| allowing access? That seems... I mean, doesn't really
| seem like lying exactly, but it also doesn't seem totally
| honest. Tricky!
| burkaman wrote:
| I think it's clearly dishonest, but fairly limited
| potential to harm the business. It's on the same moral
| level as going to a chain restaurant every week and
| telling them it's your birthday every time so they give
| you a free dessert. It's definitely lying but you're not
| going to put them out of business. If everyone started
| doing this, they'd just get rid of the free dessert/free
| article policy and probably be fine.
| bee_rider wrote:
| One thing that gives me a little pause is, these sites,
| they treat search engine scrapers preferably to humans,
| right? And the scraper's job is to categorize sites and
| recommend them to people.
|
| So, IMO, it is more like: if most restaurants gave
| reviewers preferential treatment and tended to comp their
| meals, and this was very well known, and you went around
| telling everybody you were a reviewer. Which also seems
| dishonest, but it isn't like you are exploiting some nice
| little cute good-faith thing like free dessert on your
| birthday, you are exploiting the restaurant's attempt to
| get a better review. Seems, like, dishonest but fair
| play.
|
| And, I'd love if search engines would stop giving me
| paywalled sites, haha. So maybe it would be nice if
| everyone would exploit this loophole, they could close
| it, and the whole system would get a little more honest.
| (I'm not doing it unilaterally though).
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's interesting to see that, in the end, the domestic
| manufacturing guys were right but in a different way. The biggest
| blockers to America presently are ossified construction and
| manufacturing. Chip fabs delayed due to local red tape. Ammo
| factories cannot expand manufacturing because they are now
| historic buildings. Fascinating.
| adventured wrote:
| These 'problems' are all solved with more funds, which the US
| Government has a very, very large supply of (courtesy of the
| global reserve currency).
|
| Producing more ammo isn't a serious problem, it's a trivial
| problem that the Pentagon & Co. are in the process of
| resolving.
| FreshStart wrote:
| Any Political backed endavour life's the memory duration of the
| system. Aka if politicians change every year and the average drop
| out rate is 1/5 your political crisis memory dilutes down to 0.5
| of the politicianpopulation in 3 years. Opposition is viable to
| have a consensus. Of course if internal mismanagement makes
| abandoning a "learned beehive our" earlier a rallying battleflag,
| the laws making the endavour viable might evaporate sooner.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| America's basic socioeconomic structual model is highly flawed
| and any company wanting to do manufacturing here will see obvious
| disadvantages compared to Europe or Asia.
|
| 1) Employers are responsible for employee health coverage,
| inflating employee costs by a significant degree. The rationale
| for this model among the investor class is that it makes
| employees dependent on their employer and limits the power of
| unions, but for example in Germany, there's free state-supplied
| health care (paid for by higher taxes on individual and corporate
| profits).
|
| 2) Four decades of neoliberal trade policy and corporate profit
| maximization have created a situation of fragile global supply
| chain dependence and a lack of skilled experienced labor in many
| manufacturing sectors. High-skill manufacturing jobs have been
| replaced with low-skill service jobs and the brain drain into the
| financial sector has left the industrial sector in second place.
|
| 3) Construction and operation of new manufacturing facilities
| relies on a robust domestic infrastructure system, but American
| infrastructure (railroads, electricity grids, ports, etc.) is
| woefully decrepit in many areas and lags behind China and Europe.
| Again the reason is nobody wants to pay for it, and the issue is
| not 'overregulation' it's that it would require higher taxes and
| corrupt government contractors divert government funds into their
| own pockets instead of into the projects, resulting in constant
| cost overruns and low-quality outputs (reminscent with what went
| on with Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction contracts).
|
| It turns out worshipping at the feet of Milton Friedman & Co.
| wasn't such a good idea after all.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| On point 1, it would be interesting to see the per employee
| costs both in taxes and payrolls/benefits between mostly
| identical companies in the US and somewhere like Sweden. I
| imagine it might be higher in Sweden.
| strictnein wrote:
| BMW would seem to be in a good position to judge the
| manufacturing capabilities of both Europe and the US, with
| their large presence in both.
|
| $1.7 billion expansion in the US towards the end of 2022:
|
| https://www.bmwgroup-werke.com/spartanburg/en/news/2022/BMW-...
|
| Expanding on their already expansive presence in Spartanburg.
| The X3-X7 and their newest high end vehicle the XM are all
| built in the US:
|
| https://www.bmwgroup-werke.com/spartanburg/en.html
|
| Mercedes, another company that knows about manufacturing in
| Europe and the US, is producing some of their newest vehicles
| in the US, including new electronic vehicles that debuted in
| 2022, the EQE and EQS. The 2024 Maybach EQS680, with an
| estimated price of $200k, is also built in the US.
|
| Toyota is spending $2.5 billion to expand their US facilities:
|
| https://pressroom.toyota.com/toyota-announces-2-5-billion-ex...
| BirAdam wrote:
| KIA and Hyundai have built and are building more in Georgia
| as well.
| adolph wrote:
| > obvious disadvantages compared to Europe or Asia
|
| > Employers are responsible for employee health coverage,
| inflating employee costs by a significant degree
|
| > for example in Germany, there's free state-supplied health
| care (paid for by higher taxes on individual and corporate
| profits).
|
| TANSTAAFL, just choose your favorite accounting structure. A
| company with a younger contract workforce (and likely lower
| spending/risk profile) might find the funding model
| advantageous.
| addfgionio wrote:
| >Construction and operation of new manufacturing facilities
| relies on a robust domestic infrastructure system, but American
| infrastructure (railroads, electricity grids, ports, etc.) is
| woefully decrepit in many areas and lags behind China and
| Europe. Again the reason is nobody wants to pay for it,
|
| A whole lot of people want to pay for it. The problem is that a
| minority doesn't, and they've been able to ruin things for the
| rest of us.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I don't think much associated with fabs ships by rail, even
| in Europe.
| kadu123 wrote:
| [flagged]
| mejthemage wrote:
| I think you're looking for ":q!"
| kadu123 wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| black_13 wrote:
| [dead]
| frognumber wrote:
| My question: As an American, why should I work in IC fabrication?
| I'm competing with low-cost Asians who set a cap on my salary.
| Work conditions, income, and everything else is worse than SWE.
|
| I switched away from electronics early in my career, and it seems
| like a strict win.
|
| As much as I believe in on-shoring, I'm not sure those issues
| can, will, or should be fixed.
| PKop wrote:
| They may be forced upon us, regardless of the negatives you
| highlight, if globalization and free-trade brakes down and/or
| the international trade-value of the $ goes down making the
| cost-benefit for domestic sourcing more favorable.
| slingnow wrote:
| You're right. Why should any American ever work in any job that
| doesn't favorably compare to SWE salary and working conditions?
| Everyone should quit their jobs and become a SWE. It's just
| that simple, right?
|
| /s
| mrkstu wrote:
| The issue is that there is a high level of overlap between
| the skill sets/aptitudes necessary to work in the chip
| industry and on the software side, and in some subsets, its
| substantially easier on the SWE side. Why work harder for
| less if the general aptitude for jobs is about equal?
| mcntsh wrote:
| Honest question but won't these "low-cost Asians" not be as
| much of a factor on wages if the fabrications are in the US?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Depends if there are tariffs that incentivize purchase of
| more expensive American chips.
| kakwa_ wrote:
| For the "can" part, looking at the numbers, it looks possible.
|
| If I take TSMC, they have:
|
| * $73b revenue
|
| * $32b income
|
| * 73000 employees
|
| (2022 numbers from wikipedia)
|
| That's a really high margin, and a really high revenue per
| employee. This means there is probably room to accommodate for
| higher wages.
|
| The concern I have revolves more around the US work culture.
| Employees tend to switch company frequently. Given how critical
| institutional knowledge is for running these fabs, this is a
| handicap.
|
| I also cannot shake the feeling that the lack of regulations
| regarding working conditions might also be detrimental. Better
| regulations and compensation rules regarding night shifts or
| on-call for example could improve things greatly and attract
| far more workers in this field.
| aj7 wrote:
| Ans. To make a living.
| [deleted]
| danpalmer wrote:
| I don't think the target job market here is six figure salaries
| for SWEs, I think it's mid-high 5 figure salaries for skilled
| manufacturing employees.
|
| More than Asia, but same order of magnitude, maybe even the
| same ballpark for some areas.
|
| I expect most chip design will still be done in Asia and those
| are the high paying jobs.
| duxup wrote:
| Won't we have to wait to find out?
| tylerfontaine wrote:
| I live in a relatively small city that has a 30B phased wafer fab
| project under way, and an another separate 5B wafer fab project
| underway, and plans for at least one more in the next couple
| years.
|
| Anecdotal, of course, but there's some real things being built
| for sure.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Is that a city that TSMC is already throwing under the bus and
| saying the American workers there are lazy and not cut out for
| their harder Taiwanese business/work ethic?
| https://9to5mac.com/2023/06/29/tsmc-arizona-chip-plant-delay...
|
| I don't think any of this onshoring, if it ever actually
| happens, is going to be a net positive for the areas that host
| the fabs. TSMC is already sending hundreds of their own workers
| over to America to work on stuff because they aren't happy with
| the local workforce, I don't see any reason why this will
| change any time soon. The US is just going to be a place they
| send their workers to fab chips in plants that got sweet
| cost/tax breaks, and that they don't care at all about
| polluting the local environment.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Is this perhaps just sour grapes from TSMC because they
| actually need to _train_ the new workforce?
| quantumwannabe wrote:
| The hilarious thing is that when TSMC was founded they had
| to train _EVERYONE_. Taiwan had zero chip fabrication
| talent. All of the specialists at the time, even the
| _founder_ of TSMC, were in the US. For them to complain
| that it 's impossible to train a workforce is laughable and
| is most likely just racism/nationalism.
| serjester wrote:
| To be fair the expertise needed to produce chips in 1987
| and 2023 is radically different.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| The continuity of knowledge transitioning from one
| generation of production to the next shouldn't be
| underrated. If you started in 1987 with state-of-the-art
| knowledge and kept up with the advances, your knowledge
| would have transformed over the years.
|
| Of course, if you're just getting started now, the
| knowledge from 1987 is of little use (not entirely
| useless though) and indeed drastically different from
| 2023 SotA.
| tylerfontaine wrote:
| Nope, I'm in Texas and not Arizona. We've already got two
| wafer plants here. The largest projects are expansions on
| those, so these companies are pretty familiar with the
| available workforce at this point.
| adamanz wrote:
| https://archive.is/jmpBa
| badrabbit wrote:
| Thanks, but can't get past captcha. 12ft.io blocked it and
| archive.ph doesn't work on my browser due ri ssl error. Anyone
| know other sites?
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| I've been having problems with them since yesterday.
|
| I had a little luck with archive.org/web, but it's not quite
| as stream-lined.
| overtomanu wrote:
| Below extension seems to work
|
| https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
| howard941 wrote:
| > can't get past captcha
|
| For days now Firefox gets stuck in an infinite loop of
| captchas for all of the archive links posted to HN. Nothing
| changed at my end.
| floor_ wrote:
| This all feels like a prelude to a World War.
| BirAdam wrote:
| For the USA, war (at some level) has pretty much always been
| constant. Autarky also isn't new to the USA. The current on-
| shoring movement seems to me to be more about the USA's empire
| collapsing, and the military contractors getting worried about
| their supply lines. So, prelude to WWIII? Maybe, but it can be
| explained in other ways.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| To the extent that the US has an empire, it's not collapsing
| right now. The US continues to maintain plenty of foreign
| military bases, US military alliances and partnerships are
| strong (arguably NATO is now stronger than it was in the
| recent past), and overseas territories like Guam are still
| firmly under US control.
|
| What's changed is that China continues to rise in power and
| exert its influence, combined with Russia's invasion of
| Ukraine making the West antsy about dependencies on China as
| well as Taiwan (if China invades or blockades Taiwan).
| Eji1700 wrote:
| Eh. It's more a correction caused by over globalization.
|
| Too many theorists decided to claim that "no one would ever
| risk their economy!" and since it made lines go up globally
| everyone bought in. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and suddenly
| the hawks who'd been screaming about supply lines and logistics
| for years were taken more seriously.
|
| You can't simultaneously threaten military/economic action and
| also rely on them for major resources. Not to mention how
| countries like China have essentially warped the market for
| goods around their artificially cheap labor, and the threat of
| losing that plus one of the largest markets in the world is
| severe.
|
| Now granted, we could all still wind up in world war, but to me
| it looks like the standard stuff.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| Why do you say that?
| floor_ wrote:
| Removing the dependence of chip manufacturing from non-Nato
| countries and bringing them to the United States.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Was that a common factor to the previous world wars?
| kotaKat wrote:
| I'm excited to see what happens with Micron in Clay and seeing
| how far they're committing (and putting their money where their
| mouth is already) gives me a lot of hope to see it through.
| fidotron wrote:
| While I have some sympathy for the policy makers attempting to do
| this they do appear to be oblivious that to the outside world,
| especially their allies, the meta-lesson is any critical industry
| will eventually be onshored by the printing of hundreds of
| billions to price you out if necessary. This isn't a recipe for
| long term peaceful co-operation.
|
| It's ridiculous to criticise China on one hand, and then emulate
| every move they've made ten/twenty years later.
| [deleted]
| merman wrote:
| So if we criticize China we should do nothing? It's not clear
| how you can be sympathetic that something should be done and
| against the obvious thing that should be done.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Geopolitics are not after school specials about friendship
| being only thing that matters in life.
|
| Critical industries are, well, critical. Securing redundancy
| for critical things is risk management 101, even on much
| smaller scale than geopolitics.
| isykt wrote:
| Will you explain what "emulate every move they've made
| ten/twenty years later" means? I don't understand this comment.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Breach of WTO rules, free trade principles, market distorting
| industrial policies.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Don't underestimate how powerful American (soft) influence is;
| many Taiwanese happily support these policies.
|
| But yes; Taiwan will end up losing on two ends: Massive tech
| transfer to the US. And a loss of access to its biggest market
| - mainland China.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I mean do you not have to hedge again china just landing
| troops on taiwan? I think the pandemic chip shortages threw
| into sharp relief that we are totally dependent on imports
| (and for higher end chips on taiwanese imports almost
| exclusively). If china decides to blockage or invade Taiwan
| it would be cataclysmic.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| PRC/ROC conflict has been dormant for 70 years - maybe
| don't stir it up?
| FredPret wrote:
| How is it ridiculous to build redundancy when the entire global
| economy has a single point of failure on an island just off the
| shore of a sworn foe, which they also would love to invade? If
| it hurts someone's feelings, they need to grow up - the
| situation is untenable and onshoring is the correct strategy.
| vel0city wrote:
| Judging by all the construction I see at the fabs around me, the
| people I see moving in to get the new jobs working at the fabs or
| related businesses, I'd say its pretty real to me and those
| around me.
|
| https://www.ti.com/about-ti/company/ti-at-a-glance/manufactu...
|
| https://news.ti.com/blog/2022/09/29/tis-new-300-millimeter-w...
|
| https://dallasinnovates.com/finisar-considers-3-billion-semi...
|
| https://www.dallasnews.com/business/jobs/2022/12/07/sherman-...
|
| https://www.samsung.com/us/sas/Taylor
|
| > Texas has led the country in semiconductor exports for 11
| straight years, and has shown a commitment to expanding the
| industry.
|
| https://www.texastribune.org/2022/07/26/texas-chips-act-semi...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| A commitment that apparently does not include:
|
| - treating anyone who isn't "white enough" with dignity and
| without extreme suspicion of being in the country illegally.
| Driving in texas and not white enough? You might end up in jail
| if you don't have sufficient proof on you that you're not "an
| illegal"
|
| - a reliable power grid, because they petulantly do not want to
| have to follow federal regulations in how they run said grid
| (also, electrical pricing that doesn't swing by 4 orders of
| magnitude or more)
|
| - a well-funded public school system with science-based
| curriculum to develop their children into a skilled workforce
| capable of critical thinking, being retrained, etc.
|
| - human rights, healthcare, mental health services, etc which
| highly skilled technical workers tend to strongly prefer/value
| (and in case nobody told Texas: there is a long, long history
| of highly skilled electronics engineers, programmers, etc being
| LGBTQ, autistic, having mental health needs, etc.)
|
| Anyone who is highly skilled in semiconductors could write
| their own ticket. Why would they go to Texas?
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| The assumption here is that the politics of the state will
| continue to shift against extremism.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| What do you mean 'continue'?
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| It's a law in many countries that you have to carry your ID
| with you, eg Germany. The police may do random check in high
| risk areas. Do you think Germany treats its citizens without
| dignity?
| nebalee wrote:
| You have to own an ID document (Pass or Personalausweis) in
| Germany, but you don't have to carry it with you.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Maybe I misinterpret it, but the law says "[Germans] must
| present their identity card at the request of an
| authority entitled to check identification." I guess they
| won't mind if it's at your home a casual drive away, but
| if you live in another city?
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| The point is that this isn't Germany and there is no such
| law here.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| If there is no such law in Texas, then surely detaining
| random people who are not white enough and putting them
| in jail would be a significant topic of discussion rather
| than an offhand comment on HN. 40% of Texas are Hispanic
| -- a demographic that would be under the most suspicion.
| That is _a lot_ of people in jail for no reason _and_
| without any legal reasons. The whole state would probably
| get bankrupt after a few lawsuits by those unfairly
| arrested citizens.
| vel0city wrote:
| > a reliable power grid
|
| Texas ranks about middle of the pack by most statistics in
| electrical grid reliability while also being one of the
| cheapest places in the US. Its also expanding renewable
| energy faster than any other state in the US, by a massive
| margin.
|
| > electrical pricing that doesn't swing by 4 orders of
| magnitude or more
|
| Clearly shows you don't actually know what you're talking
| about. The _vast_ majority of households and businesses in
| Texas are on fixed rate contracts. The price of my
| electricity swings every _three years_ or so. The headlines
| you 're reading are spot prices; the vast majority of people
| don't directly pay those.
|
| > a well-funded public school system with science-based
| curriculum to develop their children into a skilled workforce
| capable of critical thinking, being retrained, etc
|
| Eh, PreK-12 35th overall according to US News, not great.
| 25th for higher education, so exactly middle of the pack.
| There's a lot worse of places to be education-wise. It really
| varies from school district to school district though. US
| News ranks the high school my kids will eventually attend in
| the top 16% of schools nationally. The smaller college I
| attended was ranked in the top third of all national
| universities. Not too bad.
|
| > Why would they go to Texas?
|
| As mentioned, loads of opportunity and comparatively low
| costs of living compared to a lot of other places.
| bubblethink wrote:
| For all these issues, states like Texas are going to be
| vastly more practical than doing any real projects in places
| like California. Look at California's record on railway,
| housing, etc. SF spends $1B/mile on railway (see Central
| subway), or $1M on a public toilet. If anything, moving more
| industries to states like Texas or Georgia is a great way to
| improve the overall dynamics of the state. This already
| happened to a great degree with film/tv studios moving to
| Atlanta.
| shubb wrote:
| One of the interesting lessons of the past few years is that
| supply chain lead times are a thing and policy doesn't just
| happen because central planning says it should.
|
| So, if there is a bubble in the chip supply pipeline, auto
| manufacture doesn't happen. If there is undersupply of
| precursor chemicals it takes a while to make vaccines at
| scale...
|
| What you are talking about makes me think of the very long lead
| product that is skilled people. A significant proportion of fab
| employees are genuinely highly skilled workers who need a
| specialised physics degree and then additional training in
| order to optimize yields and things like that.
|
| I think they can build the buildings and buy the machines but
| unless a lot of Taiwanese are willing to get on a plane and
| move to the US, it is going to take a long time to be able to
| replace their labour at the required scale.
| vel0city wrote:
| Good thing there's a university only a couple of miles away
| from the Richardson fab that specializes in training
| semiconductor and nano-fabrication which has quite a large
| international reach which has been massively expanding every
| year for the last few decades.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| >One of the interesting lessons of the past few years is that
| supply chain lead times are a thing and policy doesn't just
| happen because central planning says it should.
|
| The dominant ideology in the US, at least until recently, is
| that there should _be_ no central planning. The invisible
| hand of the market was all-knowing and would allocate
| resources far more efficiently than any human planner.
|
| I wouldn't blame central planning, I'd blame the lack of it.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The problem with laissez faire economic allocation has been
| timescales.
|
| It's an extremely efficient allocator... on a certain
| timescale, itself determined by the market.
|
| It's an incompetent allocation on different timescales,
| typically when you get into the 5+ year range.
|
| The ideal blend is when capability is centrally planned,
| but implementation and tactical scale is market-demanded.
| edgyquant wrote:
| That was just a lot of talk. The federal government has
| been shaping the US economy and its industries since the
| start. Things like agriculture and energy has always been
| subsidized. E.g. the offshoring of manufacturing and the
| newer cultivation of green energy tech are entirely the
| result of tax and subsidy policies designed to result in
| these things.
| petsfed wrote:
| This is explicitly why Boise State University, an otherwise
| middle-to-low-tier research university boasts such a high-
| quality materials engineering department. BSU actually hold
| some of their intro-to-materials-science courses at the Boise
| Micron fab so Micron employees can work towards said degrees
| without missing as much work to commute between the two
| locations.
|
| Edit to add:
|
| I've met a few people who are aware of US military supply
| chain rules, and assume it means "oh, chinese $doodad must be
| crap, that's why we don't give them to our troops", when the
| reality is just as you said. Supply chain bubbles can be
| massively disruptive, so its a real strategic blunder to
| outsource critical components to the country we have
| designated as our number one rival. I'm not saying we're set
| up for a trade war, but we are well past due to calculate the
| cost of increasing short-term profits. Is a quarterly
| decrease in operating costs from consolidating fabs worth
| risking a massive disruption when that single fab is knocked
| out? Given the volumes that even small fabs do, I argue that
| quarterly increase is not at all worth it.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Current analysis projects US semi to face shortage of ~80k
| talent in next few years, ~300k+ in by decades end. This is
| reality pretty much in every semi producer countries, SKR
| and TW both have 50k-100k+ shortage with pretty developed
| talent pipeline. From everything I've read, current US+co
| short/medium term talent production won't be enough fill
| all the new fabs being proposed. Unviable due to operating
| costs which can always be subsidized, unviable due to lack
| of talent is much harder to address. Apart from training
| more, only way to plug gap is to poach talent from CHIP4
| partners, which US has the money for. But I surmise it will
| get geopolitically ugly.
|
| For reference PRC after elevating semi to first-level
| dicipline in 2018 is pumping out about 30k IC graduates per
| year. They're still about 200k short, ~520k/720k out of
| what IC talent 2018 white paper estimated PRC needed for
| complete semi industry. This is PRC that graduates ~5M STEM
| with huge population to draw from that bias towards S&T in
| tertiary. Which leads to the other uncomfortable point that
| a complete semi industry is more than just fabs, there's a
| lot of critical semi supply chain stuck in TW / East Asia
| (SKR/JP) that's going to get disrupted anyway in event of
| conflict. I don't see any indication US is resolving to
| reshore the entire semi chain.
| bsder wrote:
| > Unviable due to operating costs which can always be
| subsidized, unviable due to lack of talent is much harder
| to address.
|
| Or, gee, let's throw this out there: perhaps if the pay
| wasn't shit, people would go into the field.
|
| You know, just like computer science over the past couple
| of decades.
| nickpsecurity wrote:
| This could be an opportunity for low-cost, educational
| groups to scale or partner up. Is there a list of degree
| or course requirements fabs are looking for? What
| programs would be necessary to meet that demand?
| wyldberry wrote:
| There's not much prestige as a BSU alumni (and someone
| doing a masters part-time there), but I do distinctly
| remember chatting with materials graduate students and them
| mentioning that they chose BSU because of the ease of
| availability for equipment required for research and having
| Micron right there.
|
| There's a few _good_ things that the university offers
| which is surprisingly strong. When i went back to prepare
| for a CS masters (military, self-taught) I was surprised at
| the quality of the undergraduate degree in preparing
| students for industry, and how quickly the security program
| was invested in (INL does a lot of investment here).
|
| All that to say: it's a pretty good school, especially for
| it's price. I only ever had one bad professor, and it was
| in the supply chain management department. And it was (is
| still?) the only raptor biology masters in the country.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >One of the interesting lessons of the past few years is that
| supply chain lead times are a thing and policy doesn't just
| happen because central planning says it should.
|
| I would say exactly the opposite, the vaccines were made
| quite quickly and there weren't major supply issues.
|
| The Defense Production Act (er... central planning as you put
| it) was used to say what was going to happen when with money
| to back it up and... things happened quickly.
|
| DPA wasn't invoked to build you new cars or supply you toilet
| paper so... those things had their supply issues.
|
| The US actually can do logistics very well, especially when
| there's somebody willing to foot the bill for big asks. The
| lack of corruption and general merit-based placement here
| compared to so many other places combined with a large degree
| of vertical integration means that we can accomplish quite a
| lot and is one of the underappreciated cornerstones of our
| ability to make war (and why nobody wants to fight us).
|
| We are decimating (and then some) Russia's military by giving
| away second tier equipment to Ukraine, and the amount we're
| giving away is basically an afterthought. A one-time
| superpower is scraping the bottom of the barrel for equipment
| fighting against largely NATO supplied spare equipment.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| > The lack of corruption and general merit-based placement
| here compared to so many other places combined with a large
| degree of vertical integration means that we can accomplish
| quite a lot and is one of the underappreciated cornerstones
| of our ability to make war (and why nobody wants to fight
| us).
|
| First of all, other countries managed to develop and
| produce large amounts of vaccine in very short timeframe
| during the pandemic. Second of all, the reason nobody wants
| to fight the US is that the US spends as much on its
| military as the next ten or so countries. The US makes up
| 40% of all global military spending.
|
| > We are decimating (and then some) Russia's military by
| giving away second tier equipment to Ukraine
|
| The total value of NATO aid to Ukraine is on a similar
| scale as Russia's entire military budget. NATO is not just
| giving away second-tier equipment. It's giving Ukraine what
| it thinks Ukraine can use most effectively right away (such
| as upgraded T-72 tanks, man-portable air-defense and anti-
| tank systems early on), and some of that is cutting-edge
| gear (such as the Storm Shadow missile).
| ethbr0 wrote:
| This would have been categorically true circa-1970s.
|
| Unfortunately, US industrial vertical integration now
| includes foundations placed in global low-labor-cost
| countries.
|
| The crash vaccine manufacturing scaling program was
| possible because we were rich enough to throw mountains of
| money (of which we have the most) at any international
| supply problems.
|
| If the Atlantic or Pacific had been hostile to commercial
| shipping, or countries hadn't cooperated, it would have had
| a very different result.
|
| > _We are decimating (and then some) Russia 's military by
| giving away second tier equipment to Ukraine, and the
| amount we're giving away is basically an afterthought. A
| one-time superpower is scraping the bottom of the barrel
| for equipment fighting against largely NATO supplied spare
| equipment._
|
| "We" are not. Ukrainians are dying and holding their own
| against a much larger country, with the help of NATO
| surplus equipment.
|
| 20,000-50,000 Ukrainians now have at least one limb
| amputated as a result of the war. [0] [1]
|
| And Russia's military is not being decimated. It's holding
| its own with an elastic defense, that's making progress
| difficult and costly for a Ukrainian army that's trained
| halfway between Soviet mass doctrine and Western maneuver
| warfare.
|
| At some point the Ukrainians will hopefully manage to
| exhaust Russia's logistics sufficient to break through
| their defense, but that's in no way a sure thing.
|
| [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-ukraine-a-surge-in-
| amputatio...
|
| [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/19/ukraines-
| amputee...
| wyldberry wrote:
| Russia's military is being decimated, just not at the
| line of contact currently. You're watching a protracted
| battle play out all across the world right now between
| Russian interests and Western interests. Some of these
| include:
|
| 1. Russian/Wagner (now admitted to be the same)
| neocolonialism in African states, most recently Niger.
| Within days Niger stopped trading Uranium to France.
| Conveniently, France is the least dependent on Russia for
| energy and will force the French to buy outside of Niger
| and then refocus on Russia.
|
| 2. The latest naval drone hit on a Russian oil tanker in
| the Black Sea took place well beyond the expected range
| of Ukrainian capability, which likely means someone else
| (Turkey?) helped at least get it into launch range. This
| coupled with the Ukrainian position that all russian
| ships, and all ships trading with russia are now targets
| in the Black Sea is also big for the area.
|
| Currently Russians may not be dying in droves defending
| their positions. However, the knock on effects for
| russian military capacity, industrial capacity, and naval
| capacity are incredible. The longer they flounder and the
| more they commit to Ukraine, the more their traditional
| enemies are able to take advantage of their weakness.
|
| If russian gas and oil cannot flow out of the black sea
| safely, their PMC backed interests in Africa and South
| American become less effective, and the corresponding
| governments will look elsewhere for
| influence/protection/trade.
| api wrote:
| The Economist seems to really dislike the idea of making
| anything physical. It's a pattern I've seen generally.
| tylerfontaine wrote:
| Heh. We must live close to each other. I made the same comment
| with fewer (read: no) sources.
|
| Definitely a lot of heavy construction.
| vel0city wrote:
| Yeah when I saw your comment I figured you were from North
| Texas.
|
| Hello from Richardson.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| The political valence of this could be significant next year.
| This is a lot of high paying, high-demand jobs in multiple
| sectors of the economy from just one of 3 major pillars of the
| administration's agenda.
| dealuromanet wrote:
| What kind of salary ranges do you expect for these roles and
| in what metro areas?
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| North Texas, North Mexico, and chunks of the broader west
| coast, esp. Boise and Portland.
|
| all sorts of roles but middling pay and long hours. not
| quite the Chinese 996 but taking hints from it; the
| Taiwanese version, essentially
| bob1029 wrote:
| I've been thinking about moving out to that area. Building
| these fabs will do amazing things for the local community &
| economy. It is also likely the most resilient part of the TX
| power grid...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's the worst business to work for.
|
| You'll work 60 hours a week for shitty pay, and be the Yoda
| of some tool. In 10 years there will be a new magic tool.
| Then you start learning the Starbucks menu.
| bob1029 wrote:
| It's the best possible bootcamp for engineers if you are
| lucky enough to land a role in systems engineering (or its
| equivalent). If you actually pay attention and participate,
| you will learn about ways of troubleshooting that will
| stick with you forever. The notion of making an assumption
| is completely exorcised from your body - in this industry,
| the consequences of bad assumptions cost at least a million
| bucks always. You might also learn helpful terms like
| "value-add" that will guide your business sense for the
| rest of your life.
|
| I can see why a lot of people hate the idea of
| semiconductor manufacturing. It is the apex of "by the
| books" while simultaneously exhibiting the most incredible
| shiny technology on the face of the planet. Being forced to
| follow all of these rules and procedures to get at the
| shiny tech rubs a lot of people the wrong way. "What do you
| mean I can't take my smart phone into the office? Y'all
| make its _memory_ here. " The pay is also arguably pretty
| bad unless you lock in for life.
|
| I would say you get what you want out of it, just like
| anything. If you walk in with an entitlement mindset and
| expect the knowledge to be forced into your brain, you are
| in for a really shitty ride just as you describe. If you
| walk in thinking "I'll bust my ass here for 3-5 years and
| learn what I can", you will have a much better experience.
|
| I didn't even know I wanted to write software full time
| until I was sitting in a cubicle at Samsung's ATX office
| for a few years. In my opinion, if you aren't sure what you
| want to do but you _really_ love all things tech, why the
| hell not? Try it out. It was a great stepping stone for me.
| bagacrap wrote:
| Why can't you learn the next tool?
|
| Everyone in a tech field has to retain the ability to learn
| new things over time. AI might not take our jobs but it
| will likely change them. I guess it sucks if you have a
| fear of learning. Admittedly, at first learning a new thing
| can be kind of uncomfortable, like getting into a cold
| swimming pool. But once you get over the initial shock and
| start moving around, it's not so bad.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Because for this work it's cheaper for the company to
| hire a new person with a lower starting wage vs. keep
| employing and paying higher wages to more experienced
| workers.
|
| It's not the worker's fault they can't learn the new tool
| (they absolutely can learn it). It's capitalism's fault
| for valuing workers only for the cost of their labor and
| nothing else.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > It's capitalism's fault for valuing workers only for
| the cost of their labor and nothing else.
|
| Sigh. The value you're talking about here _is_ the cost
| of their labour. This is like a business owner saying
| that employees should value their jobs differently to
| their salary.
|
| You're right in the sense that capitalism is
| fundamentally "people make agreements and decisions
| within what's available to them" but what's the actual
| issue you want capitalism to solve, that doesn't create
| one of the massive downsides that any of capitalism's
| former rivals has?
|
| E.g. monarchy can reward loyalty, but then so can
| capitalism. Monarchy can just also tell you to go die on
| a field if you don't kill the other king's people.
| walleeee wrote:
| > what's the actual issue you want capitalism to solve
|
| Seeing as it's more or less the de facto world order it
| should ideally solve global alignment for the long term
| wellbeing of Earth-borne life
| vkou wrote:
| > Monarchy can just also tell you to go die on a field if
| you don't kill the other king's people.
|
| What makes you think that capitalism won't do the same to
| you? Capitalist[1] societies engage in pointless, bloody
| wars all the time.
|
| [1] And communist, and other -ist.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Old tool made one wavelength of light for lithography
| using a specific laser you are an expert in.
|
| New tool makes a different wavelength of light by
| shooting high energy beams at molten tin and all your PhD
| research isn't relevant to that.
|
| It's not like moving from Adobe to Figma, it's like
| moving from physics to chemistry.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Because the business needs you to keep putting out fires
| in the old tool while your younger, cheaper replacement
| trains on the new tool!
| jayd16 wrote:
| Sounds like a union could help but I guess the odds of
| that are slim.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Is there anything a union _can 't_ help with, in your
| estimation?
| jayd16 wrote:
| Of course they don't help everything but setting up a
| seniority system is a common and well tread union policy
| and solves the stated problem.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Plenty. U**ons solve one problem only: when value created
| is high but leverage (=pay) is low.
|
| The fact that this problem pops up all over the damn
| place should _tell you something_ about our relationship
| to u**ons.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| it's not just low pay.
|
| children used to work 10 hours a day and lose hands in
| machinery. hell, kids are dying in factories now, and the
| rules just keep getting rolled back further.
|
| miners get black lung or asbestos exposure.
|
| dudes boiled alive in machinery that didn't have fail
| safes.
|
| company towns that only paid in scrip and then charged
| you 3x the price of regular goods.
|
| people had to fight and die for an 8 hour workday.
|
| the bourgeoisie programmer types who've never had to work
| actually dangerous jobs tend to forget just how
| _incredibly brutal_ working conditions used to be.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| We have laws to address those things now. You wouldn't
| _believe_ the paperwork when someone gets boiled alive at
| work nowadays.
| pianoben wrote:
| Seriously! People forget that bosses responded to
| unionization with _actual violent assault_ , including
| sending literal bombers against striking miners
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain).
| Children get to go to school and not work _because Unions
| fought_. We have a weekend _because Unions fought_. We
| have an eight-hour workday _because Unions fought_.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Big companies with standardized jobs are great for
| unionization. Union bureaucracy is a great answer to
| corporate or government bureaucracy.
|
| Basically, a big, inflexible place is a good unionization
| candidate. A smaller, nimble org is a lousy place for a
| union.
| Terr_ wrote:
| "What happens when we need more workers who know the new
| tool? Shouldn't we invest in training?"
|
| "No, we'll hire them away from our competitors. Let one
| of them invest in training."
| asow92 wrote:
| Sounds like the old tool maintainer isn't leveraging
| their scarcity power. If their skills are in high demand
| and short supply, and they can't be replaced, then
| shouldn't they make things take longer as they learn new
| tool?
|
| Of course this accelerates the business's desire to adopt
| the new tool sooner, so they best hurry!
| [deleted]
| vsareto wrote:
| Continuous reskilling for bad pay sucks, especially when
| you can't reap from your investment of being a specialist
| for the first tool. Or the old tool is changed for bad
| reasons.
| vel0city wrote:
| There are loads of jobs _related_ to the fabs surrounding
| them though. Lots of companies designing the things these
| fabs will end up actually producing, lots of testing the
| things these fabs produce, lots of integrating these things
| the fabs produce. The technology services supporting those
| companies making the designs. Etc.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Those jobs don't pay well either.
|
| You'll see salaries of around $70-110k in very expensive
| metros like the Bay, Portland, Dallas, Austin, etc.
|
| Salaries just haven't kept up in the EE space.
| vel0city wrote:
| I'll tell that to all my friends in the EE space who live
| _very_ comfortably that they 're clearly not paid well.
|
| They'll probably have a laugh while they're out boating.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Idk, KLA has multiple Test Engineer roles open right now
| in Milpitas that are offering $29/hour and the idiots at
| Motek have been spamming me with ASIC Design Engineer
| roles paying around $80-100k/yr within the Bay Area even
| though I haven't been an engineer for almost a decade.
|
| I think there might be a bimodal distribution within EE
| salaries where either you work at an
| Nvidia/Google/Apple/AMD/TI type company which pays
| competitively and others which pay subpar wages.
|
| Maybe this is heavily dependent on the subset of EE as
| well (eg. I'd assume the profit margins for a fabless GPU
| company like Nvidia are much higher than a company
| building/desigining ASICs for Telcom usecases like KLA).
|
| That said, you seem to be from North Texas/DFW and EE
| wages and cost of living seem much more managable
| compared to those offered in the Bay Area and Portland.
| vel0city wrote:
| Median home price in Milpitas: $1.3M
|
| Median home price in Richardson: $478K
|
| Median home price in Garland: $301k
|
| Median home price in Sherman: $308k
|
| Median home price in The Colony: $411k
|
| Median home price in Plano: $520k
|
| Which places are you more likely to be able to own your
| home with ~$100k/yr income?
| alephnerd wrote:
| No shit sherlock.
|
| I'm just pointing out that EE salaries within the US are
| depressed due to the (relatively) low wages within DFW
| (which by DFW levels are competitive).
|
| At the end of the day, you guys are definetly being
| underpaid compared to SWEs as well as certain
| specialities of EE (take a look at Nvidia's mid-level TC
| in the Bay verus TI's in DFW).
|
| DFW has always been a major EE hub in the US, but SV and
| Portland are similarly sized EE industry hubs and their
| wages have been depressed.
|
| Since DFW represents around 30-40% of the EE industry
| within the US, it's a major portion but plenty of
| industry share is still stuck in higher CoL areas, which
| incentivizes talent to either switch to SWE or outsource
| jobs to SK, Taiwan, PRC, India, and Israel where such
| salaries are more competitive
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I worked on a campus as a tenant at the facility with a
| big semiconductor focus and some prototype fabs.
|
| The pecking order was established in the parking lot. The
| execs drove BMWs and Teslas, the tenants varied. We were
| in a special lot.
|
| The worker bees in the fabs drove older Hyundais and
| Nissans. Except for the trades - fabs require a lot of
| plumbing and electrical contractors, and those guys were
| all union, all minting overtime, and all driving fancy
| pickup trucks.
| asow92 wrote:
| If you can't learn a new tool then you're just a tool
| yourself.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Engineers dancing around the fundamental constraints of
| reality deserve a bit more respect than folks complaining
| about learning the latest JS-of-the-month, all of which
| follow basic comp sci patterns.
| asow92 wrote:
| You talk as if they're smart enough to learn something
| new.
|
| They're either smart or they're not. Which one is it?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Here's something new, perhaps: some things are much
| easier to learn than others.
| asow92 wrote:
| Obviously, but that doesn't change my mind here.
|
| If you're in the 1% of top performers, you have the
| cognitive ability to learn new things.
| bee_rider wrote:
| They are "smart enough" to have learned the previous
| generation of tools while in school or in the early parts
| of their careers (where expectations are lower), and not
| "smart enough" to learn the next generation of tools
| while also doing their full time jobs.
|
| So, ok, but anyone thinking about entering the field can
| see that they'll be left in a lurch when they hit mid
| career.
|
| We've already run this experiment for a generation or
| two; anyone smart enough to finish an engineering degree
| can just go do a programming career afterwards, where the
| work and career advancement is easier. Now we have
| imported chips and a million JavaScript frameworks.
| asow92 wrote:
| Up above we see "Then you start learning the Starbucks
| menu". Does that seem like an honest take here? Surely
| folks "dancing around the fundamental constraints of
| reality" aren't about to start whipping up frappuccinos
| because they failed to keep up with industry trends and
| plan ahead, right?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| My good friend from high school has a PhD and was a
| published expert in a field that stopped being relevant
| when his company acquired another company and went with
| their tech.
|
| He was laid off and unemployable in the field. He
| survived as a Starbucks manager and sold Herbalife for a
| year while getting some additional education. I was able
| to help him get a contract as a tech writer to get out of
| the retail stuff. Now he's a director level person in a
| cybersecurity firm.
|
| The one true path is obvious on message boards, but the
| reality is people find themselves in bad places
| sometimes.
| stanfordkid wrote:
| Sounds like the ideal type of trade to build a union for?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Ah yes, Texas, well known for its labor rights.
|
| When the _cops_ are complaining about union-busting...
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This will be the end of semiconductor industry.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The end of it in the US. It'll carry on fine elsewhere.
| alephnerd wrote:
| That's why TSMC became competitive in the 2000s.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| [flagged]
| vel0city wrote:
| There's a lot to like and some to dislike, but I imagine that
| holds true just about anywhere. I've enjoyed my time living
| in North Texas, _mostly_ from a cost of living and plenty of
| opportunity perspective. I don 't exactly make a massive
| income (probably about half of a similar salary to the
| valley) but with that I'm able to actually afford a decent
| house with a single income family and still save, have a
| commute of only a few minutes, and I can take a light rail
| very close to my home into downtown to access all the things
| I'd want from a big city.
|
| I definitely don't pretend its all just roses though. It
| being over 100F every day for the past month or so is
| definitely a big negative, and a good bit of the politics
| here is getting ugly. We need to continue to expand the
| public transit in North Texas and make it more useful to
| reduce car dependency. More dense housing options need to be
| available to allow people to choose different ways to live
| and alleviate rising housing costs. There's a lot of stuff
| that needs to be addressed, but there's movement in positive
| directions around here.
|
| A lot of the debate about Texas power grid make things sound
| way worse than it is. In reality Texas is about average when
| it comes to reliability in the US. Meanwhile we produce the
| most renewable energy in the country, we enable people to buy
| 100% renewable electric plans, and our cost of energy is some
| of the cheapest in the country. There's definitely challenges
| ahead for the grid and some of the market strategies we have
| need to be re-thought, but overall I'm not too worried about
| the grid long-term. Texas isn't alone with its grid
| challenges though, most states need to address massively
| aging infrastructure.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| "the most resilient part of TX power grid"
|
| A roommate of mine once quipped on something: 'that's like
| saying my crap smells better than yours'.
|
| Feel free to correct me, I'm not an expert, but Texas runs
| its own state-only independent grid, it got completely pants
| in the ice storm a few years ago, and at the time a lot of
| articles said the Texas grid is fundamentally less resilient
| that other power companies. Is any of that wrong?
|
| However, Texas is loaded with sun/desert and I believe a ton
| of wind resources, so it has that going for it for next-
| generation industry.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > it got completely pants in the ice storm a few years ago
|
| Right, in 2021... and in 2011, and in 2003, and in 1989...
| :p
| alephnerd wrote:
| > However, Texas is loaded with sun/desert and I believe a
| ton of wind resources, so it has that going for it for
| next-generation industry.
|
| Surprisingly, you got to thank George Bush for that
|
| He made renewable wind and solar energy a major part of his
| energy policy when he was Govenor of TX. [0].
|
| In 1999, he passed a law mandating Texas to get 2,000
| megawatts of electricity from renewable energy by 2009.
| This helped spurt the entire renewable industry in TX
|
| [0] -
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/08/29/70295/george-
| w-b...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Why's that surprising?
| alephnerd wrote:
| Rhetorical flourish.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Because the Bushs are a family of oil types
| alephnerd wrote:
| They actually started off in the New York City publishing
| industry.
|
| McGraw Hill was founded by the Bush family before they
| decamped for Dallas in the 1920s.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I mean, you might be able to thank Bush for the
| investment, but I think we should not start thanking
| politicians for the sun and the wind, haha.
| bluGill wrote:
| The laws of physics suggest an area about the size of Texas
| is all the bigger you can make a grid. AC is much better
| than DC for areas of that range, because you can adjust
| voltages with a cheap transforms. However if you get too
| large and feed the grid from multiple places, there gets to
| be a point in the middle where power from one end is
| driving the grid negative while the other is driving
| positive.
|
| You can get around this with DC, and grids do interconnect
| with DC power, but that requires more expensive equipment.
| vel0city wrote:
| Lots of places face challenges with reliable delivery
| during massive storms. See NY earlier this year.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| Careful. The cost of a fab makes it very difficult for
| competitors to start up. Working in a field with only a few
| competitors seems attractive, but you risk specializing in
| skills that only few businesses worldwide can leverage.
|
| I used to work in semiconductors and transitioned to software
| when I realized how precarious that was.
| [deleted]
| bob1029 wrote:
| I used to work in semiconductors as well. At the SAS A2/S2
| lines right down the street.
|
| I wasn't actually suggesting that I return to my former
| employer, although the thought has crossed my mind...
|
| My reasoning for a move would be about all of the higher-
| order consequences of having well-compensated technology
| enthusiasts imported by the thousands.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| > I wasn't actually suggesting that I return to my former
| employer
|
| No worries, I was picturing a young person setting out to
| 'make their fortune' by moving across the country to make
| it. I just wanted to share the perspective I left the
| field with.
|
| That doesn't mean it isn't possible to make it work!
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Using mad physics and computer skillz to change the course
| of empire? Cool! For a $78k salary in HCOL area? Not Cool!
|
| This was years ago and not TX. I'm sure it has gotten
| slightly better but what I see on glassdoor still makes me
| very glad I listened to the job hunting postdocs in nanofab
| class and steered clear of this career path.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| It really is such a cool field, but yeah, the pay isn't
| great, especially given the tendency to crunch.
| dpflan wrote:
| I'm definitely interested in how the communities build up to
| support this long term, assuming best conditions. I'm curious
| about investment into education that can lead to further
| economic developments (e.g. rise in engineering education due
| to factors like proximity to tech jobs that can persist, i.e.
| working at a fab (in any capacity) is good job/career to
| learn/work towards).
| vel0city wrote:
| > I'm definitely interested in how the communities build up
| to support this long term
|
| From a North Texas perspective, the communities were
| already built up. The first integrated circuit was made in
| North Texas. DFW has some of the highest number of fabs per
| square mile, tons of small producers around along with some
| of the big behemoths.
|
| North Texas has been a pretty big semiconductor
| manufacturer since semiconductor manufacturing has been a
| thing.
|
| For a historical context of the history of the community of
| semiconductors in North Texas, JFK was shot on his way
| going to give a speech at what would become UT Dallas, a
| school whose entire history is focused on semiconductors.
| adventured wrote:
| Well the CHIPS Act was $50 billion.
|
| We've got another $50 billion. And another after that. And
| another after that. As necessary.
|
| See: Ukraine v Russia.
|
| $50 billion ain't what it used to be (and Russia is an economic
| joke in scale compared to the US, we can shovel billions of
| dollars into that war endlessly). Its just that the US and China
| have gotten so massive compared to their former peers, that we
| can fund at a relative gigantic level quite easily. The US
| economy is now 50% larger than the EU economy, and six times
| larger than Japan. US GDP per capita is a shocking $80,000 - well
| over double that of both the EU and Japan (soon to be double that
| of France and Britain; or closing in on France and Britain
| combined to put it another way). $80,000 is equal to the combined
| GDP per capita of France + Japan.
|
| Things that are difficult for the EU to fund, like $50 billion
| for chips, are now comparatively easy for the US (or China) to
| fund. We're only funding the CHIPS Act because that sum is no
| longer a huge deal to the US. That's a little toy program that
| Biden was allowed to play with precisely because it's not that
| big of a deal financially. A medium deal would be $200-$300
| billion (eg helping Ukraine defeat Russia across several years);
| a big deal is $500b-$1 trillion (infrastructure level).
|
| Germany's economy hasn't grown on an inflation adjusted basis in
| decades. The same is largely true of all of Europe's biggest
| economies.
|
| US GDP in 2008: $14.7 trillion. Now: $26.8 trillion.
|
| Germany GDP in 2008: $3.7 trillion. Now: $4.3 trillion. And that
| is a mirror of what has been going on in Europe broadly (with a
| few exceptions eg the Baltics and Ireland). Since 2008 the US has
| added economy equal to Germany + France + Britain + Italy.
|
| $50 billion would have been a big deal for the US, two decades
| ago.
| foofoo4u wrote:
| CNBC's take on the matter [How Texas Became The American
| Chipmaking Hub](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDamhO7my9A).
| Although the 17 minute clip is Texas-centric, it still talks
| about other states.
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| This was an excellent watch. Thank you.
| edgyquant wrote:
| At the very least it's several hundred billion dollars worth of
| real. We'll have to see if the policy sustains itself or not.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Does that include the several hundred billion dollars from
| CHIPS act?
|
| That was a sad moment last year, I am extremely concerned we
| Zombified our tech sector.
| cezart wrote:
| Can you please elaborate what the issues are, and what do you
| mean by Zombified?
| Mouthfeel wrote:
| [dead]
| v8xi wrote:
| I've seen this argument elsewhere so I think I know what he
| means. Basically the idea is you throw money around too
| easily and companies that would otherwise die (due to poor
| management/inability to compete) stay around. Too much
| subsidy yields poor incentive to compete yields fewer
| breakthroughs and slower technological progress.
| isykt wrote:
| The world's largest deposit of ultra pure quartz, which is needed
| for the very high end processors, is in North Carolina.
|
| The renaissance is real, or is about to be.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Is it difficult to refine less-pure quartz?
|
| I just assumed they had processes for eliminating any and all
| contaminants.
| isykt wrote:
| It is only done in China, Japan, the United States, Germany,
| and Italy. Since some of the newer semiconductors are shaped
| at 99.9999999999% (literally, 10 9s) pure, only a few places
| in the world can do the purification. China, and only China,
| can do 99.9999999 (Seven 9s) at scale, which is good enough
| for solar panels.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Sorry, let me clarify: I'm assuming that the requirements
| are so stringent that _all_ quartz ore needs to be
| purified.
|
| So I'm wondering how much the initial ore purity really
| matters.
| isykt wrote:
| The process is more complex and the energy more intense
| the more 9's you need, because the contaminates in quartz
| are different depending on where it was mined. This
| complexity is why there's only one place in the world
| that can do it at solar panel demand scale -- and that's
| because China dumped a ton of money into the process and
| doesn't have strict pollution laws. If you can start with
| purer quartz, you're way ahead of reaching scalable
| refinement.
|
| Here's a great video on it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIRfWyyOFPg
| mbfg wrote:
| i read the "The resonance is real"
| sudosteph wrote:
| Yep, near Spruce Pine, NC. My Grandad lived his whole life in
| that area and would tell stories about mining mica and riding
| the trains they used to transport it. There's still a bit of
| the train system left, at a local amusement park, Tweetsie
| Railroad.
| SoylentYellow wrote:
| What is quartz used for beyond oscillators?
| wrycoder wrote:
| Reduce pure quartz, get pure silicon.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Quartz = SiO2 --> Silicon and Oxygen QED
| Dork1234 wrote:
| My take is it not the skill or even the cost of labor. The
| biggest issues is it is easier to find skilled people in Asia
| willing to work late and long hours to keep the machines running
| 24/7. The only way to make money is to keep these machines
| running as close to 100% efficiency 24/7. It isn't just one
| company, it is the whole chain of suppliers/manufactures with
| fast turn around time that gives Asia a upper hand.
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