What Pat said is 100% correct. The actual manufacturing of EUV ICs is incredible difficult, only eclipsed by the difficulty of figuring out HOW to do it. Doing the fabrication here in the US is great, but the much more difficult and key skill is the 'figuring how to do it'. Modern EUV is unbelievably complicated, and there are a continuous supply of new engineering problems that at first glance often don't even appear to be solvable.
In many cases you have an idea and it take 2-3 weeks to determine if it made any difference, and the feedback loop just gets slower after that. The steps in EUV requires some extreme engineering, and it is that core engineering talent you want to develop. The fabs are complicated, but the recipe is the key.
(Note I worked at Intel in the 90s, funny enough in Pat's group)
> "If you don't have R&D in the US, you will not have semiconductor leadership in the US," Gelsinger said, according to a report this week in the Financial Times.
Fair enough. More of a reminder to pay attention to how TSMC approaches R&D in the states, since a part of the $165B investment is for a proposed R&D facility. If they focus on optimizing existing processes (as has been suggested) and keep the development of new processes in Taiwan, then that's a signal that we're not on a path to success (at least in Pat's eyes).
Agree on the newsworthy.. quotes like this are not super valuable... however the concept is that without real R&D the actual manufacturing is not as valuable. Of course it is better than no manufacturing, but in EUV, the real magic is in the process development.
A suboptimal amount of would be engineers works for spyware companies I guess. And the mind share is with top of the pyramid financial engineering fluff not actually doing stuff.
When I worked with machine engineering there was this gloomy prospect of all these "lifers" who would reach retirement age some day and be replaced by an consultants burning out every 6 months.
The US could figure something out decades ago doesn't mean it can now. I think ship building (even military ship building) is another example that the US could do decades ago with a very large capacity but I'm not sure whether it can reboot to such capacity nowadays.
Yes let's keep up foreign relations where we pay for people to arm themselves against us (china). Or we pay for the defense of people who won't pay to defend themselves (EU).
> "we pay for people to arm themselves against us"
Sounds like you want a completely isolationist trade policy. How has that worked out for the US in the past? The only way to never pay another country to arm themselves against us or any other country is to never give them money, and unless we force them at gunpoint to give us what we want that is not going to happen.
> "we pay for the defense of people who won't pay to defend themselves"
The EU doesn't spend 0% on defense. Many of them are NATO members who are increasing their spending and who have demonstrated that they'll follow us into war after we are attacked (Afghanistan as an example). The US gets far more in soft power/geopolitical benefits out of our European allies and NATO members than we put in.
>> Sounds like you want a completely isolationist trade policy
> No. You made this up.
Okay - then square the circle for me. How do we buy things that China makes and be 100% sure none of that money goes to buying weapons to be used against us? Extend that to every business we deal with outside the US. The only way to get to the point where we're not know for sure that we no longer "pay for people to arm themselves against us" is to never trade with them.
Americans enjoy their current (highly subsidized) standard of living in large part because we produce a surplus of goods and services that we export to the rest of the world.
If a good chunk of the world turns against the US, such that they refuse to consume our goods and services, then Americans will not be able to continue to enjoy their current standard of living.
This is why "soft power" matters, and it's why would-be contenders such as China have invested as heavily as they have in building up their soft power in LatAm, Africa, and elsewhere.
So yes, enjoy your "hard power," but you'll probably be poor.
China is using soft power because they don't have hard power, especially not enough to compete with the US. But they are using profit from the soft power investments to fund their hard power ambitions.
As somebody whose work is closely involved with the US military, particularly INDOPACOM and SPACECOM, I can assure you you don't have the full picture.
China is plenty capable of competing with us in a high-intensity conflict, especially regionally, but also in space, and they can even hurt us in the home front, if we're being perfectly honest.
Sure, the US might ultimately "prevail" such a conflict, but it's not a conflict US war planners or anybody with a clear picture of the situation is in any hurry to jump into.
You should pray that such a war never comes to pass, because it won't be pretty for any side, and has the potential to be especially dicey for the US if domestic politics are as inflamed as they are today.
No this is wrong. Europe has nuclear power, weapons, and navies. And Europe has an obligation to spend on its own defense (which they have not fulfilled in some time).
Two countries in Europe have nuclear weapons (several have nuclear power though). Sweden for example had a nuclear weapons program that was shut down in the late 60s (guess which country strongly wanted us to shut it down).
I think most European countries cut down too much on the defence after the Cold War, but it seems we are about to fix that. But it’s not like the US gave away fighter jets and other weapon systems for free. Several European countries spent lots of money buying US planes and other stuff.
France and the UK have it despite the US not wanting it too.
Luckily!
> And Europe has an obligation to spend on its own defense
Yes, since the US wants to pivot to Asia. That's fairly recent on the timescale :)
> which they have not fulfilled in some time
Did you know the US, unlike the others, includes pensions as "military spending"? But yeah, now ... They will raise it to the required 2 % (which a lot already do)
IT IS what the majority of people voted for, so it very much IS a valid argument. If you don't like it, tough luck, but that's how democracy works. You can vote next time to change it.
This reduces democracy to free-for-all mob rule, which has been very well studied as a bad form of it. The government isn't supposed to wildly swing between extremes, and the guardrails against that are being taken down for the benefit of some rich old men trying to steal enough money for their underlings before they die.
That's EXACTLY the very definition of true democracy, the will of the majority. You can't change it now just because you're on the loosing side this time, when you were ok with it the status quo the previous elections.
Any alterations that overrule the will of the majority, makes it not a democracy anymore, and you don't want that since that opens a can of worms that can always be used to also override your decision next time.
Which is why the world is never going to view or deal with the US the same way they did before. The current administration and its actions represent the will of the American people; represents their world view, their desires.
The majority of people thought they were voting for cheaper groceries, not for undoing our entire system of alliances and global trade.
Also, the President is not a King, so just because people voted for him it doesn't mean opposition ceases to exist. Opposition and push-back to executive policy been a mainstay of US politics. It's been true of Democratic Presidents (e.g., federal courts blocking Biden's policies), and it remains true of the current President.
>The majority of people thought they were voting for cheaper groceries, not for undoing our entire system of alliances and global trade.
If you look at the approval rating for democrats and republicans, as reported by CNN this week, that disagrees with you. People who voted for Trump seem to be happy with what he's doing.
Regular reminder that the only time article 5 of NATO was invoked, it was USA asking others to help them in war they actually wanted.
And when unwanted war became possble in EU came USA ended up allying itself with Russia while trying to extort the victim country for minerals. It did helped initially, but it did not lasted and USA turned into a bully.
All the while threatening annexation of parts of EU and Canada.
Which is still not the same as open aliance USA is doing. And EU countries are members of NATO. And did followed commitment to the war USA wanted. It is USA who is threatening annexation of multiple countries now, it is USA who supports Putin and openly praises dictators.
Russia expansion is threatening Europe, not just Ukraine. You know it, I know it. And USA is about to help them.
Ukraine was stupid to give up nukes, they should never trust promises about help in case of attack. They should keep the atomic bombs, but it is too late for that.
Who is "we" in this, because it certainly isn't true of US national policy for many decades re Germany (e.g. NATO), or Japan for the last decade or so.
> There’s a reason we don’t want Germany and Japan arming themselves, see world history from 1933-1945 for why.
It's bizarre and frankly racist to think that that illustrates some immutable property of Germany and Japan rather than forces that can materialize in any country.
I live in Japan, and I can tell you that I'm worried about Japan. There are constant murmurings among politicians to repeal article 9 of the constitution, the one shackling it from war; you talk about racism but the xenophobia here is visceral and constant; and there's still bad feeling that is also noticeable regarding WWII and towards other Asians and their countries.
I've met some lovely, kind, and outward looking people in my time here, but I'd have to be as blind as a bat to miss the dark undertones running through society. If the Americans didn't have their bases here I think we'd be back to a pre end of WW2 Japan quite quickly.
I disagree, it’s not bizarre to think that Germany won’t try to take over the world again when they’ve already tried. Twice.
I don’t consider it to be at all likely to happen, but there’s a much better chance of Germany going to war against the world than there is for virtually every other country. Feel free to ignore history, I’m not going to.
balderdash. Tech designed by the US, sold in the US, but manufactured in china led to utter dominance of manufacturing for china. This would work just fine in reverse. Possession is 9/10ths etc
Seems like a common theme here. Push manufacturing to another country - that country becomes adept, dominates, and branches out. Primary country can't compete, complains, and put up tariffs to try to bring manufacturing back that it chose to give up to begin with.
I think Pat should moderate his comments. He failed and in spectacular fashion. Moreover he was extremely influential in the US government, the CHIPs act is really an Intel bailout. Intel should have been allowed to fail, its fabs spun off and many of its unprofitable ancillary products shut down or sold (Networking anyone?).
Despite that he’s not entirely wrong but he’s also not saying anything that’s of practical use.
True semiconductor R&D won’t return to the US without investment in educating people in semiconductor technologies in US graduate schools. Funding for this type of research has mostly gone into more esoteric materials and processes and hence many people who emerge from these programs are a poor fit for modern industrial semiconductor manufacturing tech. Countries like Singapore and Taiwan do a much better job giving their graduate students a more practical education that better prepares them for industry. In a sense US is too academic and not vocational enough (I see this across the board in HW).
The fact is that advanced nodes being produced in the US is a gigantic step in the right direction.
Decades of commodity HW and SW dominance have gutted the talent base for HW tech development in the US. It’s going to take a decade and smart US government policy (not the Chips act) at least to recover to where we can even begin to have this kind of R&D again in the US.
> Intel should have been allowed to fail, its fabs spun off and many of its unprofitable ancillary products shut down or sold
If Intel had failed, the fabs would have shut down, not been spun off. Intel's fabs are the primary reason Intel has poor financials - continually running on a loss. Intel's Product division makes a profit - always has - and can survive.
The Bailout is all about propping the fabs, not the products. Letting Intel fail really does equate to losing semiconductor capability in the US. There's no other US company that comes even close to Intel's fabs.
The market is harsh to Intel - it's essentially saying "There's no room for number 2"
Yeah, no. Firstly nobody can use Intel’s fabs because they can’t really provide a PDK the way TSMC can. So Intel’s fabs are fundamentally not competitive as it stands because they are almost impossible for anyone but Intel to use. Who cares what their equivalent process is if it can’t be commercialized?
A break up would force them to get their act together as a commercial fab.
The fabs are substantial capital and would have been spun out in the same way IBM spun out their fabs into Global Foundry. Someone with knowledge of how can turn these things profitable.
The bailout props up a failing mismanaged entity and encourages its moribund status quo.
Moreover the US taxpayer shouldn’t foot the bill for Intel’s mismanagement.
The era of x86 dominating compute is clearly over and hence your last point is anachronistic.
I don't know his intention or whether The Register just framed his words to align with a political viewpoint. Perhaps it's nothing more than one industry person taking shots at their rival... but I'm having a hard time reconciling his current statement with his previous statements, specifically about the CHIPS Act and US manufacturing.
"Gelsinger added on the CHIPS Act: "Supply chains move because they're advantaged. So in that sense, I see chips [making], plus some of the economic inducements, as being a formula that I fully agree with looking forward. But we can't go backward on what we put in place for the CHIPS Act. We need to continue to restore manufacturing. We need long-term research and development." (https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/tech-companies/former-i...)
TSMC was heavily sponsored by the Taiwanese government with the goal of making Taiwan so valuable that other countries would feel required to defend them against China.
It is against their interests to outsource too much or outsource cutting-edge nodes. This is exactly what we see.
The recent Arizona fab is N4 which is just N5 with some refinements. N5 was sampling iPhone chips in 2019 and N4P has been available since 2020-2021. That's a half-decade ago.
N3 started up in 2022, but won't be in the US until 2028 some 6 years later. By 2028, TSMC plans their Taiwanese factories to have produced 2nm, 1.6nm, 1.4nm, and 1nm.
If the US wants cutting edge chip manufacturing, it 100% is NOT coming from TSMC.
There's also a strategic imperative for chip production in the US that isn't cutting edge; lots of stuff depends on basic ICs that were in short supply during COVID and having more production of stuff that doesn't need to be 2nm is a good thing for the US.
There's generally a strong preference for those basic chips to use planar nodes. This limits them to 28nm for TSMC and 22nm for GlobalFoundries (22FDX+ fab is actually in Dresden, but they announced plans to add a second 22FDX+ fab in New York).
I do agree that more fabs in the US is better than fewer though.
In many cases you have an idea and it take 2-3 weeks to determine if it made any difference, and the feedback loop just gets slower after that. The steps in EUV requires some extreme engineering, and it is that core engineering talent you want to develop. The fabs are complicated, but the recipe is the key.
(Note I worked at Intel in the 90s, funny enough in Pat's group)