Absolutely ridiculous! The right goes full communist. When the government starts picking winners and losers in the private sector, it's over for the market of innovation and free choice. We barely keep government tax breaks for corporations from destroying the country, and now they will hand out tax payer money to a failed company.
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US Government May Buy a Stake in Intel
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Ahhh no. It doesn't make sense. At all. In any way. At any time. It's the government propping up a FAILED COMPANY who didn't keep up and is not far behind. And it mixes all kinds of issues into the marketplace. AND it's TAX PAYER money going to a company that, Steve Jobs warned 25 years ago needs to look at mobile, and they laughed him off.
I'm torn. I am planning an upcoming miniserver build and intel makes more sense than AMD for what I want out of it, and either way, some components will just have to be intel anyway (like the NIC and GPU) but I'm just not happy about giving them money. this makes me consider even harder trying to make an AMD build make sense. :/
Yep, let's keep throwing money down this hole. That will solve everything! Who's clamoring for this? They go after Apple and Google who are profitable beyond belief but throw money and raise tariffs to save and badly run companies and misguided manufacturing pipe dreams. This is not "free market" economics. This is inanity.
The problem is, chip making is a national security issue in this day and age, akin to a military requiring weapons production on its own soil.
Putting this semi-nationalization of a company aside, there are only a handful of foundries producing chips and it poses a real concentration risk with many of them being based in Taiwan.
Not a big Intel fan, I don't like government interference, but I'd be concerned about AMD and their performance, prociing and motivation if they didn't have a ying to their yang.
I mean this has been done in the past by a few different governments (state or federal). Ford, Volkswagen, TI, GM, Boing, and pick an energy company.
For this crowd, I think this has to do more with who is in office than anything and one can see that from the comments in this thread alone.
I don't like it, and I didn't like it when the above companies received it, doesn't matter who was in office, but somehow I think that matters.
For this crowd, I think this has to do more with who is in office than anything and one can see that from the comments in this thread alone.
I don't like it, and I didn't like it when the above companies received it, doesn't matter who was in office, but somehow I think that matters.
Believe me, it's super easy to save Intel as long as Mr. T tells Tim - Hey Tim, thanks for the plaque, by the way, can you buy chips from Intel again? 
Al Gore Senator of Tennessee for how many years previously ? ( 1985-1993. TN house Rep 1977-1985). If Gore had won his home state then Florida wouldn't have matter. The SoCUS unliaterally handing the election to Bush is a bunch of myopic handwaving. That campaign had problems. ( subset of those same campaign runners came back in 2008 and 2016 and lost to Obama (primaries) and Trump (general). ) .
This largely came down to people who didn't properly push a pin through a thin piece of paper. ( hanging chads).
Historically sitting VPs usually don't win. H.W. Bush winning after Regan is more a historical hiccup than the norm.
How win President of United States and folks who should know you best ( home state) don't elect you ... Really?
( Yeah Trump didn't win New York in 2016, but also racked up two two impeachments also. Lots of folks didn't like
him. Never ran for NY statewide office either.... likely wouldn't have won any of those either. )
The dream was "High-paying jobs for people with a high school education". Like back in the 1960s when cars were made without the use of robots.
Remember when Trump promised he would bring those iPhone factories to America and put people back to work in coal mines. Could you imagine being so desperate that you would actually want that to happen? But that is his "base."
He could have promised Pharmasutical research, robotics design jobs, but his base would just walk away, saying, "that's not for me, I don't live in California, or China."
That is really what is being pushed for, swapping the role of the US and China. Move the low-pay, low-skill jobs to places like Kentucky and Ohio, and let the Chinese do all the design and engineering work.
The days of making a middle-class income with not much education are gone forever. Even if you do get a factory job, it is only because you are willing to work for less than a robot.
Remember when Trump promised he would bring those iPhone factories to America and put people back to work in coal mines. Could you imagine being so desperate that you would actually want that to happen? But that is his "base."
He could have promised Pharmasutical research, robotics design jobs, but his base would just walk away, saying, "that's not for me, I don't live in California, or China."
That is really what is being pushed for, swapping the role of the US and China. Move the low-pay, low-skill jobs to places like Kentucky and Ohio, and let the Chinese do all the design and engineering work.
The days of making a middle-class income with not much education are gone forever. Even if you do get a factory job, it is only because you are willing to work for less than a robot.
I understand....but we should also be working on duplicating ASML. They are in the Netherlands and not American and we shouldn't pause in giving them billions to build a duplicate pipeline in the US. Our budget is fantastical and full of garbage...things like this genuinely matter for world security.
The trades are still the way to go to make a good living without a college degree. You still need education but aren’t saddle with debt.
There are a lot of ways to run a government, some of which involve state-owned means of production, and rumors are just rumors. But I just find it hilarious that after listening to every Republican candidate for at least the past decade scream up and down about the evils of socialism, and how you needed to vote for them to stop socialism, their new economic plan now appears to be... socialism of the most overt sort.
Also, if you're going to start nationalizing formerly-commercial tech companies, wouldn't one that isn't an incompetent money-pit be where you'd want to start? Nvidia or AMD instead of Intel?
Also, if you're going to start nationalizing formerly-commercial tech companies, wouldn't one that isn't an incompetent money-pit be where you'd want to start? Nvidia or AMD instead of Intel?
indeed, they will believe it, true to the acronym: Make America Gullible Again
Yeah, that seems like a pretty big conflict of interest. I don't want Intel to fail, because competition is good and we're too reliant on foreign chips, but I don't want the corruption to accelerate either and that's exactly what will happen as they take over more companies and then use it as a political weapon to cut off access to those who don't capitulate.
That somewhat incomplete picture. The pool of shrinking fab vendors has be happening for multiple decades at this point. The plants and tech to make every smaller stuff keeps getting more and more expensive.
The problem with Intel was that the board and the executives where in denial for way too long that Intel needed to get serious about growing a foundry business. And spending too much time listening to Wall St folks who kept chirping about the AMD-spin-out model as a insanely great idea. That very nearly killed AMD in the process; in major part because that foundry had no customers at the time of the spin out (so AMD had lock-in, no choice contracts for years. And a supplier who didn't have to work hard to maintain the business. ).
Furthermore, Intel's chip designs on TSMC still have major competitive problems with AMD x86 design on same process. Even if went external fab they are still eyeball deep in problems. Again the board and upper execs more interested in stock buy-back and doing distracting hocus pocus is more so the root cause problem.
The Ohio site keeps getting assigned the next fab process 'just around the future corner'. That isn't so much capacity as it is an excuse to defer costs ( slow construction and spend less) .
The other major problem at Intel is that they are the board rowing in different directions at the same time.
" ... Intel board chairman Frank Yeary attempted to spin off Intel Foundry or even sell it to TSMC earlier this year, but faced strong opposition from Lip-Bu Tan, ...
... TSMC never wanted to buy Intel's fabs or manufacturing assets due to both technical and business reasons. ..."
Intel's chairman reportedly tried to sell fabs to TSMC, CEO Lip-Bu Tan opposed
Let the internal clashes begin?
The Chairman is spending tons of time trying to sell "ice to Eskimos in Winter". The 'strong opposition' from Tan isn't as major a problem as the supposed buyer being largely uninterested. They would want it even less if the Ohio site was still on the original build schedule. ( The faction myopically pursuing sell off wants a smaller , cheaper deal because already at the point that nobody with chip business sense would want to buy it even at a lower price. )
Chairman
"Frank D. Yeary joined Intel Corporation’s board of directors in March 2009 ..."
2009 - 2017 track record of dubious investments and management is at the core of problems Intel has now. Botched 14nm and even more bllow 10nm was all his watch. Under investing in EUV for the sake of saving dividend payout levels .. ditto. Same board that signed off on putting Kraznich as CEO 2013-2018 ...
Not really 'kinda' cancelling 18A. They have very real product rolling out out 18A (Pather Lake ... although that likely is a 'paper launch' in 2025... 2026 product). There has been some 'doom and gloom' reporting about 18A recrently
Exclusive: Intel struggles with key manufacturing process for next PC chip, sources say
The production process that Intel hoped would pave the way to winning manufacturing deals and restore its edge in churning out high-end, high-margin chips is facing a big hurdle on quality as it puts newer technologies to the test.
But the 'cancel' part is more so applying marketing and sales effort into trying to get customers to buy 18A. It was 20A that largely got dumped ( internally and externally). In part, that was to suppose to help free up resources so 18A could roll out more smoothly. That didn't happen. Of course firing the CEO , reorg parts of company , multiple rounds of layoffs all in the middle of that probably didn't help either.
If the yields were 10% in 2024, then yeah it was probably as hard as 'selling ice to Eskimos in the middle of Winter'.
Intel isn't 'betting on 14A' . The current CEO said they would not do 14A if they don't have a substantive external customers. If Intel cancel's 14A they would seriously need 18A+ or 18A-p or some enhancement to work.
Intel really found any very substantive customers for their older processes either. Not sure who the 'bigger fool' is going to be buy up the fab part when there is no viable runway for that business. Intel would need to go the non bleeding edge vendor to keep fab going (until it was viable to sell).
It really isn't about volume as much as it the bleeding edge is becoming more excpensive. Going down to just one bleeding edge vendor is still going to end up with expensive chips. That company will just have an monopoly (which isn't likely to get reduced chips. They will just be the last player with enough money to even try. That isn't 'volume' as much as herding all the possible customers into just one 'store' to create a largge enough potential cash pile. Those increasingly expensive chips won't be 'volume' for long. )
Even if AMD had failed to revive x86 fortunes and x86 intel was still higher demand, Intel would still be in trouble for not finding more folks to direct share the R&D costs for the most leading edge process.
America has already been showing what it means to be an ally to them. America is already controlling heavily who ASML is allowed to sell to. There are very good reasons to be wary of “government sponsored industries” and the EU has strict rules against it. Everyone is wary of China partly for this reason, but if the American government decides to “nationalize” their chip production supply chain, then America will be on the same list as China. Since ASML would then lose the American market and face the ban on selling to customers who would gladly take their latest high-end equipment, what do you think will happen? Will ASML just say “oh well, it was fun while it lasted, understandable, have a nice day?”
Well, if outside the US are all your enemies, you will then be classified the same as well. Think about all the regulations the US is imposing on EU companies (who to sell to). Consider them all gone… and then what would you do with all the other markets. There is not a single US car without the European supply chain involved.