We in the west can afford higher fuel prices. Not all of us.
Can China afford higher prices?
Mean can China afford this as their debt crisis probably deepens? Can China afford this and a military adventure?
Can China afford this and a military adventure?
China like Russia has serious demographic issues. Any military adventures must be undertaken soon before they run out fit young men. I expect China is watching the Ukraine issue closely. If Russia succeeds China very well may attempt a Taiwan takeover. We have no defense treaty with Taiwan & it is a long way from the USA. And like the Ukraine, Taiwan may not be considered strategically important.
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Taiwan may not be considered strategically important.
Maybe not geographically strategic, but semiconductor manufacturing?
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Maybe not geographically strategic, but semiconductor manufacturing?
Intel is building 2 news factories in US. TSMC is building one as is Samsung. Others may follow.
The US once was a leading manufacturing center of semiconductor chips before cheap labor led to closure of factories. We can be again. And should be for strategic reasons.
https://techhq.com/2021/12/is-reshoring-the-us-semiconductor…
tj,
The move away from the US as a larger manufacturer of semis had to do with a few other factors…not so much labor costs.
Pollution, US corporations did not want the costs of cleaning up.
Chip companies that were smaller than Intel but US based decided to use foundries because of manufacturing scale. Building a fab for a smaller company is out of reach. AMD may huff and puff but gave up on the costs of fabs.
Intel before Gelsinger the current CEO had Swan as CEO. Swan was much more of a bean counter. He brought Intel’s profits up from $9 billion per year to $19 billion in about three years. Swan was not like John Chambers at Cisco constantly negotiating the voyage through the engineering development process. Meaning Intel fell behind on something in particular that is important the “node” technology to make smaller nanometer transistors. Intel and TSM can buy the machinery for making chips from ASML, but the nodes at TSM are more advanced for smaller transistor sizes.
Intel has been small time in the foundry business such as a prior agreement to build Apple chips. But without the more developed nodes tech this rushed more design companies to TSM and Samsung. Also the rise of the iPhone put some of the business into China long with other product needs from China.
Gelsinger has a lot of experience working at the top of Intc directing engineering. He worked with Andy Grove.