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I think it's mostly material science and chemistry. There is a tremendous amount of know how that can only be learned on the job, no course or seminar could ever teach all of the tricks of the trade that go into semi process development and manufacturing. The US had a huge amount of know how...
That is fair, they pour a lot of money into R&D and have struggled the last few nodes for sure. But the flip side of that is $23B in cash will only build one new fab these days. If they or anyone else in the US were to try and become a leading edge foundry (not just an IDM) they would almost...
What exactly does saving the US semi industry mean? To me it has to include advanced node development and manufacturing. Who else in the US can do next node development. No one but Intel has the people or the money to do it. IBM did it until it became too expensive for them. GF tried to do...
I hear this a lot and I am afraid it's a bit misleading. IBM didn't really pay GF to take their fabs. Essentially IBM gave them their fabs for nothing and in return GF would keep substantially all of the employees, continue their operations and most importantly they had to do advanced node...
If the US govt was going to pour the hundreds of billions of dollars required to fund US onshore leading edge foundries they should have done it when GF desperately needed it and was asking for it...when GF still had a world class development team. Too late for that now, there is no US company...
GF ended 7nm because they didn't have the $$ to keep funding the development, that's really all it was. It's very expensive and their investor was no longer willing to keep infusing cash.