www.bloomberg.com
I could also see Micron and maybe GF (pending how sticky their nodes are now that shortages are easing) being in this boat too. Either way this is further evidence that CHIPs not meant to prop up losers. Micron and Intel (as well as TI, Samsung, TSMC, Global wafers, ect) will get subsidies for investing not for existing. Although I wouldn't be surprised if firms with R&D/pay taxes in the US will get slight preferential treatment for reasons that should be painfully obvious.
If that was the case TSMC and Samsung would be totally unsuitable for this purpose. Yeah the manufacturing would be onshored, but the IP would be in the hands of foreign nationals. If say the ROC is conquered by the PRC, then that IP would be in PRC hands (a far worse scenario than just the supplier being taken out of commission). At that point why bother onshoring at all? If the DOD was only reason for CHIPs, then only US firms would get the money and no matter how bleak things start looking for intel and micron the DOD would prop them up.
My question is how does this make US technology more secure? I don't buy the argument that now the DOD doesn't need to worry about the collapse of the ROC. TSMC AZ will in the best case only be able to maintain the nodes they currently produce at that site without the rest of TSMC. As I mentioned there is also the risk of DOD IP/designs falling into the hand of the PLA. That happening is FAR worse than getting their future capacity cut off. In short in my opinion if all that mattered was securing DOD technology/supply you would go to intel or GF and even if the chip needs to be 2x more expensive and some huge die monstrosity you would do that. This solution is also FAR FAR FAR cheaper than the $52B for CHIPs since the DOD could just leverage existing capacity. Those two firms are the only two that could provide guaranteed capacity, a guaranteed roadmap, and guaranteed security for their IP.
Almost certainly not the world's first exascale supercomputer. China is rumored to have at least two operational exascale systems.
www.nextplatform.com
Almost certainly not the world's first exascale supercomputer. China is rumored to have at least two operational exascale systems.
China Has Already Reached Exascale – On Two Separate Systems
More analysis "Why Did China Keep Its Exascale Supercomputers Quiet?" Native CPU and accelerator architectures that have been in play on China's previous
The TOP500 list only includes publicly announced systems. The US government is rumored to have multiple "dark" exascale or near-exascale systems operational, which are probably top secret. The real issue with any of these scale-out / accelerator-based systems is software, so I'm skeptical that LINPACK results are all that telling anyway.
Without seeing the application itself and being a lawyer qualified to dissect the thing, it looks like things are being well thought out. Foxcon Wi or government welfare these do not seem to be.
CHIPS Act: What companies need to do to get their share
In a long awaited announcement, the Commerce Department outlined Tuesday what semiconductor companies will need to hand over to get their share of the billions in government money that will come their way soon. Bottom line: no blank check. “We'll run them through the paces and then we'll make...finance.yahoo.com
As you could tell from my previous posts, I just don't like this Act. It does nothing to address a bunch of fundamental differences in construction costs and inefficiency between the US and Taiwan. It does nothing to address permitting inefficiencies. It includes a boat-load of expensive and (IMO) useless bureaucracy. It does nothing to level the playing field with China and Taiwan WRT taxation, especially the write-off of capital expenditures. And it includes some very tangled rules on stock buybacks, and I'm guessing dividends as a percent of net income will be a political factor. And DoD chip volumes are so low compared modern efficient fab capacities that calling this ACT "fundamentally a national security initiative" is silly.
Valid concerns. I was speaking from the perspective of if this is what CHIPs, it seems like the US GOV is putting guardrails in place so that this doesn't turn into something that squanders the people's resources.
Besides the permitting thing what would you do instead? The ROC/ROK offered and still offer generous tax credits on equipment and cheap guaranteed financing, wouldn't the US need to offer even better incentives to attract folks like TSMC, Micron, SK, and Samsung to build new greenfield fabs in a region which they have no (TSMC/SK) to little (Micron/Samsung) presence?
Personally, I don't think TSMC needs any incentives at all. I think they're incentivized by customer demand to reduce geopolitical risk. IMO, I don't see that changing for the foreseeable future. And I still hold the position that just building fabs in the US doesn't really reduce TSMC's geopolitical risk. I don't think the AZ fabs can be just in a way nationalized (put into a US-based company) and expected to continue producing and evolving without the ROC infrastructure.
