GF hasn't gone past the 12nm node. TI is at 45nm. Micron is on relatively recent processes, but they make RAM, not logic (which are totally different processes). Intel is the only chip manufacturer left that is working in logic at anything like the leading edge.

GF is a few nodes behind. Micron doesn't make semiconductors, they mostly make flash and whatnot. TI doesn't have the capacity or knowledge to expand to Intel's size/capacity

Yeah terrible position to be when your own government is investing in your competitors' company using your own tax dollars.

As a software engineer, this isn't an entirely new concept.

GF is a zombie company. Micron and TI are both far far away from leading edge. There is only one American company which is both developing and manufacturing leading edge nodes.

re: Micron - Memory is very different from logic chips. You vast number of repeating cells in memory. If any of them are bad you can just turn them off and bin them as lower capacity. You can do that to some extend with logic chips but not nearly as much as memory.

I believe the most modern TSMC fabs outside of Taiwan are in Arizona. They are just moving to 4nm which is nearly 5 years old and just a revision of 5nm which is getting close to 7 years old.

TSMC aims to have N3 in Arizona by 2028 at the earliest which is 6 years after it first released. By that time, TSMC will have released N3X, N2, N2P, N2X, A16, and A14.

TSMC is heavily sponsored by the Taiwanese government and was created with the express purpose of making Taiwan so valuable that the West would be forced to defend them against China. Moving newer processes out of the country is against their national interests and they've made it clear that there's no plan to do that.

GF is like a decade behind in research. Without years to ramp up and update their fabs they're not relevant.

Global Foundries is on 12nm. TSMC is at 3.

The vast majority of TSMC production is in taiwan. If china invades the fabs will be destroyed. They pretty much would be forced to just stop operating, yes.

Outside of Taiwan TSMC foundries are just pumping out already developed non leading edge fab processes. Everyone who matters to TSMC tech development is in Taiwan.

How to run a company correctly?

Quite the opposite. Part of the reason Trump wanted to end the Russia-Ukraine war so bad was because they wanted to gear up for the "big fight". Ukraine simply wasn't a big strategic priority which is why they wanted to either end the war (best case), or shift responsibility over to Europe if that failed.

Lookup Elbridge Colby - served in first Trump admin and now Undersecretary of Defense. Along with Hegseth and JD Vance, they are all that same line of thought

It also means that China can expect the destruction of Taiwan's fabs to hurt the US less than China.

Combine that with the US's ability to unilaterally destroy Taiwan's fabs, and it sways the calculation a bit

As far as I know none of them manufacture anything resembling a replacement for a Xeon, which is relevant to national security because those are uses in military applications.

I'm surprised to see on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchip_Technology that Microchip does in fact have fabs. I thought it was fabless! Its fabs are in the US, but the assembly and test facilities are all across the Pacific.

Neither of them make high performance CPUs or GPUs

Yes

A large bulk of CPU orders comes from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Want to say 50% of all AMD revenue is datacenters, and the Hyperscalers represent the largest chunk of that.

Huge order for... what? DoD's needs for chips are quite modest in quantity. Truth is that the US Gov doesn't need the volume which requires Intel to keep afloat.

Government involvement is the fastest way to corrupt the purpose of an organization, hollow out its soul and quickly get rid of all the competant people. There's a reason that the DOGE findings made a laughing stock of government employees.

It is not socialism. Socialism is when the workers control the means of production. Not a fat windbag mobster president and his thugs.

What good would that do if China invades Taiwan?

The major patents on all the most important parts of x86 expired years ago now. Nobody wants to take on a legacy ISA with tons of footguns everywhere when newer ISAs have learned a lot of lessons from x86 about how to do things better.

I haven't heard of them until this comment, but reading through Wikipedia, and a techpowerup article, I'm not seeing that they actually own a license to manufacture x86 cpus freely. It seems like they were able to due to it being a partnership with AMD. I could easily be wrong though.

Why would TSMC or Taiwan want to give that information to the United States? There is a strategic reason why TSMC does not build their latest nodes and processes in the United States and why their R&D happens in Taiwan. They want / need The United States to protect Taiwan and their interests. It opens up strategic options for the United States if Intel or another US based company can produce cutting edge chips in the ballpark of TSMC.

Intel wanted the 9 billion in CHIP Act money that was being withheld and was willing to make a deal for 10% equity in order to get it.

Labor is not the key factor driving chip prices or performance. Fabs are highly automated and filled with extremely precise machinery. The maintenance and upkeep of machinery, the yield per wafer, and consumer demand drive the prices. Labor is basically a rounding error.

Doesn't matter. All of the US's advanced weaponry systems now use "state of the art" electronic systems, which in the context of defense only means "not decades out of date." Two or three generations old is perfectly fine. The military does not need the latest and greatest CPUs and GPUs going into the iPhone 17 or whatever, but it does need the equivalent of the chip in the iPhone 12 or iPhone 8 or whatever for integration into next generation weapons systems.

But if all of our advanced weaponry used chips from Taiwan or Korea, for example, then the strategic implications for war in East Asia would be radically different. People are right to say that China could engage in war over Taiwan for chips, but for the wrong reasons. It's not that they want access to the fabs (they'd love it, but they're not stupid and they know the fabs and know-how would be destroyed in the war), but it would deny the US defense industry access to those fabs.

If US missiles or drones use chips from TSMC, and TSMC is in occupied territory or a war zone... the US can't make more missiles or drones. And no matter how powerful your starting position is, you can't wage war without the ability to replenish your stockpiles. It's the bitter lesson Germany learned in both world wars.

China wants hegemony in Asia, and to remove the influence of the US, Japan, and their allies within what they perceive as their exclusive sphere of influence. How to achieve that? Invade Taiwan, which eliminates western access to TSMC one way or another, effectively blockading western defense industry from the core things they need to resupply their militaries in a war. Like WW1 all over again, a "preemptive war" becomes the game-theoretic optimal outcome, and the world suffers.

How to counter that? The US and its allies need to make sure they have access to chip fabrication facilities that can produce near-state-of-the-art chips, even at inflated prices that are not commercially viable in peacetime, as well as the necessary strategic minerals like germanium and lithium. Only then does calculus swing the other way in favor of peace. Hence Biden's effort to get TSMC to build SOTA fabs in Arizona, and when that failed/stumbled, this investment in Intel.

Haven’t you read Curtis Yarvin’s vision for America? Our leaders, VCs, and owners have

If they actually release Panther Lake on 18A this year, so one year to fix yield should be reasonable assumption, right?

Sure tough business but, risky compared to what? Intel?