this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
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Huang is talking about complete independence, not just leading edge node production like i've seen many people assume based on the headline. Achieving this in 10-20 years with the volume of components needed is actually pretty optimistic.
The truth is, the U.S. and other countries dont really want to create (and spend) for complete chip independence, they just dont want to depend on Taiwan and China. Outside of wartime production, chips would just be sourced from the U.S. and trading partners like Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Ireland, Germany.
Isn't it reliant on places like Israel, Taiwan, and South Korea? And how many of those places invested in such capacities to guarantee a degree of US protection and involvement.
Mostly Taiwan. South Korea doesn't do it for protection, if it did well they screwed up badly because samsung botched their nodes even worse than intel did for years.
Intel is reliant on Israel for engineers. Very difficult to replace and unlikely that they would move over to the US. The brain drain in the US is real in part thanks to EE wages not matching up with booming software engineering wages and the US treating manufacturing like an afterthought in general.
South Korea does do it in some part for protection in my opinion. North Korea are a very unpleasant neighbour, allied with China, and SK depends on US support as a deterrent. The primary benefit is that it’s the heart of their economy, but I believe that defence is also a factor.
Being at a critical part of many crucial supply chains means that the US has a very strong interest in making sure SK keeps producing. Even if you look at advanced products mostly made in Taiwan - e.g. the nvidia H100s, the CoWoS packaging is done by SK Hynix.