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  • sheh - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link

    Why does Intel do its main production, unlike assembly, in expensive countries?
    Let's say US plants are a sort of patriotism (unlikely), but why Ireland and Israel?
  • quorm - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link

    I'm guessing because these processes are highly automated and do not benefit from cheap, unskilled labor, while highly educated/trained workers are needed to maintain the machines.

    Chips are tiny so shipping isn't much of an issue. I guess there may be benefits to keeping these in countries with strong intellectual property laws as well.
  • ilt24 - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link

    I think the biggest reason is available talent. While yes China has the ability to educate capable people and has been, current U.S., EU and Japanese export laws prohibit shipping equipment required for a state of the art...14nm or below...factory in China. If you look at other lower cost countries they don't train people to work in the semiconductor industry.

    As far as Ireland goes, I think Intel built their original plant in the early 90's to have a factory within the EU. In the case of Israel, not sure what originally got them to do manufacturing their, that decision was made in the early 80's
  • Samus - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link

    Because Ireland and Israel have highly educated populations, and Germany\Japan\SK are too expensive.
  • woggs - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link

    The other answers already pretty much nailed it. Need skilled engineers and technicians to keep such precision operations running smoothly. Also need a highly stable environment. When a factory goes "down" for any reason, months of material can get scrapped, costing an immense amount of money and disruption to supply.
  • Darcey R. Epperly - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link

    Ireland is in the EU and has nearly no taxes. Israel has good labor and some military demands and those projects are highly beneficial.
  • 808Hilo - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link

    Those decisions are unintended and are beneficial. It means nobody can start a war anymore because the economies run on intels subcontractors delivering in time. Without steady supply of various chips from various global sources production and the life of everything will simply stop.

    Spreading fabs among the US Commonwealth was a strategic decision to lessen that impact. Fabs are complex entities and getting more complex by the day and need aeons of peoples accumulated expertise to run and 10-15 years to build. Shorting a cable is enough - as we have seen at Samsungs plant last year. Nobody wants to work in Germany, so Ireland it is. Israel, military development and contract work and a good schoolsystem produce people with moderate payvisions. Same here. It would be hard to find good people working in a fab in Alabama so you find them in urban cities in Tx, Ca, Wa
  • BertrandsBox - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link

    I can't answer for Israel, but as someone from Ireland, I feel I can give a pretty good answer as to why they would have chosen here.

    - The plant is located in Leixlip, on a large site less than 30 mins to Dublin (the capital), with large room for future expansion
    - Highly educated workforce, with a focus on ICT/engineering/etc. supplying a steady stream of graduates from the universities here
    - 12.5% tax rate
    - Legal system based on common law
    - Access to the European markets
    - Native English speakers
    - Good relationship with the US (e.g. US preclearance at major airports here)
    - Stable political environment
    - IRE £87m grant (equivalent to €196m/$225m today)
  • sheh - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link

    Nobody wants to work in Germany? :) Why?

    I'm not sure labor in Germany/Japan/Korea is cheaper, but maybe.

    And I'm thinking, there are possibly two additional contributing reasons:

    Inertia. Whatever reasons they had in the past for building their first fab, once it's there there are benefits to sticking around.

    Concentrating operations. Intel's also been buying companies there, in recent years 2 in Ireland and 4 in Israel. And there were existing R&D centers, at least in Israel.
  • sheh - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link

    P.S., there's also a fab in China, but for flash/3dxp.
  • Cyanara - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link

    Intel have a 7nm manufacturing process? All I've been hearing is how much trouble they've been having getting anything out of 10nm (even if it is more akin to TSMC's "7nm").
  • Valantar - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link

    They have a 7nm process _in development_. It comes after 10nm, and if the recent statements are anything to go by it's "on track" for whenever it is supposed to launch (unlike 10nm, which as of now is three+ years late). For all we know, 10nm might last for a year or less for mainstream product lines whenever it finally appears.
  • eva02langley - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link

    Or might be slightly used for less complex chips and phased out to 7nm for full deployment for their high level silicon.

    I honestly believe that it is what they were intending by "not dead" and "in progress". Semi-accurate report seems more and more plausible.
  • HStewart - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link

    Semi-accurate is well known as quite bias

    I don't believe Intel killed 10nm - possibly killed Cannon Lake - early reports may have indicate that behind the scenes Intel has developed a new 7nm - but latest rumors indicate 10nm does have some life in but possibly only short live for 1 or 2 years - but this is all speculation - we have to just have to see what happens.

    Keep in mind the Node development (nm) is different then architexture - it is extremely smart that Intel is investing in 7nm at same time correcting 10nm and also working on improve the core architexture.
  • haukionkannel - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link

    It may be that the 7nm may come out faster than 10nm... Well not actually because 10m is coming to consumers in small quantities even now and in volume 2019 (hopefully).
    The 7nm is made with different production technology, so things that does make Intel's 10nm to struggle are not completely same as with 7nm. If 7nm would be just better version of 10nm... well then it also would be in deep trouble at this moment.
    But all in all, it is getting harder and harder to make things even smaller.
  • HStewart - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link

    I think they are working on both 10nm and 7nm at same time. Intel gets a lot of bad rap about 10nm being taking a long time and I believe they wan end that discussion by making sure that 10nm is corrected and 7nm is on track.

    When previous this month the article about 7nm it appear that Intel drop currently 10nm plans and went directly to 7nm next year - how it looks like from later reports - that they instead made corrections for 10nm

    I believe Intel wants every one to realize that Architexture Is different than Node (nm size development are independent then each. The big chance for Intel next year is Sunny Cove which is major Architexture change - but it could be built of 10nm, 7nm or even 14nm nodes. Yes smaller nodes help in making things more dense, lower power and possibly even faster - but the real performance change comes with Architexture changes

    I think we are on same thought - but of course in forums like this - they are only opinions and must be taken with grain of salt.
  • yannigr2 - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link

    I can think of two scenarios.

    1) Next gen Intel CPUs will be really great, triggering a new circle of upgrades and Intel is getting ready for it.

    2) Even with AMD stealing some market share and Qualcomm trying to get into laptops, Intel sees that the demand for x86 processors is going to sky rocket in the next years, so it is getting ready to support that.

    In any case people realized that tablets are not going to replace PCs any time soon, so they are going back to PCs, with smartphones covering any needs for a touch device. At the same time every business/enterprise/organization/? out there, it is probably increasing the number of PCs it uses, driving the need for x86 machines higher.
  • HStewart - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link

    Keep in mind replacing PC is not same as replacing Desktop computers. You can take a trip to local BestBuy and see few desktop, few AMD laptop and yet to see Qualcomm laptop.

    One thing about Qualcomm, Windows is probably not best market - I am sure Qualcomm would make a killer Chromebook - but that would compete with Android and they probably don't want to do that - On Windows it is basically a joke.
  • iwod - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link

    Why the expansion now? Did they not forecast to have the need for these Capacity long before? Why not during BK era? What went wrong? Why left IMFT? Why making 3D Point / Optane yourself ?

    The more changes they are making now the more it shows how Intel had not been doing anything in the past few years.
  • HStewart - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link

    I think it done for Business reasons, I believe they do their large purchases at end of year. They also have other plans for Optane memory stuff and probably getting rid of fat of it. FAB changes take time to develop especially that things are getting smaller and smaller. Just because it not publicly announce about the changes - does not mean they have been working on it. It would be foolish to believe that Intel has not been working on correcting 10nm issues they obvious appear to have trouble in area.
  • Shiitaki - Friday, December 28, 2018 - link

    Intel is making the classic 'always must grow' mistake. Optane is dead, it's years late and horribly overpriced. No body cares. CPUs? AMD isn't a joke anymore, processors are slamming in to a wall to break 5Ghz, and we already have more cores than 90 percent of the population could use.

    The modern desktop CPU has reached 'maturity', and it will become a commodity over the next 5 years, people simply won't care if it is blue or red inside.

    We are currently headed for a world wide recession and a very uncertain future politically.
  • ironargonaut - Friday, December 28, 2018 - link

    <sarcasm>You forgot that nobody needs more than 64k memory.<sarcasm> If no body cares, why are you bothering to post? "Optane is dead", that must be why all the datacenters are buying them.
    "We are currently headed for a world wide recession and a very uncertain future politically."
    Just another democrat trying to talk the US into another recession because a republican is president of the USA. Not that I blame you/them it worked the first time, and you/them don't care whom you hurt.
  • NewNumber6 - Friday, December 28, 2018 - link

    You spelled your handle wrong. It’s spelled i-g-n-o-r-a-n-t.
  • TheJian - Tuesday, January 1, 2019 - link

    He's spot on. NO recession, and dems/news have been saying we're headed for Armageddon for 2yrs...LOL. The world is ending due to trump, trump will start nuclear war, blah blah...NOPE, he's ending wars...LOL. Economy, unemployment etc great. He just needs to kill the Central Bank and Fed and we'll be just fine. Since 1913, the dollar has lost 94% of it's value. Hmm, what was created in 1913...ROFL. The Federal Reserve! Illegal BTW! The founding fathers NEVER wanted this nor the fbi, cia, doj, fisa etc etc etc, all illegal/unconstitutional. These people (the deep state I guess) are far more dangerous than trump (or any president). The damage they can do to anyone they don't like is unbelievable. IE, Flynn was worth 5mil and had a house before they attacked him for a lie both federal interviewers said he didn't even make. Govt shouldn't have the power to do this to citizens, and they did it because he knows everything they did during obama/clinton (pres/state dpt) admin.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_central_b...
    There's a reason Jefferson saw it as "an engine for speculation, financial manipulation, and corruption." He was 100% correct, and they're currently trying to take down trumps economy (7 rate hikes in less than 2yrs? For what? Ah, to kill the stock market - and they hope trump 2020). Trump got the market too high, jobs up etc etc, time to take him down...Ugh.

    Tax payers should not be backing debt. Govt should not be in banking either. It breeds corruption, bailouts etc. I never voted to bail ANYONE out. If you fail at business, you need to be put OUT of business and make room for someone better at it to move in. Trump hopefully is moving to bring back the gold standard (put a bill up, seems he's going to do it or leaning that way)

    https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house...
    YES, kill the fed trump! DO IT NOW! Seal the border until mexico begs to pay for the wall (they lose well over 71B a year if we do this now, just in balance), and do the same for china. Welcome to USA power again, along with WEALTH and JOBS. USA first. PERIOD. We owe NOBODY anything in welfare. Time to take care of our own. Stop all welfare to illegals (240bil a year now that we know there are 22-30mil here, that is 10% of the population almost), and you get 10 FREE walls anyway yearly...LOL The wall stops crap every year and is 99% effective (just ask Israel for crime stats, walls work).

    Just like a dem, no comment on substance, just personal attacks. Trump's going to end the world, climate change is real...blah blah blah...BS. They can't predict the weather for my trip to the beach, let alone decades out...ROFLMAO. 1% means NOTHING even if their dumb models are correct at SOME POINT down the road, and by then we'll have better tech and ideas to beat it (but it's fake, so who cares). Thank god trump isn't falling for that fleece america BS. If you can't build it for profit without a govt subsidy go fly a kite (I'm looking at you windmills, solar etc). 5B sugar subs in the crap bill last month, but no 5B for a wall? They've passed 3T in the last year, but can't find wall money? Fire everyone you can trump. They are all trying to fire you anyway...LOL. Dang deep state.

    Google Grahams Hierarchy of disagreement so you won't be so ignorant yourself.

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