[PLUG-TALK] U.S. manufactured motherboards ... and growth

Tue Feb 11 05:07:53 UTC 2025

There's zero chance that any Trump tariffs are going to stimulate the growth
of on-US-soil chipmaking.

Any investor looking to drop 4-6B into a fab is going to expect at least a
decade of returns.   Probably longer.  Their fab will start out making CPUs
then as time passes and newer CPUs are made with newer tech they will make
cheaper CPUs that get used in DVD players and Microwaves and so on and so on
until a decade after construction they will be wringing the last drops out
of their investment making chips for garage door openers.

But, ALL the investors expect Trump & Co to burn out.  They know that the
biggest reason the MAGgots got elected was due to the inflationary spike
after COVID.  They know that there was nothing Biden could have done to
prevent that spike because you had tons of people WFH and saving money on
gasoline and such allowing that money to build up in savings and pay off
credit card debt and so on - and when the pandemic abated people were like
"Damn I've saved enough now I'm gonna SPEND"

They know that Ma and Pa Kettle don't understand any of this they are just
pissed off that the price of eggs jumped.  And that happened during the
runup to the 2024 election so the Democrats got blamed and the Republicans
took advantage.  And even the Republicans know this which is why they are
just outright destroying stuff.   The Billionaires expect in 4 years the
MAGGots who voted for Trump will be burned by Trump & Co enough to throw
them out of office - so any tariffs that are there to promote the US chip
market growing - will be tossed aside.

This is not an environment you need to re-grow US chipmaking.  So it just
isn't going to grow at all.

It's been years since I bought anything from a local computer repair shop.
They don't have the selection and Amazon's 2 days away.  If anything the
Trumpy owner of a local computer repair shop is just counting on motherboard
prices skyrocketing so that people will try nursing their own crap a few
more years.

But I just don't see it happening.  When I can go on Back Market and buy a
generation 10 core i7 for $400 the entire business of wringing the last drop
out of computer hardware goes out the window.  Today I'm throwing away
stacks of Core i5 generation 4 Small Form Factor gear that runs perfect with
the exception that it's too slow for win 11.  16GB ram and everything.  High
end Elitedesks not that crap Lenovo or Dell stuff.

Tariff's only apply to NEW pcs and the Fortune 500 are all on 3 year
forklift turnaround schedules.  They WILL pay the tariffs for the next 4
years because that will only be 1 cycle of desktops for their users.  And
the secondary market will continue to be flooded with off-lease gear that is
ridiculously cheap because there's just too much of it out there.

The reason Intel is struggling is simple and obvious.  When Bill Gates (as
he did last week) started singing the praises of Pat Gelsinger, you know for
damn sure that this is why Intel is having problems - their board didn't
move fast enough to fire Pat.  If you really want to know who the morons are
in High Tech - look at who Bill Gates is praising.  Notice that the current
Microsoft company really wants nothing at all to do with the guy.  They are
not stupid.

People need to understand something critical about the computer market.  It
is the same thing that happened to the automobile market.  Let me ask you
all - how long was a typical model T expected to last?  30-50k miles, that
is all

How long is a typical car sold today expected to last?   200k miles that is
how long.  I have owned many cars since I was 20 years old and all of the
modern "daily drivers" lasted 200k.  Anything made in the 1900's in general
- with the exception of outlier models - lasted that long.

The automotive industry had to get used to product cycles that were longer
and longer and longer.  

Do you honest-to-God expect that the average lifespan of a desktop computer
will only ever be 3 years?  Why is it that you think consumers will tolerate
this?   They will not.  If the computer industry wants to keep selling PC's
that only last 3 years they MUST make them cheaper.  Otherwise if they can't
- because of tariffs, or because their own business plans demand 3 year End
Of Life - then they are GOING to get schooled by consumers.

Microsoft figured this out.  That's WHY they released Microsoft Office 2024
LTSC 4 months ago.  That is NOT a subscription product - it's a FIVE YEAR
lifespan product.  Not 3 years.  And LTSC's license IS PERPETUAL.  So if you
buy it today and you want to use it for the next decade - noproblemo.  You
can.  Microsoft knows this.  They know that people are STILL running Windows
10 on 10 year old hardware.  They know people are running 8 year old copies
of MS Office.  They know that consumers won't accept this magical 3 year
replacement scheme that Intel and Apple have been banking on.  They know
consumers won't accept continuous subscriptions. They are hedging their
bets.  Like Ford, when it watched the Model T disappear and be replaced by
vehicles with engines that lasted longer - and it too redesigned their
engines and got rid of the "Flatties" and made longer lasting engines - this
is how things work in a mature industry.

Tariffs are NOTHING.  So OK the Trumpers and Magaoots are going to slap a
40% tariff on the new $1000 PC I buy.  No big deal.  I just won't get rid of
it in 3 years.  I'll get rid of my $1400 PC in 5 years.  Not 3.   Wow - I
just dropped the 1 year cost of my PC from $333.00 to $280.  If you don't
understand how I did that you are as stupid about mathematics as the Magaots
are.

If you REALLY want to "bring back" the chip industry - then the Magoots need
to be in power 20 years - and they need to institute 200% tariffs on chips.
And there's no possible way that will happen.  Even the Magots don't believe
they will be in power that long.  That's why they are doing a smash-and-grab
on the government.

Ted

-----Original Message-----
From: PLUG-talk <plug-talk-bounces at lists.pdxlinux.org> On Behalf Of Keith
Lofstrom
Sent: Sunday, February 9, 2025 3:45 PM
To: plug-talk at lists.pdxlinux.org
Subject: [PLUG-TALK] U.S. manufactured motherboards ... and growth

Foolish politicians preach tariffs on China-manufactured goods, which
presumably includes desktop and tower "P.C."
motherboards.  This is intended to promote US manufacture, although the only
"manufacturing" most politicians can do is the production of fake "facts". 

The Trumpy proprietor of one local computer repair shop told me "there are
plenty of idle factories ready to make motherboards."

"PC" motherboards are COMPLEX.  ALL (except PERHAPS military
motherboards) are made with Chinese chips and components. 
Motherboards can fail; I keep spares, just in case.  

Only ONE motherboard manufacturer, Corvalent near Austin Texas, supposedly
makes the circuit boards and populates them with those foreign chips,
capacitors, etc. 

I purchased two used Corvalent motherboards for my spare supply.  I counted
40 tiny surface mount VLSI components on the board, NOT counting the
socketed Intel CPU and US sourced RAM sticks.  ALL those components are
Chinese, mostly but not entirely Taiwan.  Most of the connectors (RAM
sockets, power sockets, etc.) do not show manufacturer IDs, but those are
presumably made in Asia, as they have been for decades.

I've worked for (and consulted for) U.S. electronic system manufacturers for
half a century, and watched them decay to nothing, not much better than the
competitors that I could not help, due to onerous NDAs. 

Turning a potato chip factory into a computer chip factory is a decade-long
project (for example Micron Semiconductor in Idaho), and requires the
creation of hundreds of support companies and the training of thousands of
technicians to /maybe/ produce a product, much less produce a profit and a
return on investment.  Intel in Hillsboro took decades to grow from their
first factory in Aloha, and that was in "fertile soil" plowed by Tektronix,
Floating Point Systems, and dozens of other established electronics
manufacturing companies in Washington County.

Today, Intel is struggling, and the 300 or so vendors feeding technology to
Intel fabs are struggling as well.
Many of the tasks Intel super-CPUs used to perform are now spread over a
VAST number of handhelds, or are performed by graphics co-processors like
nVidia (chips from PRC and Taiwan).

So what will happen if 2025 tariffs follow the same course as the
Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930?  Those were supposed to encourage US
manufacturing and remedy the 1928 stock market crash; instead, those idiotic
tariffs extended that crash for another decade. 

World War II created demand, built new factories, and enlisted 12% of the US
population in the armed forces.
It also created nuclear weapons, so that World War III will NOT be an option
for economic recovery. 

( FEAR FACT: The incremental cost of one additional mass-produced nuclear
warhead is 8 labor hours. )

Anyway - things could get BAD for the next few years.
If the technology adepts of PLUG work their asses off, we might be able to
help our Oregonian neighbors endure the rest of this decade with slightly
less pain. 

I'd like to write "prosper", and share some product ideas that would create
jobs and profits, but if I do so on this list (rather than private meetings
at Intel and elsewhere), I expect that PRC entrepreneurs will implement them
and corner the market first.  I wish good things for those entrepreneurs,
but I wish GREAT things for my friends and neighbors.

If there are Intel people reading this, I'm ready to sign some "conditional"
non-disclosure statements to share my ideas.  Not "for free"; I don't need
to get paid for my ideas, but I want my partners to train and pay hundreds
of Oregonians to develop them.  Not just more patents to suppress other
potential employers and products.  Been there, done that, lost startups to
patent trolls.

Conditional: if the conversations don't lead to action, I reserve the right
to share my ideas with more aggressive companies elsewhere in the U.S.  At
least /some/ of that will help my friends and neighbors in Oregon.

Does anyone else want to help build the connections and collaborations to do
this?  Learning and long hours required.

Keith L.

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com
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