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

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Mon, Feb 10, 2025 at 09:07:53PM -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> 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.

This isn't how bleeding edge chip factories (like Intel D1X) work.
IF Intel factories continue to work.  Today, Intel's products are
"too capable" and much too expensive for the desktop or (more
importantly) the "palmtop".  Intel business is the tippy top end,
which must grow huge and fast if they are to survive.

There are plenty of "upper middle" companies like TSMC (Taiwan
Semiconductor and clones) that make phone chips. 

The feeble chips in DVD players and microwaves are made in
bottom-tier low-tech fabs using hand-me-down equipment (which
might have been Intel fab equipment two decades and four
owners ago).  Piper Cub vs Airbus 380.

In 2025, the glamor market is megascale Artificial Intelligence
- whatever that really means.  It will soon be big POWER THRIFTY
artificial intelligence, because the limit to A.I. growth is
the cost of gigawatts, not gigaflops.  Intel's processes make
very small transistors, which do not need many femtojoules
to switch, but they must switch zillions of times per second
to earn their exorbitant production cost.  Switching is not
thermodynamically thrifty.

Data centers locate in Oregon because our power is cheaper than
elsewhere, but it won't be for long, bidding for a fixed energy
supply.  Sometime soon, Oregon residential customers will notice
their electric rates are rising and their air worsening (due to
coal-fired generation) and realize that politicians pander to
employee-lite server farms rather than households and "people
employers". 

I imagine an election-winning slogan like "watts to the
people, not to computers taking their jobs".  Not entirely
accurate, but when did accuracy matter in politics?

Anyway, Intel's current products are overpriced for consumers
(who consume handhelds), and too power hungry for the tasks
current data centers perform.  That said, Intel's superb chip
technology can enable new kinds of data centers using new
sources of energy - which is what I hope to discuss with them.

As a chip designer and avid "Intel watcher", with a wife who
worked for Intel 34 years ago, I can extrapolate where they 
are, and as an outsider I can see beyond the grindstone in
front of their noses.  There are vastly more opportunities 
than they seem to be aware of.  I'll help them so I don't
pay taxes for food stamps for their laid-off employees.

Those employees are who I care about, not the suits in the
C-suite.  MANY decades ago, Howard Vollum (co-founder of 
Tektronix) took me aside and explained that my job was NOT
to create brilliant inventions, but to create profitable 
products that could be produced with pride by thousands of
Tektronix factory employees, earning the money that paid
their mortgages.  Not many "Howards" these days.

Note that Howard did NOT explain that many oscilloscopes
were sold to measure nuclear weapons tests, or that the
scopes were disposed of after one test because they were
radioactive, or that the part that turned radioactive was
the decorative chrome trim around the case, which could
have been discarded and the scopes used again. 

With thousands of families to feed, compromises are made. 

Intel has similar problems and obligations, and no doubt
some unnecessary "chrome trim" that pays mortgages in 
expensive Washington county.  I hope to turn that chrome
trim into job security for Intel employees, like my wife
used to be.  BTW, her next "job" was medical school,
a demanding task that demanding Intel prepared her for.
I hope that Intel will be "preschool" for thousands more
like her, decades into the future.

----

Regards the Trumpies, the drunken sailors will have hangovers
sooner or later.  As an engineer who designs for production 
by well-equipped PEOPLE, my job is not to wave fingers at
them and tell them "I told you so", but to design the products
and tools and procedures they will need to earn a salary in
the future.  MAGA hats aren't safety equipment, and slogans
don't create silicon chips.

Regards computers, my concern is watts.  I figure a watt
of extra average power consumption costs me $20 per decade
(including summer air conditioning).

My previous 24 port gigabit switch (2 or more wired ports in
every room, many in the office and "bit shop") consumed 16 watts
idle.  I recently replaced it with a 24 port TP-Link ($86
from Amazon) that consumes 6 watts, saving $200 per decade.

I worry that the TP-Link will Phone Home To China with some of
my packets.  I will soon deploy a better firewall computer,
and will log the IP addresses it talks to.  I hope a paranoid
PLUGger can suggest a list of worrying IP addresses to compare
those log files to.

----

If you made it down this far ... Cisco/Linksys SRW2024, free
to good cause.  I cleaned out the crud that caused fan noise.

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com