[deltaseventhree]

It's universally well known that Asian workers work harder and can be paid less.

It's not just about intels capabilities. It's about economic wage standards. The cost is just too high in the US.

That being said tsmc workers in Taiwan are by far more capable then Intel this is proven by the 3nm process of which Intel is completely incapable of achieving.

[ahkurtz]

You have posted many times in the thread saying the same thing, but slightly moderated because you got flagged.

You said elsewhere "things change" regarding labor force quality. They do. Asian labor across the board, but especially in China, has been rapidly increasing in cost while for example USA labor is stagnant in overall cost. Apple is medium-term going to be priced out of China just by labor costs. It is actually smart in a real-politik sense (and a business sense you deny) for labor sourcing to start looking a lot more broadly at different countries on a cost basis. USA is rich in some measures, but in terms of purchasing power and compensation of much of working class, it no longer is.

As for the quality of USA workers you've commented on a lot, I'll give you there is a serious decline in education. Saying they are slow or lazy shows you don't know anything about USA. The vast majority of the country is working itself to death and the life expectancy is cratering. As sad and reprehensible as it is, from the kind of logic you're using, a desperate and broken workforce is a GREAT business opportunity.

There is something beyond "American Exceptionalism" and "Asian Exceptionalism" and I think you really need to find it.

[arghnoname]

I always feel there's some implicit racism or belief in cultural superiority or something at play in these discussions. Anyone who has gone to grad school can see pretty plainly that the top schools are stuffed with Chinese and Indian nationals. They're capable and they work hard. Some of them, not a small number, go back home. Further, western industry set up shop in Asia for their own reasons and brought their expertise over.

The west had a lead, but 'we' trained Asians at our top institutions and worked closely with Asian manufacturers so that they can make our most sophisticated products more cheaply. There are a lot more people in Asia, and high relative poverty and cultural practices encourage a higher degree of scholastic achievement. Of course they're beating us now.

Outside of a very explicit and intense effort to develop domestic talent and retain foreign talent (or bloody wars), the west probably won't ever really lead ever again. This was the obvious outcome decades ago, but these things take time. The gap will grow and will extend up the value chain--western nations will do protectionism to try to slow this (e.g., Huawei, current chip restrictions), but cat's out of the bag.

I don't think it's a good or a bad thing from a global perspective. It just is. The great power competition that may result, wars, etc, is a very bad thing. The US in particular should compete as best it can, but it's best for everyone if we learn to live in a multipolar world.

[mr_toad]

> Anyone who has gone to grad school can see pretty plainly that the top schools are stuffed with Chinese and Indian nationals. They're capable and they work hard.

People in grad school tend to be hard working and smart, that’s how they got there. Hypothesis: foreign nationals have to be even smarter and harder-working to secure places in US universities, hence the stereotype.

[arghnoname]

It wasn't my experience that they were harder working or more capable than the domestic talent. Because of the immigration benefits, some had additional motivations native-born Americans didn't have, but there are easier ways to immigrate. There were some differences culturally in how certain things were approached, but I thought capability wise there was not an obvious and significant disparity in terms of capability of students by national origin.

What was noticeable is that there were a lot of these students and to the extent that the US does not retain them, we are training the workforce of our competitors. To the extent we do retain them, we are poaching the talent of our competitors. My guess is this is tough to balance and where we're at now is making total global innovation higher but lowering the proportion of the pie over which the US has dominion.

[davrosthedalek]

What percentage of the chip cost is the wage cost? This might be relevant for a 90uM process, but I think at 4nm, the wages are a minuscule part of the production costs.

[deltaseventhree]

Should be a huge portion of the cost. The material is just silicon. The expertise and know how that goes into this is where most of the money goes. For Taiwan, this expertise is better, faster and cheaper.

[adwn]

You're forgetting about the billions of USD that go into buying the machines that make up the fab.

> The material is just silicon.

No, a lot of chemicals are required as well.

[deltaseventhree]

Those billions are also mostly R&D. It's also from a country external to Taiwan. ASML, the Ductch.

Yes, Obviously there's a lot that goes on in this process, more then "just" silicon. But if you want a summary, then cost expertise and knowhow, eclipses actual process. In a sense it is just "silicon" when measured relative to the ability and knowledge required to transform that material.

[ajhurliman]

Chip-making isn't the same as sewing together cheap trinkets, and the Chinese economy has changed to support a growing middle-class so the reality of Chinese labor costs has drifted from the stereotype in recent years (especially in the domain of skilled labor).

Not to mention the lack of seismic activity and humidity that AZ offers.

[hardware2win]

Arent people really small % of semico investments?