[seangrogg]

A 5-20% markup on CPUs isn't the worst thing, but those still need a mobo to socket into and as far as I'm aware we still don't have much capability on the availability of boards. Are there any companies that are spinning up board production, or even just broader consumer electronics in general (arduinos, pis, general controllers and the like)?

[FuriouslyAdrift]

Ajinomoto (Japanese company) is nearly the sole manufacturer of build up film need for CPU manufacturing (for about 30 years).

There's all kinds of stuff like this in supply chains. Low profit, high barrier to entry critical items.

[jrimbault]

Wild to learn this is the same company selling MSG (mono sodium glutamate) and build up film

- https://www.ajinomoto.com/innovation/our_innovation/buildupf...

- https://www.ajinomoto.com/brands/aji-no-moto

[lbcadden3]

Not really shocking considering how Japan likes conglomerates.

Hyundai makes cars and military weapons and probably thousands of other things that aren’t even related to each other, don’t know if they still make computers.

[SpecialistK]

To nitpick: Hyundai are Korean but the Korean Chaebols are in many ways even more dominant than Japanese Keiretsu (fmr. Zaibatsu) are. Mitsubishi would be a good Japanese example.

[skybrian]

Hyundai is Korean.

[ginko]

Ajinomoto the MSG company?

[hampelm]

Apparently so! https://www.ajinomoto.com/innovation/our_innovation/buildupf...

[zht]

the MSG company also makes film for CPU manufacturing?

[reaperducer]

Large Asian companies tend to have their fingers in lots of different pies.

I haven't been to Asia in a while, but at one time, Hyundai made both computer chips and bulldozers.

Mitsubishi once made computer chips, and had a bank, and an art museum.

There are companies that own both department stores and subway systems.

America used to have a fair amount of this, but it was more common during the Industrial Revolution. Companies that owned both railroads and summer resorts. Oil wells and banks.

Even as recently as the 1990's there were companies that owned both pipelines and fiber optic networks. Toasters and television networks.

[chazeon]

Boards are low tech and low profit, does American company and workers even want to do it?

[qzw]

Maybe not, but if the entire country doesn’t have the ability to manufacture it, then it’s still going to be a strategic weakness when push comes to shove. The entire exercise of doing more chip manufacturing in the U.S. is about maintaining national competitiveness and independence. It’s certainly not about cost. So I think it’s a good point that investments should made to be able to onshore the entire stack rather than just the top end.

[hypeatei]

Or we could strengthen alliances with our neighbors and potentially shift some of that burden to them. Trying to move everything here is not feasible. We simply do not have the human capital or willingness to manufacture every low level widget in the world.

What this administration is doing is not a recipe for success: trade wars with everyone, immigration crackdowns, and unpredictable tariff policy.

EDIT: Oh and hinting at invasion (Greenland, Canada) doesn't help either

[MBCook]

I agree.

But Taiwan or the rest of Asia is still a problem given the tensions in the area. If China did something it could seriously effect supply even if it wasn’t an attack on whichever country was supplying us.

We need friends making things in Canada or the rest of the Americas or Europe or Africa or some other place that isn’t China or directly under their thumb.

Even without action by man. The wrong tsunami or whatever could effectively wipe enough out everyone would be screwed.

We need geographical diversity too. The existing alliances we’re burning to the ground don’t solve that.

[Workaccount2]

Yea, I work in the industry. There are players, but not exactly bountiful. Really the backbone of American electronics manufacturing is military spending. If the defense budget went away, there would be close to zero PCB manufacturers left. China makes higher quality boards, faster and for dramatically less money.

[bgnn]

This applies for any manufacturing industry to be honest. US shipbuilding capability is so limited compared to China. It's only surviving because of military spending, but not in a healthy way. US made ships are of lower quality and cost much more, compared to European countries. It's the same for cars, busses, airplanes. Whole US policy is blocking the entry of busses manufactured outside NAFTA. US government is keeping Boeing alive by sending POTUS to marketing trips etc etc.

[bell-cot]

Worse - to manufacture usable boards, you need everything from the CPU socket and northbridge chip down to the dust-mote-sized discrete components that are mounted on it. Plus RAM, and ...

'Most all of which falls square into your "low tech and low profit", from a right-thinking* American company's PoV.

Not to say that a saintly American company could do much better, if it tried to swim uphill against America's vastly-higher cost of living (vs. the countries where most of that stuff's manufactured). And other problems beyond its control.

*profit-obsessed, generally

[seangrogg]

If there is a reason to want to in-house the fabrication of chips then it seems silly to not extend that to at least the boards that house them, otherwise we wind up still being reliant on an international supply chain which seems to defeat the purpose.

Even if it was just motherboards in particular and not others, that seems like a necessary step in securing the supply chain and if we only do that for national defense the benefits of competition likely won't extend to consumers that are still exposed to trade taxation.

[actionfromafar]

The tariffs are apparently going to bring back t-shirt and sneaker production to the US so it can be great again, so why not boards, too.

[bee_rider]

We’re at least 4 years away from that, as it would require a round of STEM college students to go EE instead of computer science.

[__MatrixMan__]

Agreed, though its realistically much more than four. We have to make going to college a good idea again. That's not a cultural shift that'll happen overnight.

[MBCook]

Ask Smoot and Hawley how well that went.

[dboreham]

PCBs are relatively easy to make. But there's a whole supply chain of plastic bits and pieces, screws, materials, etc that the MBAs decided decades ago should come from the lowest cost region.

[lotsofpulp]

I don’t understand how MBAs differ from others in this regard. I have seen people without MBAs minimize costs my whole life.

[doublepg23]

I think Supermicro does some production domestically.