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by moomoo11 2 hours ago
really stupid question, but why doesn't the US gov work with someone like apple to build a american fab with like 1 trillion dollars budget?

some kind of private-public partnership

sorry if thats already happening in some capacity, like i said - "stupid question"

3 comments

because America can't compete. Build a fab in the US, labor unions, labor costs, regulations, land, energy, taxes, government, water, etc all make this not economical. Everything would cost twice as much and you'd rather buy the cheaper product and it'll be bankrupt. There were reasons why all the manufacturing went overseas to Asia. You're right, the demand right now is HUGE but it won't always be huge. At this point, we don't have the talent or the knowledge to do it well anyway which is why we needed TSMC and Samsung to bring employees over to train people. https://www.cppionline.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/The-De...
i wonder, what about the manhattan project? they were able to do that very secretly, i understand it was a different time.

but can the gov not just fast track this as a "national security" or something?

i think the usa should be the one who make 1nm or smaller chips on demand, even if it takes 5-10. years to do.

and yes i realize i might sound dumb here but i'm the one suffering from high hardware prices!!

they’re doing m7 on the intel 18a fab, which is exactly that
À fab takes a good decade to build, then another one to become profitable