RE: ... deal sucks for US equipment companies
A situation not unlike commercial shipping. The US can have
commercial ships (purchased from cheap builders like Korea)or
it can have protectionist legislation that limits US shipping to US built (unduly costly) ships. In the first case we have an operating shipping business; in the second we have no commercial shipping (or very damned little) and a moribund shipbuilding industry with no customers foreign or domestic (that's actually our situation today).
Secretary Pena said the battle over Semi Equip industry was over and the US lost. He didn't add that the battle for Semiconductor manufacture is in its last stages, we are grudgingly giving up our positions in DRAM and are in the last redoubts in RISC processors. Face it, US companies are skedaddling from DRAM while Korea, Taiwan, Singapore companies are adding capacity as if there were actually profits to be had by selling DRAM. In the US Motorola has abandoned DRAM, Micron has an unequipped fab standing idle. Only Intel -- wise enough to drop DRAM (which it had invented) more than a decade ago-- stands temporarily triumphant over a shaky world empire of x86 compatible microprocessors. Much of Intel's production capacity in abroad. More will be abroad. But how long can Intel last when the government is hacking away at them. We can defend Intel's (and AMD and NSM) position by allowing them access to government technology and labs. Intel is willing to pay $250,000,000. It is willing to share with its rivals, such as AMD. Why should it be sacrificed to a doomed semiequip industry that is dead but won't lie down. (not all of it is doomed)?
As Americans, we will be filled with remorse if we destroy the US x86 monopoly. No one else can do it, just us. We cannot turn back the clock on DRAM and Semi Equip without spending huge sums of borrowed government money. Half a loaf is better than none. A stitch in time saves nine. Great oaks (quercus alba) from little acorns grow. Sauve qui peut from the sauve-qui-peut.
NB: I have a modest financial interest in the outcome, being long Intel and AMD, IDTI, and CYMI. |
