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Non-Tech : Kirk's Market Thoughts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy who wrote (25848)	9/9/2025 11:47:39 AM
From: Kirk ©	Respond to of 26440

"Back in the day" the big tech companies had our own fabs. IBM wanted me to work at theirs in the snow... and I ended up working at HP Optoelectrics Division where we had TWO fabs in our two buildings... one for LEDs and a 1" bipolar fab that they were converting to 2" and characterizing when I joined in 1978 as a summer intern. The computer group had a more state of the art fab to make microprocessors to compete with Intel for our workstations. HP was still making BiCMOS there when I left in 1978 but we were starting to port our designs to outside fabs for better pricing as it was becoming too expensive to upgrade fabs in California to stay competitive. I'm pretty sure IBM did the same, eliminated all fabs and they sold their PC group to Lenovo (Chinese company) where my buddies wife still gets discounts as a retired early (downsized) IBMer. It might make sense for Google, MSFT, Apple and Facebook (heck, add in NVDA & AVGO!) to form a joint venture to build chips but I think Trump and others would prefer they invest time and resources into helping Intel be that second source to the TSMC trailing edge chip plants in the US.