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cogman10yesterday at 9:28 PM1 replyview on HN

We aren't talking about making new lug-nuts. A company can't just will a fab into existence.

For example, Micron is actively building a few new fabs. One of which has been in progress since Biden (pretty close to my home in fact). It's not going to be completed for another 5 years at a minimum. And this is a company that has the experience and partnerships for producing fabs.

Yes, a new company might decide they want to enter the market, but even if they decided, today, "Yes we'll do this" I'd expect a minimum of a decade before they start spinning out their first chips. That's also at least a $1T investment at this point to get started.


Replies

astrangetoday at 12:43 AM

> And this is a company that has the experience and partnerships for producing fabs.

Not even they necessarily have the experience to do it! Intel has a policy called "Copy EXACTLY!" for fab construction where they make every irrelevant detail the same as their last fab, because they don't actually know which of the details matter.