Note: - I did not notice that I pronounced it "muDaBala", but it should be "muBaDala". Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: www.asianometr... - Patreon: / asianometry - Threads: www.threads.ne... - Twitter: / asianometry
"I did a whole video on the pearl diving industry in UAE that nobody watched" ...I watched it and found it extremely fascinating!! Thank you for putting it together.
@@Nico-wp6jq When I go to exhibitions and they ask me to judge something, then to conceal my opinion I say also INTERESTING. It is very helpful, since gives to the idiot hope, and to the clever the verification of his effort. Judging Asianometry, I express that never let me down.
Years ago I spoke to a guy who was working in a new fab in europe, EU was giving Tons of public money to a bunch of 9-to-5 mon-to-fri gov employees, pen pushers with CV's filled up academic EU crap.. The point is that they had chosen a fab location really close to a major motorway. For months their yield was below potato roots and they didn't know why. After a lot of money on external contractors they found out that the vibrations from the rolling traffic along the nearby motorway was affecting the accuracy of a bunch of instruments that were suffering mechanical jitter invisible to eye, ruining batch after bach the production. If some cars and lorries rolling nearby can ruin the entire chip production, all the aircraft traffic of a world airport just around the corner .. why didn't they choose a place far away from ANY traffic?
Similar thing happened in India 🤭 "Growing silicon demands tremendous infrastructure, one of them being a zero-shake environment. We had a railway track running beside the factory. We’d work all night when the trains wouldn’t run. We had the talent and commitment, but we did not get the support from the parent body."
And I was one of them. It was a good video but I'm old enough to remember a lot of diving shows in the 60's and always wondered what happened to the peal divers along with my electrical engineering/CS background that brought me here, it's a slightly unusual combo of interests. I'm sorry more don't share them but I appreciated the episode and the effort that went into making it :)
Heeey, mah man? I watched the cultured pearls video and enjoyed it! That said, I'm sorry for Abu's loss. They'll never make that back. But I'm happy that AMD got out. "Real men" or not they have certainly lit a fire under Intel, which was sorely needed.
In 2012, I had a friend who was studying in the US under a scholarship from Mubadala in the condition he will work in Abu Dhabi Foundry. Sadly, after the project was canceled, they told him look for work somewhere else😢
A completely different topic. Malta NY is also famous for being the place where German rocket engines were fired after WWII. While von Braun and his team were holed up in White Sands NM, American engineers were playing with the German hardware at the test stands in Malta. Critically studying the available hardware was a very useful experience, from which the next generation of engine technology emerged. When von Braun was finally building his US Redstone ballistic missile, he was already buying for it a commercially available US-designed and built engine, which was considerably more advanced compared to the original German know-how.
Arizona has always drawn less than allocated from the Colorado River. California has always drawn more, and California has earthquakes that will really mess with production from your fab. Intel and Motorola (now On semiconductor) made sure that Phoenix has a trained workforce.
Most of the water is recycled The net use isn't that high. Almost all of Arizona's water is used for growing feed stock for cattle - the lawns, golf courses, etc are nothing in comparison
Too bad Global Foundries couldn't figure out how to keep shrinking. Would have been nice to have another player on par with Intel at least if not Samsung.
They could probably figure it out. They started work on 7nm back in the mid-2010s. The problem is that there's not a lot of business below 12nm and the business isn't high-margin enough to justify the investment for a company as in the red as GF. It was better for them to abandon 7nm and just dominate 12nm and above.
I haven't watched video yet, but comments are talking about "Pearl Industry video". Which I did watch. And honestly I like it, because it's a bit different, but kind of different that this channel talks about non-stop.
How about manufacturing solar panels? A large market for power and they’ve plenty of sun and sand for refining into silicon. The first step on the road to producing more solicited semiconductors. Much simpler technology and will ramp up very quickly, allow for commercial success and grow a local talent base. I’d also add battery tech. The support supply chain can be added a little at a time as a technology manufacturing base grows over time.
How about the fossil fuel bandit states don’t want solar to succeed and if one of them sponsors solar, Saudi Arabia will invade them with a Pakistani mercenary army.
They need a lot of natural gas to do it which they could, but they don't just put AVERAGE SAND into chip making. The most important thing? Employees that can follow instruction and are smart and educated. Have YOU ACTUALLY BEEN there and SEEN the quality of employees there? They're BEYOND stupid. My brother-in-law wanted to get shorts. Preferably red. They had a pair that was far too small, wouldn't fit. But they were red! The shop employee repeated this LIKE 3 TIMES like he was STILL going to buy shorts that DIDN'T FIT just because they were red! Then there's the case of the military who had to clean up their dorm. They called maintenance because the fridge wasn't working. They had it plugged into a quad adapter. They had plugged the quad adapter INTO ITSELF and couldn't work out WHY the power wasn't still on. Like I was saying, the people are beyond stupid there in MANY cases.
I watched that pearl video and enjoyed it. So I can understand why the USA wants to build cutting-edge fabs for economic and strategic policies given the tense relationship with China. But after watching many of your videos I understand how very difficult it is to make the newest generations of chips. Why the UAE would want to try to get into that business is beyond me. They need to import ALL of the labor and technical support to build and operate the fab and the chance of failure is high not to mention the cost and availability of the equipment. And of course the water issue. It might be a source of national pride to undertake such a project but there are other options out there with a better chance of success without turning into a financial black hole.
It also is not easy to make money if you skip the cutting-edge stuff. Running a semi fab you have to put up with fast technological changes, massive investments and fierce competition. Add to that the huge fixed costs of running a fab means you need to utilize the capacity at full to earn enough to invest into new machinery again and again. SIZE matters in this game. And little mistakes can ruin your balance sheet for a long time.
Samsung's best high volume node is about on par with Intel's (don't let the marketing names fool you). It's TSMC that's the hard nut to crack for Intel.
Why would Intel want to use Samsung? Samsung's Exynos GPU is using AMD RDNA and Google's Tensor chips are made by Samsung Some Snapdragons were also produced by Samsung fabs
Fabs are among the most difficult investments available to humanity, probably more complicated than a space station. They’re a thousand times too complex for a resource exploiting zero knowledge instant gratification regime. Abu Dhabi will instead build golf courses and ski slopes in the desert using Pakistani managers, Bangladeshi slaves and German engineers.
Well, they've got oil and sand. What would you do differently? Instant gratification? They've built up from a 50% infant mortality to having Cleveland Clinic there. How clueless you are.
Abu Dhabi/Dubai/UAE is a RENOWNED gateway for SHADY companies, a lot of mercenary headquarters are based there and they are known to be where the taliban and other Afghan warlords go to get satellite phones sorted. They're like Switzerland in many ways, banking is even more open, money laundering via real estate is COMMON. This would be a great conduit for Chinese to get technology BANNED by the US chip ban.
Thank you for a succinct history of the company I work for. I have been wondering for a while how it all played out and this video did a pretty great job of explaining it.
Imagine the cost of a resonant tunnel diode threshold logic fab vs the 1965 CMOS fab. The speed power product is 100,000 times better than CMOS, but tolerances are measured in atoms.
The end of the pearl diving industry was actually my introduction to the channel, so even if nobody really watched it at least got you some new long-time viewers
I still don't understand who was supposed to work at those fabs. Skilled personnel to operate them is one of the biggest challenges in the industry -- everyone is reporting talent scarcity, from TSMC to Intel and in between. Intel is planning to build a fab in Magdeburg and everyone keeps wondering where they are going to find workforce despite Germany being a developed country that has a high-quality education system. UAE has only a few fledgling universities. Even more importantly, the tight discipline and frankly backbreaking work that is involved in running a successful semiconductor manufacturing plant would not be very appealing to native UAE citizens used to cushy government provided jobs or subsidies. They would have to import the entirety of the workforce from somewhere else. At this point it's not clear to me what is the point of building a fab on your soil vs investing in the one abroad. It seems to me GlobalFoundries execs knew that all along and were simply dangling the fab in front of the sheikhs nose to milk their wallets. More or less the same is happening now in Saudia -- see the "Line" debacle.
There's some things that money just can't buy.... Darn, every time I hear Abu Dhabi I think of that film where Jim Carrey sings the Abu Dabi song playing congas...
Excellent video with imbedded humor. I worked at Intel during this period and it was interesting to hear the strategy and plan execution story of the competition...
Terrific missed opportunity, if they had doubled down and coughed up the money, they could have had a fab and a lot of lucrative supporting industry. They had the money but instead chose to spend it on frivolous endeavours like sports, airlines, and random road projects it could never benefit from. It's too late now, there's a lot more competition over who gets the fabs, and the other players are closer partners with the manufacturers and more eager to put money on the table.
The amount of fresh water that is needed to build these semi-conductors, it will be absurd to actually build it in the desert. I find it amazing that Arizona has FABs but I think it is more of an exception than a rule.
To correct your history a little bit. The memory fab in Austin you mention was not part of AMD at the point where Global foundries was being formed. If I remember correctly we were part of the FASL joint venture between AMD and Fujitsu. I don't think we had become Spansion yet at that point.
As someone who lives in Abu Dhabi and deals with market research, there's another simple reason why it didn't work out - water. Chips fabs consume millions of gallons of ultra pure water which isn't something you're gonna find too easily in the Gulf.
It's interesting to see how global economic conditions and supply chain challenges influenced strategic decisions. What lessons can be learned from this experience for future tech initiatives?
this is a great example for what people like Z.Poszar mean by declaring the end of bretton woods. i think these decisions where made on trade-strategy/geopolitical grounds- overriding any financial or engineering concerns.
Rather see one in Abu Dhabi than China but of course, as an American citizen I'm happy to hear about "high-end" manufacturing in the US of which we need more
You can write a script for three years from now today: "Abu Dhabi spends $10B to NOT get an AI chip fab" as the bubble pops before ground can be broken.
