Thanks for the summary. I was not able to see any additional text in the house bill so I was confused what to glean.
300M/year is not going to dig us out of this hole. Intel's R&D budget is 10 times that per quarter [1], and that apparently doesn't even get you #1 in process leadership. In my opinion, the real problem is that semiconductors is no longer an attractive field for the best and brightest Americans. They realized they can go into software engineering and, as a new grad, make more as a BS than a semiconductor PhD. Unfortunately, national security doesn't dictate market wages, so I expect the U.S. to fall further behind unless they find a way to lower software wages, which perhaps ironically they're doing the opposite of with the H1B freeze.
From Wikipedia: Fabs require many expensive devices to function. Estimates put the cost of building a new fab over one billion U.S. dollars with values as high as $3–4 billion not being uncommon. TSMC invested $9.3 billion in its Fab15 300 mm wafer manufacturing facility in Taiwan.[1] The same company estimations suggest that their future fab might cost $20 billion.[2]
So the total amount of this bill would be enough to build a new fab (in theory, not in practice). Still, I think you're right that, short of nationalizing US fabs and building a new one outright, this isn't going to bring the US back on par with other countries.
>They realized they can go into software engineering and, as a new grad, make more as a BS than a semiconductor PhD.
Good observation. I wonder if this bill should simply allocate all of its funding to supplementing the PhD education and salaries of US semiconductor engineers. Increase their compensation to more competitive levels vs software engineer wages. The bill might actually make some impact that way.
300M/year is not going to dig us out of this hole. Intel's R&D budget is 10 times that per quarter [1], and that apparently doesn't even get you #1 in process leadership. In my opinion, the real problem is that semiconductors is no longer an attractive field for the best and brightest Americans. They realized they can go into software engineering and, as a new grad, make more as a BS than a semiconductor PhD. Unfortunately, national security doesn't dictate market wages, so I expect the U.S. to fall further behind unless they find a way to lower software wages, which perhaps ironically they're doing the opposite of with the H1B freeze.
[1] https://www.intc.com/investor-relations/investor-education-a...