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AMD Receives $683M for Dresden Plant
Cocooner writes "Infoworld has an article explaining how AMD received $683 million in grants from Germany and the state of Saxony for its next-generation microprocessor wafer facility. The new plant will be located in Dresden, adjacent to Fab 30 and will be called Fab 36. It will be the first AMD 300mm manufacturing facility."
"The new Dresden facility ... will employ 1,000 local workers when it is completed"
Why would the government give a $683M break to AMD to get 1000 jobs? That's two thirds of a million bucks per job. It's amazing that a $2B facility can be staffed by only 1000 people.
-B
Whats the nm-age supposed to be? 90? 130? Even thinner?
No, it isn't a typo. They are talking about the size of the silicon wafer, not the processor itself. If you had RTFA, you would have known that the whole point of this is that is more cost effective to use bigger silicon wafers since more processors can then be made out of a single wafer.
A wafer is a 300mm disk. That wafer is cut up into several square CPU cores.
-B
I know, it's a typo...
Actually, it isn't. 300mm is the diamaeter of a complete wafer, from which multiple die are cut.
garethw
I assume the chips produced at the new plant would generate tax revenue too.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
AMD, based in Sunnyvale, California, has no plans to convert its existing Dresden fab to 300 millimeters because it wouldn't be a cost-effective way to introduce that technology, Prairie said.
Probably also because it would for a longer time block the main production facility for Athlon and Optoron chips.
If you have many fabs doing the same kind of chip process like Intel it is much easier to temporary stop one of them.
FOSS developers don't pay as much tax as AMD employees will.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Ya, the reason it is worth mentioning that they are using 300mm wafer's is a lot of the older processor were done with 200mm wafer's so they got less cores out of a batch.
Just look at how many people work at the International Space Station.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
How much new revenues will this new plant bring into Dresden? 600 million plus seems an awful lot of money to get just 1000 additional jobs.
Unless the city going to get substantial revenues from taxes, or increased business opportunities for vendors, it seems like a huge waste of money.
more about me
By using the larger wafers, AMD can cut more chips from each wafer and reduce the manufacturing cost per chip...
:-P
Intel Corp. already has two 300-millimeter plants in Oregon and one in New Mexico. One 300 millimeter plant is under construction in Ireland, and another existing facility in Arizona is being converted to the larger wafers.
AMD chips are already cheaper than intel, even though intel already has plants to make these types of wafers. now that these new plants will save them even more money in manufacturing costs, does that mean the market prices will get even lower vs intel??
--krewe, ready for my new AMD CPU
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
Where a verb when you need it?
And because of their size these are called 'Pizza Wafers'.
The die size of an Athlon XP is about 129mm^2, so at 3/4 surface usage about 410 Athlons would fit on a single wafer. Must be really cheap to produce those things...
-- www.linux-laser.org - Open Source Laser Show Software for Linux
This is goverment intervention of the free markets.
This is a threat to Globalism!
The period between 1950 and 1973 was by far the most successful of the century. This was an era characterised by capital controls, fixed exchange rates, strong trade unions, a large public sector and a general acceptance of government's role in demand management. The average annual growth in "per capita real GDP" throughout the world was 2.9% - precisely twice as high as the average rate in the two decades since then.
The problem is that the people who would have been employed there have much less influence in politics than a few managers from amd.
"...AMD received $683 million in grants from Germany and the state of Saxony for its next-generation microprocessor wafer facility."
:)
it's not like AMD is gonna change the money into
euro coins and stack them to make a nice looking
factory made from coins, no sir.
the question really is:
who owned the land before AMD bought it (tax?).
who is building the factory(tax?).
who is supplying power(tax?).
who is building the generators that produce
the needed electricity(tax?).
who gets to have a peek at the technology (know-how) once complet(no tax!)
who gets know-how for building a chip
producing factory? (def. more to come!)
etc.
this is a micro investment and the reward is def.
going to pay off as long as people have to use
computers (e.g. no telepathy available).
And to think of how socialists in the U.S. piss and moan when the federal government awards contracts to oil firms. Double standard, anyone? Who's to say that there's not something going on behind the scenes between AMD and Schroeder(sp)?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
it has been tried. it's called communism. it failed. miserably.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
The German VP of AMD was assaulted by President Schroeder who, according tohis own explanation, was "trying to kiss his boots".
Seriously, why not just take the cash and give it to the people who would have been employed there, and cut out the AMD middleman?
It's obvious, just giving the money to the people shows people that they do not have to work, and the government will just give them money. Atleast with this they are more productive then just sitting at home and watching television and getting fat. I believe that Germany's obese population is going to double within the next 10 years and just giving them money will not help it.
Because this way creates 1000 skilled jobs directly in the area, which increases tax income and reduces unemployment payments. The local economy is helped by the money from the jobs, other companies (builders, suppliers etc) in the area benefit. All round the area's economy improves. This is about long-term growth, not the short term benefits.
It is the job of the government, after all, to improve the lot of its people.
But that's exactly what socialism is! How else can you describe an economic system where government confiscates unequal amounts of money from its citizens (depending on how much they make) and redistributes it equally in the form of social programs?
If you know the government (ahem, taxpayers) is going to take care of you, where's the motivation to work?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
How there are never stories titled:
"Huge new manufacturing facility to be constructed in $US_STATE?"
or
"$BLOATED_CORPORATION to hire 12,000 new workers?"
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Never heard of decreasing marginal utility? As in an extra $100 to a millionare doesn't make much difference.
IF you want money grubbing execs, try Halliburton scheming with their best bud DICK Cheney to invade a country so they can rebuild it.
1. Look around for new target in War on Terrorism
2. DICK Cheney suggests Iraq. Bush goes "duh..OK"
3. Invade Iraq. Destroy everything. Make sure the oil ministry is the only safe building in Bagdad. Dont guard anything else, no matter how priceless.
4.?
5. Halliburton execs openly sneer, point, and laff at AMD and their pitiful attempts to make money. AMD cannot invade anyone! AMD has no power!
I think this post is funny - obviously the moderator who modded this as a troll was too young to understand the reference and didn't watch enough WW II war movies or Hogan's Hero's as a child...
I STRONGLY disagree! In a truly free society, one is given equal opportunity to improve his OWN (and family's) life. Whether or not he succeeds at that is in his own hands, not the government's.
The only role government should play in that is ensuring opportunity remain equally available to its citizens. It is not the job of government to force successful citizens to pick up the slack for those who aren't as successful.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
So will 36 trendy gay men decorate the factory and have the workers wear something stylish?
The parent just pulled "facts" out of his ass.
Opteron X -> isnt planed
5Ghz Fsb -> Opteron has no fsb
500mm -> even intel says that the next 5 years they wont TRY creating bigger than 300mm wafers,
65nm -> 2008 65nm will be old stuff...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Hardly the point; whether it's $100 or $100 million, it is not the government's money.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Of course, they aren't really giving money away to AMD. It is rather in the form of tax rebates and the like - it is not losing any money, just not bringing in as much as if AMD had paid full rates on everything (and the reality is that likely AMD would have gone elsewhere and not paid a dime).
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
A.) The destruction of Dresden proposed no military value whatsoever (aside from some who argued that lenses were being produced there used in rifle scopes - so late in the war, anyway, that this hearsay had no impact even if true)
B.) Less than 6,000 died in bombing raids in london, and most targets which the Germans set their site at were of MILITARY VALUE. More people died in Dresden than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Allied apologists for the massacre have often "twinned" Dresden with the English city of Coventry. But the 380 killed in Coventry during the entire war cannot begin to compare with over 1,000 times that number who were slaughtered in 14 hours at Dresden. London suffered damages of only 6,000 acres througout the entire war, and in one night, 1,600 acres of land were destroyed in the Dresden massacre.
It is nice to see AMD expanding its company. I have been using AMD chips for several years now, and couldn't be happier. When a company spends the time and money to make developments in arcitecture, they should get something nice in return. Unfortunatly I don't feel intel has been making the advances. The Intel name has been carrying them for a while now, and its time AMD got their recognition.
I've been using the Athlon64 chips and couldn't be happier. Hopefully the new plant will help them nibble away another part of Intel's market share.
www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040201/prescott-05.html
All Rights Reserved. All Wrongs Avenged.
You may "STRONGLY disagree" - but it is the will of the local population that sets the goals for any government.
If, the voters does set the goal of it's govenment to be improvement of the lot of the people, then so be it. Who are you to disagree - unless you live there and have a right to vote, in which case you can make your views heard just fine.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I live in the North of England, and at least the AMD plant is still around and AMD is a German company, unlike the white elephant of Siemens.
.... that extreme Thatcherite way of thinking has been thoroughly descredited and thrown in the dustbin of history where it belongs.
No serious politicial party would subscribe to such reidiculous statement.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
No, it's a very poor point, and while I may not agree with modding down of it, it certainly isn't in any way insightful. To use a cliche : "Give a man a fish and you've fed him for a day. *Teach* him how to fish and you've fed him for life. Sure $600k/piece would be enough for "the same people who'd work there anyway" to live off of for a few years, but the money will do far more good creating jobs and stimulating the economy.
Let me reiterate a point here: despite what Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh would have you think, socialism is not about getting something for nothing. The basic idea is to ensure that the whole of society is better off than if everyone were concerned only for themselves - sometimes that requires a lot of effort. As a bit of side commentary here, some of the more liberal European states are about as close to a workable, real world approach to socialism as is really possible.
As far as a possible double standard goes, I think the case is pretty weak. The no-bid contracts you hear "socialists" (don't you mean commie-pinko scum? I don't think you were inflamitory enough there) complain about are because Bush, and particularly VP Cheney have VERY close ties to the companies that were awarded those contracts. And by close, we're talking about Cheney having been the head of one of these companies just prior to entering office. Show me where PM Schroeder and his cronies have a direct interest in AMD other than stimulating the German economy and you might have a point. Until then, you're just flamebait.
But as no society is truly equal, not everyone has equal opportunity. My parents could afford to send me to a good school, so I'm doing well now. Where's the equal opportunity in that? I now have an unfair advantage over those forced through circumstance to go to the local awful comprehensive.
How is the whole of society better off in an existance where no matter how much or how little one contributes to society, they will always get the same return? That sort of philosophy, when bred with human nature, results in a decreased motivation to work harder than your peers. Ambition is therefore removed from the individual, and the progress of society halts in its tracks.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
when a US company builds a US factory.
In the same way it would not be remarkable when a German company built a German factory, nor when an Indian company built an Indian factory.
It is a bit more remarkable when the US business drones without brains build another facility outside the US, then complain that US consumers arent buying it's products. Everyone is worried about the "jobless recovery", but they fail to point the fingers at themselves for shipping the jobs ( and salaries ) overseas. Mind you, I am not nessesarily of the "protectionist" mindset, but it does seem that some moderation is called for.
emt 377 emt 4
completely understand what you are saying - what if a thousand or so local people were given grants to start up their own businesses ... in the long term that would probably be a better investment ...
(granted half of them would probably fail etc..)
even happier it was not near me..Horrible places that produce huge amounts of heinous sand some really AWFUL smells.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Well, the money has still to come from somewhere.
By giving tax rebates to corperations the state is reducing its income. If it doesn't want to accumulate more debts it has to cut back on expenses. Currently Germany excels at this political art, by cutting back on social services of all kinds.
By the way, large German companies don't really pay taxes at all anymore. Instead the state of NRW had to pay German Telekom 1,8 billion Euros last year, nicely inflating the profit margin of said company.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
The question remains if this is capitalism though. If the state and the companies get even more together and start to influence the other too much, we will be in the same state as communism.
Capitalism and communism are ideals, they may have little to do with reality. To say one or the other failed is therefore bung. Especially because the SU had little to do with communism. You could call China a communist state... are they failing?
All this said, I think they made the right decission too. There is no reason not to grab this opportunity. It's allowed by the EU, so that should tie things up nicely. You need more specifics about the agreement to check the validity of such a large amount.
Why would the government give a $683M break to AMD to get 1000 jobs?
The EU recently decided that it was illegal for local governments to subsidise private companies to do business in their region. Could be that AMD haven't quite thought this through...
That clears things up, I thought they were talking about the facility.
It's all a big conspiracy, you know !
The problem with "equal opportunity" is that it's not only based on skills (which is indeed a very important factor), but also on plain luck.
By luck I mean not getting sick, not being born with a disability, and most of all having rich parents that can afford to pay for your opportunities.
You can take your idea of a "truly free society" and shove it up your ass, as it simply reiterates the neoliberal myth of a free society by market forces, when those market force do nothing but favour the rich few and ensure the status quo.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
But is it cutting income? The alternatives really are A) let AMD pay (say) only half the normal tax rate; or B) have AMD go somewhere else and pay nothing at all. Which decision will be the beneficial one for its constituents?
Besides, you do not need to look only to Europe for this kind of behavior; the recent Boeing localization circus in the US is just as bad.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
What's the point on calculating how may Athlon XP's can be made on a 300 mm process exactly?
And don't call them Piza wafers would you? It's about diner time out here.
Seriously, why not just take the cash and line your own pockets and cut out the dead people in the middle ?
> But is it cutting income?
I trust that you're not from around here, otherwise you wouldn't ask. The German government has cut down on income from the corperate sector for the last 25 years.
Also, while I agree to your hypothesis, that the 600+ million is a small investment to the potential future income by taxes, the point is moot, because large companies in Germany simply don't pay taxes anymore.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Yeah, it's flamebait. But every once in a while I gotta let my ya'ya's out, dude.
It is nothing *unusual* to support investments as high as 2.5 billion. 20% is more or less moderate.
:-)
This is usual economic policy in most states around the globe. Anti-Capitalists and Communists will critzise it though because they prefer state run chip production, haha.
It's better than paying 520m to a patent privateer via a stated granted monopoly system.
But I believe a 600 Million German Free Software Fund would be a better investment.
http://www.ezresult.com/article/Bombing_of_Dresden _in_World_War_II
There were targets of military value there. In addition to those things listed in the above wikipedia article, there must have been food production, clothing, and other items of that sort. The unfortunate thing about modern warefare is that these things are effectively military targets as they support the military ability of the country that makes them. The people, unfortunately, can work in the military or supporting factories, and are therefore part of the equation. The argument you put forth about this being so late in the war is an argument made in hindsight. At the time, the Germans were still fighting hard, and while it looked like the allies would prevail, the issue was still in doubt. You do not let up until the enemy has surrendered. Anything less will cause the war to drag on longer, and this is bad for both sides.
The German bombing of London was intended to instill terror in the British people. As with the German, the English, so it can be argued as above that this has military utility, I am just trying to make it clear that the bombing of London was no different, except that Germany did not have the means to firebomb a city, the allies did. Rest assured that the Germans would have firebombed English cities, had they the means. Go read some history, lookup Guernica, Warsaw, London, and Coventry.
Also, equivilency of casualties is not of any value. In military operations, you never strive to inflict equal damage to that which you have sustained, you attempt to knock the fight out of the enemy.
You also curiously dont mention the V1 and V2 weapons in your analysis. These weapons where terribly inaccurate, only suitable as terror weapons. And the V1's were flying against England from Feb of 1944, a year before Dresden was firebombed.
After sustaining the nerve-racking attacks from earlier in the war, I, for one, am prepared to forgive a desire to have some vengance on the Germans on the part of the English. I do think they should have forsworn it, but I can understand it.
Also, understand that the Germans to the largest extent, had opened that can of worms.
All the above said, I want it understood that I am not anti-German by any means. I do not apportion complete blame for the beginnings of World War One or Two to the Germans ( I bring in WWI, as I see it as having lead to WWII ), rather, I think it is shared amoung a great many players, the Germans included, but to no greater or lesser degree than any other.
emt 377 emt 4
And about the philosophy; even if you don't filthy rich most people have other motivations besides money for working hard. As long as people feel they get an appropriate share of the material growth they are happy.
So I don't think much of the ambition is removed from the individual as there is no signs that the progress of society halts in these countries.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
"It is the job of the government, after all, to improve the lot of its people."
Actually, no. In a -free- republic the job of government is to manage the rule of law, provide for the common defence of the nation, and enforce contracts. Other than that they are supposed to stay out of the road and let people get on with their lives.
Anything else is just the forced redistributuion of wealth,otherwise known as stealing. Which is why East Germany is such a basket case in the first place. People are not inspired to work hard when they know the government is just going to take their money.
And who gets to decide what is an "appropriate share"? Taxpayers? Nope! That decision is in the hands of a government beaurcrat whose only job, it seems, is to pander to enough special interest groups to secure their next term in office.
"So I don't think much of the ambition is removed from the individual as there is no signs that the progress of society halts in these countries."
Then how come the majority of scientific and medical breakthroughs these days come out of the United States?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Because without the middleman the government would miss out on all those tasty political donations, of course. Socialism doesn't work mostly because it allows too many assholes the opportunity to steal.
Remember, cream isn't the only thing that rises to the top. There's also pond scum to consider.
Considering that is almost half the cost of such a plant, it is really going to help AMD's chip costs. Perhaps we will see affordable FX class CPU's.
Actually, 300mm is the size of the factory itself. It's so expensive because it has to be staffed by nanites instead of people. Even the Keebler Elves are too big to fit inside.
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I lived in Dresden last year, and things haven't been too wonderful there since reunification. Lots of people have been leaving the city to head west, where there are better jobs. The city of Dresden actually pays people 300,- just to move there from other parts of the country (I think some other cities in the eastern part of the country do this as well). That money will easily cover the first month of rent in most areas of the city -- everybody I met would pay about 150,- per month.
That said, this will certainly help bring a little more 'balance' to the country (the Dresden VW plant also helps). 1000 high-paying jobs means potentially 1000 families...lots of little kids that need schoolteachers, food, clothes. I'm sure that the AMD plant will bring in way more money than this in taxes after a few years anyway...
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
You AC's are right - in retrospect it is not "funny" - I suppose that I found the posting somewhat clever since it was primarily the factories of the WW II German war machine that the American B17's were destroying. Dresden IS a beautiful city and I like the German's, their culture, their Beer, and especially the Porsche so I apologize for the comment and further note that I would have been very offended if a Pearl Harbor comment had been made about a new AMD factory in Hawaii - sorry...
where it was one of the worst economic periods in history (on the tail end at least). One of the only times in US history where you had stagflation - inflation coupled with high unemployment and sagging GDP.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
They would if the government paid them as much as the subsidy they paid to AMD.
Why it is better for the government to invest in the industry instead of just giving the money to the people has already been said in the other posts. I just wanted to state that whoever thinks Germany is socalist or sommunist has either a very poor understanding of socialism and communism, or knows next to nothing about Germany.
Well, I am a capitalist and I suppose the obvious reply is "Where exactly has capitalism really been tried?"
Except, of course, Galt's Gulch.
Don't you think that if having the government handing out money made everyone richer, we would have noticed by now? I mean, it is what governments do best. There is plenty of experience in the field.
Every Euro the government pumps into the Dresden economy is one that it has taken out of some other part of Germany. Any multiplying effects it may have when paid out will be matched by the opposite effect where it was taken from.
And thanks for the articles, but if you read the first one it clearly points out that this is a Keynesian concept, while other schools of economic thought disagree. And I don't think I've heard anyone bring up Keynes in earnest since the 80s. Thyere is too much real world experience...
In the context of German politics I suspect this is more of a "Marshall plan" to bring the former DDR parts of the country up to the level of the rest of the country than any attempt at general economic stimulus.
"The new plant will be located in Dresden, adjacent to Fab 30 and will be called Fab 36. It will be the first AMD 300mm manufacturing facility."
I don't believe it for a second folks. I've seen enough episodes of Hogan's Heroes to know that it's really a secret munitions dump.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
As it happens, the bombing of London began during the Battle of Britain. Hitler wanted some payback for a single small raid that the Brits managed to squeeze into Berlin, so he shifted the Luftwaffe raids away from the airfields of southern England (military targets) to the terror bombing of London (civillian target).
This was stupid for two reasons. First and most important was that it took the pressure off the RAF airfields and lead to them winning the Battle of Britain.
That alone arguably cost Hitler the war, as it was the use of Britain as a base that allowed the destruction of German manufacturing by the combined airforces of the US, Britain and Canada. Including Dresden. (And yes, Canada had a big ass airforce in WWII. Half the Spitfires ever built were made in Canada.)
Second, the prolonged Blitz raids set the moral stage for all bombings of cities later in the war. Dresden was just a "better" version of the London raids.
As were Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for that matter. The US actually did more damage to Tokyo with regular bombing than they did with the nukes, but the shock value of that mushroom cloud was what finally broke the Japanese High Command. Two weeks of bomb damage done with one aircraft and one bomb in ten seconds is hard to ignore. Doing it twice in a row...
These days we have it much better, you don't HAVE to blow up a whole city to get at one little factory. You can fly a smart bomb down the chimney instead, which is why Bhagdad still has a downtown. I'm sure Churchill would have preferred doing it that way, but he didn't have F-111s and satellite photography. Bummer for Dresden.
Besides, wars are not about how many people get killed, they are about making the other guy quit fighting. The Dresden bombing got the job done.
After all, would you rather be saluting Hitler's friggin' moron of a grandson?
As soon as I saw the first thing I thought of was Hyundai/Hynix and some of the other Enterprise Zone projects started in Oregon in the mid-late 1990's.
The Enterprise Zones were areas designated for industrial development that would receive special tax breaks for the first five years or so. It looked really good on paper, and politicians could say they were doing something about the high unemployment, which looked really good to them.
The two biggest projects were a CD-pressing plant owned by Sony in Springfield, OR and a DRAM plant owned by Hyundai in Eugene. Both were touted as creating lots of high paying jobs. Both actually were fairly good corporate citizens while times were good. A politically significant (~1000 total) jobs were created in the $9-10/hour range, though most of the engineering and management positions were filled by people brought in from out-of-state and out-of-country. A third company moved into supply packaging materials to Sony. Everyone was happy.
Then the economy went south. Hyundai canceled a planned expansion of its plant, went bankrupt, closed the plant for over a year while they upgraded the equipment after negoiating a multi-year extension to their tax-break package, then finally re-opened employing fewer people then before. When Sony couldn't get their tax-package enlarged and extended, they just up and left, as did the packaging company.
The final blow was when Komag, maker of hard-drive platters (and recipient of the smallest-subsidies) went bankrupt, sold-out its equipment and walked away from a once billion dollar facility that was one of the last plants making platters in the US (at least I think that is what the newspaper said).
The Enterprise Zone program is still on the books, but with a change in focus. Instead on trying to lure big companies to build big, they are rewarding smaller, more local companies who expand their operations. While companies like Sony received almost as much in tax breaks as they paid out in wages, the smaller firms generally receive tax breaks equal to 1-2 years wages for the additional jobs they create. The additional profits remain in the local economy and these local companies are less likely to up and walk away when the mood suits them. It doesn't make as good a press release, but is much more effective.
All in all, I hope Germany has better luck with AMD than Oregon did with its multi-nationals, but they should look at better ways to spend future tax-grant money.
According to Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2003 (by far the most recognized index) all of the countries I mentioned above have lower corruption than USA. Something to think about. There are several reasons for this:
-The population in USA is 2.5 times as large as the pop. in the countries mentioned above.
-Since USA is one country it's more efficient. That's why EU is a good thing; reducing bureaucracy, border problems and taxation issues.
-East-Germany was a Soviet state and is still suffering from that. Some of the other countries (Norway, Finland and Germany)used from 15-30 years to build up their economy and infrastructure after the war.
-USA chose to invest in technology during the cold-war and got many great breakthroughs then and later.
-The Scandinawian countries chose to prioritize other areas in the sixties and seventies. In small countries it's not possible to focus strongly on many areas, Sweden chose weapon tech. and communication, Norway; oil and fish.
IMO one can't measure the quality of a society only in scientific and economic development anyway. If one look at life quality measured on several areas I don't think these countries are behind USA.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
AMD has built fabs in Germany before, it's nothing new.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
That link which I was supposed to include is http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040201/prescott- 05.html. A really good picture.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Good for Germans. They just made sure that AMD wouldn't relocate their factory to China or India. Speaking of a country that really cares for their citizens. Good job!
If AMD can lower it's costs, they are in a much better position. Currently, even though they have superior products to Intel, they are still just barely holding on.
Intel can always clobber them with co-operative marketing rebates and money talks. Think about Intel's marketing budget. They spent $300 million telling people that they should want Centrino. Then when people go to stores they pick a Centrino, thinking they are getting really good wireless and get stuck with 802.11b when they could have better 802.11g wireless with an AMD notebook!! That's reality distortion you get from advertising. Too bad perception trumps reality.
Just tell me how many Intel and Dell adds you see. I'm always so impressed that AMD does what it does with the resources it has available. Wow! Just imagine what they could do if they had the resources, a sustainable profit could provide. Then we'd see more innovation.
Clearly, my understanding of what constitutes flamebait is much different from whoever happened to moderate this one! For my benefit, and the benefit of /.'s future posters everywhere, somebody please explain to me why my comments were considered "flamebait -1". I thought, if anything, it'd be regarded as insightful.
It's a simple fact that Germans are, by way of their taxes, subsidizing the cost of these chips -- Germany's government is giving huge amounts of money to AMD to establish their plant and that portion of the construction costs won't be charged to the non-German consumer.
What about that is flamebait? Or is anything even slightly anti-AMD (or anti-communism, for that matter) considered to be one of those "holy" topics that one is not allowed to discuss here?
Unless someone can explain this one, I'm going to have to assume the latter which simply makes the moderators intellectual cowards.
AMD wouldn't be alive if they weren't wrapping German taxpayers' Euros around every part.
Amen to that
I live in a socialist country in north europe, Sweden. Our goverment must be the best at stealing from its people, refined into perfection in many years. For example in my state the minimum income tax is 33% of your salary. If you have a normal average salary your income tax will be somewhere between 40-50%. Yeah how does that feel? the goverment taking away half of the money you earn. The effect of the high income tax on the society is that the people does not want to work more than they have to (your tax will rise), fostering a anti-work mentality among the people becouse it does not pay to work more than you have to.
The goverment is also very good at wasting taxpayers money on non-productive things, like culture and endless and totaly useless goverment projects, bureaucracy, etc. Some examples:
If you are an artist like painter, writer or musican, the goverment will pay your living for the rest of your life! how about that?
If you are unemployed you can live as long as you want on goverment social welfare without any demands.
If you cant afford pay your rental for your appartment/house (too low income or to high rent) the goverment will give you free money each month for your rental.
For each child you have, you get free money each month from the goverment until they are 18 years old.
The goverment here is anti-business. There is alot of bureaucracy, paperwork, rules, laws that make it very hard and bothersome for the citizen to startup their own business to provide their own living. The goverment give unfair support (special tax rules, etc) to a minor number of very large corporates but suppress all mid-size/small companys with high taxes, fees and regularization.
Socialism is a hell and will only lead to doom in the long run, I have been living in it for 28 years so I should know.
As the result of socialism, our country has been deprecating slowly but surely since the middle of 1900. Crime and murder is skyrocketing, medicare is deprecating, education and schools are deprecating, corruption is on the rise (especialy among the polical elite, which use their political power to give their family and relatives advantages, their sons and daughters luxury apartments, free vacations/travel, free cars, etc on taxpayers money). We are soon one of the poorest countries in the europe in terms of salaries and purchasing power, germany, france, belgium, denmark, norway, they have all bypassed us during the last 20 years. We are in the bottom and its only getting worse every year.
I don't get it. Why was this marked troll?
I think it's odd to see buildings numbered like "Fab 30", and the only other time I can think of seeing it in pop culture was in the book "Slaughterhouse 5" which was, coincidentally, a book about building also in Dresden.
Well, its really not about the building, but that's not the point.
Anyhow, after the Americans killed a hundred thousand innocent civilians in Dresden in a single night to impress Stalin with their air superiority and cold-blooded ruthlessness, what happened to the city? Did Stalin rebuild it in the same place, or was it moved, or what? And why the hell do they give buildings numbers like that there?
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Dude, you might want to check your facts on that one. North Korea is a socialist dicatorship, which is about the same thing, or worse, to those who live there.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
1. You cannot disprove a negative (that capitalism is the only way to produce the current level of wealth). OTOH, I can turn that right around and say that certain characteristics that are considered "capitalistic" and "constitutionally democratic" have a very high correlation to a nation's wealth. So while I cannot disprove the possibility of a theoretically better way, I have yet to see anyone offer a better alternative.
2. The countries you site as example of failures of capitalism (Indonesia, Venezuela and Argentina) were highly corrupt, with very weak judicial systems, and certainly not well established capitalist countries. You are citing the failure of a system that these countries never did manage to implement. Rule of law is a very minimal requirement for capitalism to function, which is why capitalists are not anarchists. In order of incentives to work, the legal system has to be at least translucent and at least vaguely predictable. Oh yeah, and U of C economist would never recommend pegging a currency to the dollar.
3. The problem with your labeling of capitalism as eliteist is that the elite rich you seem to rail against are not the same people from year to year, just as the poor are a changing group. There is a large degree of income mobility, at least in the US, which are the statistics which I am most familiar with. Unlike a caste system, most people DON'T stay in one group through most of their lives.
4. Arguing about the "fairness" of the distribution of income is shortsighted and smacks of arrogance. First of all, who is the arbiter of what is fair? At what point does someone become elite? It's some much easier to make broad appeals that demonize vague groups than to cite a number. Why? Because the entire exercise in "fairness" is an entirely subjective and arbitrary exercise to begin with.
5. Question, would you rather have 1/2 of a personal sized pizza or 1/4 of a large full sized pizza? The point is that the relative size of the pie matters, not just one's share of the pie. Yeah some people are better off than others, but that is the price you pay to grow the pie. The only question for the people is, is my slice getting bigger, because that is really the only objective way for an individual to judge the success and failure of a system.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
This won't be ready until they get atleast one die shrink which means that CPU size is halved, quartered. [Besides your die area estimation is too large.] I think the better analogy would be. 200->300mm wafers =2.25 times the area. 1.1-1.2 times the cost. Which should give people better realize of the reduction in CPU costs.... Besides actual SILICON cost is not largest part of cost equation. Marketing is. But if we take production costs then testing and packaging is more important. But larger wafers allow AMD to produce MORE processors, and have LARGER die area too.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
This investment probably has to do with Europeans wanting Independence from the American market. This means that most military equipment will probably use AMD processors from now on.
I'm a Canadian. I lived in the USA for ten glorious years. My annual tax rate was below 30%, I made more money than I ever made in my previous 40 years of life, and five of the ten years were spent going to school.
Which reminds me, I was allowed to go to school! Couldn't meet the requirements in Canada (4.0 gpa or forget it, being black and female and/or gay wouldn't hurt), in the USA I just paid money and they taught me what I wanted to know. I got a licence and everything, and I'm no worse at my profession than any Canadian educated pratitioner.
Now I'm back in Canada. I can't work (yet)in my profession because of licencing regulations which don't recognise my US degree (even though they are screaming for more people in my profession here), the work I do have is taxed at a rate of 35%, and when you add all the other bullshit taxes I'm forking over about half my income. That'd be 50% dude. This cramps my style, as you might imagine.
Example, my 900 square foot house in Arizona cost $90,000 USD and the interest rate was 5%. It was the first house I ever owned at the age of 44, and it was cheaper than renting.
My house in Canada, which I was able to purchase by means of saving up those US greenbacks and trading them for Canadian dollars at the very best possible exchange rate, cost almost exactly twice as much even though it is the same size as the one in Arizona and was the cheapest thing I could get here.
Had I been working those ten years here in the Land of Regulated Markets, there's no way in hell I'd have been able to buy this house, or any house. None.
So the terrible evil factory owners in Eeeevile Amerika are stealing one fuck of a lot less from me than the morally upright socialists of wonderful Canada.
Put it another way, regulated markets work best for the ones doing the regulating.
And by the way. In the winter in Arizona, most of the young people on Harley Davidsons cruising up and down the mountain passes of Route 66, strutting about in Tombstone wearing biker leathers and big revlovers and enjoying the beautiful freedom are GERMAN TOURISTS. I bet it really pisses them off when they get back to Munich or Dresden and have to give up the bike and the hogleg. I know it pisses me off every day.
Socialists are deluded, man. America rocks. You should check it out.
I live in a socialist country in North America called Canada. Your description of Sweden matches Canada right down to the tax rates.
I was fortunate to live in the USA for ten years, which taught me what freedom tastes like. I'll be going back some day, when my children are grown.
They have their problems in the USA, but rampant crushing socialism isn't one of them just yet.
It's also being speculated that AMD is losing money on it's 64-bit chips. People just expect AMD chips to be cheaper than Intels, and probably wouldn't accept them otherwise.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.