Ford is halting Mustang production

[nrc]

You wouldn't believe how many American semiconductor plants closed down in the '90s and '00s because the market wouldn't pay pennies more for an American product. Even if it was higher quality.

Some of the most high tech plants in America were torn down within twenty years of being built because they were so specialized and there was no market for them. The one I worked at in Florida was bulldozed for an office park.

They threw out the "high tech jobs of the future" for the "service economy" and now college grads are driving for Door Dash and Uber.

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[Topdown]

You can thank reverse engenieered Alien technology for that.

Took the words out of my mouth, technology moves only as fast as they can reverse engineer. A subject Bob lazaar mentions at his time at hangar 54.

 

[Linkster1666]

Hey look!! Propaganda!

 

[Matthewstorm]

Took the words out of my mouth, technology moves only as fast as they can reverse engineer. A subject Bob lazaar mentions at his time at hangar 54.

Where do you think fiber optic cable came from?

No, seriously.

 

[Matthewstorm]

Me.

Ok, Zork.

 

[Bikeman315]

Ok, Zork.

 

[shogun32]

Wait...isn't this a car foru

yes and I am happy to report that the Camaro and ATS series lines are back up and running.

 

[Gregs24]

Yeah, but how many cars is that? I think I've got enough spare microchips in between the couch cushions to build a years worth.

There may be a problem with your old chips.........

So, you are driving along and you pull the gear lever paddle which sends a message to the good old chip you provided. The chip goes, mmmmmmm, that means something. What does it mean? I'm sure somebody told me before. Oh I know ! It means I have to change a gear, but which one ? Oh well try this one .... (Just how the 6R80 used to work!)

 

[ice445]

My employer had to shut down our semiconductor line, years ago.

The problem is that even if you were able to run at 100% capacity, 24/7, that only gets you to the break-even point. The root problem is that equipment goes obsolete very quickly, and you need to run the heck out of it, before it does go obsolete.

Add to that, that it is a very expensive investment. Not many companies can go it alone anymore (even IBM falls into that).

When my employer shut down our fab, we offered it for free to any university who would want it, with the caution that just routine maintenance alone is around $1M a month. There were no takers, and they ended up tearing it down.

There's even bonus risk, in that the technology you're producing isn't adopted widely or is immediately superseded by something better or more cost effective. This happened to Intel and Micron with the whole 3D XPoint joint venture. Micron is selling the factory (which is located here) because of lack of demand for the technology.

The whole industry is truly insane as far as complexity and cost goes.

 

[shogun32]

Micron is selling the factory (which is located here) because of lack of demand for the technology.

I wonder how much of it can be recycled for secondary auto product lines. RAM has a fairly large feature size though compared to CPU... My dad was in the wire bonder and tester side of the business.

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