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CHIPS Act dies because employees are fired (semiwiki.com)

submitted 1 month ago by yogthos@lemmygrad.ml to c/us_news@lemmygrad.ml

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[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

To be fair, CHIPS act was dead on arrival, and it failed to achieve much of anything.

[–] MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Was it? I'm just glancing at the wiki, but this looks like a start, especially for a high-tech industry where manufacturing takes a long time to ramp up:

By March 2024, analysts estimated that the act incentivized between 25 and 50 separate potential projects, with total projected investments of $160–200 billion and 25,000–45,000 new jobs...

On the second anniversary of the Act becoming law, the NSF put out an updated fact sheet. The TIP Directorate had now awarded a two-year total of 2,455 grants and signed 25 contracts in research and development, and incentivized $8.15 billion in private capital and more than 75 exits from federal seed funding; the NSF also designated 10 new Regional Innovation Engines in January 2024, issued the first 40 awards in the ExLENT program promoting experiential learning in semiconductor engineering at universities, launched the NSF SBIR/SBTT Fast-Track pilot program for certain startups and the APTO program promoting technology prediction...

On May 13, 2024, Bloomberg News found a total of $32.8 billion had been allocated from the CaSA's $39 billion fund

Even looking at this with a skeptical eye, it looks like companies and universities were doing real projects that took advantage of the program.

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

this was a really good run down of how absurd the whole thing was https://compactmag.com/article/fighting-a-chip-war-on-the-cheap

[–] aspensmonster@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Every manufactured product, from toasters and automobiles to ballistic missiles, runs on computer chips. The United States invented the integrated circuit but now fabricates just 12 percent of the world’s chips, and none of the most advanced versions.

As a dude that got a BS in Computer Engineering only to give up on the industry, yeah. That tracks. AMD and Intel were like "got a PhD and post-doc work? No? Maybe go fuck yourself, work in verification/validation for a decade at 40k/year, and then maybe we'll consider you." So I said "oh well" and wrote code instead. If I could tell my decade-younger self one thing, it'd be: Learn Chinese.

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 1 month ago

Same, I really wish I started learning Chinese sooner. I'm making up for that now though, it's never too late. :)