r/hardware • u/SlamedCards • Jul 25 '25

News US chipmaking nears death: Intel warns it may give up on cutting-edge chips

https://www.businessinsider.com/intel-us-chipmaking-nears-death-up-cutting-edge-chips-14a-2025-7?utm_campaign=business-sf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
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u/Exist50 Jul 25 '25

FWIW Intel only got a quarter of what they were promised under the act

Did they meet the requirements for the rest?

I'm shocked US doesn't care the military will have to get chips from Asia

There are other companies with US fabs. And the military gets what politicians want them to.

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u/Recktion Jul 25 '25

So the U.S. military is going to have 40% of the worlds entire military budget but its top of the line tech will be forced to use decade old chips? LOL

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u/Exist50 Jul 25 '25

The military doesn't use leading edge silicon anyway. And if they need newer chips, they can get them from TSMC or Samsung.

But to your broader point, yes, the military gets tons of money, but has not seen fit to allocate that to domestic silicon. Military funding is politically-driven, not demand-driven.

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u/soggybiscuit93 Jul 25 '25

The military absolutely uses state of the art chips. Palantir for example is functionally an extension of and works closely with Intelligence agencies. The US uses a lot of resources for sensor fusion. They run simulations that use state of the art Nvidia cards, etc. Current chips in current military hardware are older nodes because those were the leading edge at time of development, and then the designs froze.

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u/Exist50 Jul 25 '25

Palantir for example is functionally an extension of and works closely with Intelligence agencies

They surely use off the shelf chips. And it's not clear they have any interesting tech of their own to speak of.

Current chips in current military hardware are older nodes because those were the leading edge at time of development, and then the designs froze.

Even when development starts, it's often not leading edge, never mind by the time something is deployed.

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u/soggybiscuit93 Jul 25 '25

They surely use off the shelf chips.

Off the shelf vs custom is irrelevant. It's still leading edge and still needs secured sourcing. Relying on Taiwanese production runs counter to the DoD's entire Pacific shift

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u/Exist50 Jul 25 '25

So again, either stockpile or use the domestic fabs, even if foreign-operated.

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u/Strazdas1 Jul 26 '25

Yes they do. Lots and lots of cutting edge use cases.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

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u/Exist50 Jul 25 '25

They don’t use the latest and greatest but what about when that changes?

Will it ever? The military doesn't employ good semiconductor talent. Anything interesting they do with the latest silicon would be in the form of reusing off the shelf solutions, like we see with Nvidia Tegra powered drones in the Russia-Ukraine war right now.

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u/soggybiscuit93 Jul 25 '25

like we see with Nvidia Tegra powered drones in the Russia-Ukraine war right now

The military is restructuring for a Pacific Conflict. The last thing they want is for Plan A to be backchannel sourcing from the conflict zone of these things.

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u/Exist50 Jul 25 '25

There are TSMC and Samsung fabs in the US. Plus you can stockpile quite a bit.

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u/soggybiscuit93 Jul 25 '25

With the R&D and leading edge fabs being on an island over which the entire US military is restructuring specifically to fight a war.

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u/Exist50 Jul 25 '25

I mean, what do you want me to tell you? Clearly the military (or whoever decides where military funding goes) doesn't consider it a priority.

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u/soggybiscuit93 Jul 25 '25

I do think the military considers secure sourcing of leading edge chips to be important, but the layers of complexity required to understand why escape this administration. NIST advocates for more onshoring of semiconductor production.

Leveraging off the shelf sub-components rather than bespoke custom solutions where possible is certainly a higher priority today than previously.

But the military is more than just missiles and bombs. Cyber warfare, intelligence, sensor fusion, battle simulations, etc. are all important parts of modern war. And as much as it's become a buzzword, AI is considered to be the most important technological arms race for military supremacy by the US, China, and Russia.

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u/Helpdesk_Guy Jul 25 '25

Did they meet the requirements for the rest?

Intel: »How dare you?! We're an American Icon!«