16 March 2020

The Tyranny of Average Cost - part the tenth

Well, more proof that capital, in the age of hyperautomation, is in trouble. The issue with automated production, from at least the days of Ford's River Rouge plant, return on capital derives entirely from the removal of labor from production. The downside to that is: if production doesn't increase while amortizing said capital, average cost can't be driven down. Ya gotta pay the vig no matter whether you shift one widget or a million.

So Intel and Micron made a new agreement on 3D Xpoint memory. They need to boost output, aka sales, in order to get average cost under control. Intel sees off-shoring to China as the way to drive out what little labor there remains. But it'll fail, if nothing is done to promote demand. They just ain't much labor left in semi-conductor manufacturing; for the 300mm fab (far and away the mainstay) overhead labor is 10 times direct.

Intel should have folks smart enough to go back to the future with a lean cpu doing all operations in memory. Yes the TI-990. I said it againa

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