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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

Why would Israel have ever been an intelligent location for that? Was it just about connections and money?

Surely there’s places with better labour or logistics options.

Intel has had development centers in Israel for a long time; people with computer architecture backgrounds might remember that the Pentium M, which evolved into their Core line of CPUs, was designed at their Haifa facility. It saved Intel's bacon when their Pentium 4 architecture started running out of steam relative to their competitors.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibi...

They also had fabs in Israel already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si.... The paused one is Fab 38, which was to have been built alongside the existing Fab 28.

[EDIT] Removed an unnecessary digression.

Thank you for the insight (no sarcasm)

now, about "ThrowawayR2" :/

Maybe Intel should have failed. It is possible that today they would have much better management and a positive outlook.

Money is certainly part of it, the Israeli government tends to subsidize these sorts of initiatives. Costs would typically be lower vs. other options like Japan, Germany or the USA even without those subsidies.

Israel has a long history of semiconductor expertise. From Intel's first R&D office outside the US in 1974 to many others. Mellanox, Tower Semiconductors etc. There's a lot of know-how and expertise and Israel would typically be considered one of the top 10 (if not higher) countries in the world in this area.

https://www.computer.org/publications/tech-news/neal-notes/i...

https://www.diskmfr.com/unveiling-israeli-semiconductor-powe...

> Money is certainly part of it, the Israeli government tends to subsidize these sorts of initiatives.

Governments, in general, tend to subsidize these sorts of initiatives and compete with other nations and states.

Israel has incredible tech talent in general but especially in semiconductor design. For example, Amazon’s chips are designed by a company they acquired in Israel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapurna_Labs). I’m not sure what the causes are, but Israel has a lot of talent and an entrepreneurial culture that’s bigger than its size implies.

> citing need for 'responsible capital management'

it wasn’t an intelligent location

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