* Posts by chasil

209 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jul 2014

Page:

Greener, cheaper, what's not to love about a secondhand smartphone?

chasil

my *really* old phone

I have a Oneplus 5, and only T-Mobile will allow it on their network (AT&T needs the final Oneplus 6 model, even though this supports VoLTE).

I was already running Lineage on it, but I wiped back to stock because I needed a phone for Cisco Duo (remote access . So I ran on Android 10 for 3 years or so until Duo ended support for this OS release. I mailed the corporate security people about putting Lineage back on with MindTheGapps Google support, and they said that they did not explicitly forbid it, so I brought it back to Lineage's release, currently on Android 14 after the upgrade this month.

Suprisingly, even Wells Fargo's app runs.

Many Android people say an unlocked bootloader is an insecure phone because it is vulnerable to the "evil maid" attack. However, an OEM-abandoned phone running the latest LineageOS release will have updated network security patches that might be more valuable in trade. Note that any firmware vulnerabilities with your WiFi, Bluetooth, LTE/5g modem might present an attack surface that cannot be patched, but a 3rd-party ROM allows you to keep at least *some* of the device up to date.

The Pixel is an even better device, so by all means try a custom ROM.

chasil

"unsupported" battery

My mother needed a new device, so I got her a used iPhone XS off eBay for $180 or so for Christmas.

It was in reasonable shape, but one of the "Finish setting up your iPhone" items was "unsupported(/non-Apple) battery."

For some reason, Apple thinks I should care.

I really don't care, since I don't buy Apple products. I don't know if she cares either.

chasil

Unlocked bootloader

On the other hand, if you have purchased an older Android phone with an unlocked bootloader and a large enthusiast community, you can choose from a number of updated 3rd-party ROMS that offer many features that you simply cannot obtain on any stock rom.

You will have the ability to remove Google almost entirely from your device. An enthusiast ROM will not bring OEM bloatware, which will make your device more responsive. You can add the ability to run apps with the UNIX root user (uid zero). The Magisk rooting tool enables a large library of extensions for customization. One extension will prevent your battery from charging above 80%, which will vastly extend its life. Another extension will enable you to change the custom font.

OEMs can see all of this activity, and they commonly make decisions that this functionality should not be available to their user community.

Don't buy phones from those OEMs.

Top five reasons to move from CentOS to RHEL (according to Red Hat)

chasil

Missing hardware

RedHat aggressively removes kernel code for hardware that they (somewhat arbitrarily) have decided that they will not support.

There are a few kernels that return this support, including ElRepo Mainline and the Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel.

It is also possible to load Fedora's kernel into RHEL, but that does have a larger blast radius.

chasil

Oracle adds another six months to CentOS 7

With the proviso "Expect no new version/functionality upgrades, only critical and security related fixes," Oracle will provide another six months of critical RPMs.

https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/elsp-lifetime-069338.pdf

Adapting this might be as simple as adding additional yum repositories.

Login required for this link:

https://community.oracle.com/mosc/discussion/4546696/announcement-oracle-linux-7-premier-support-extended-from-jul-2024-to-dec-2024

Preview edition of Microsoft OS/2 2.0 surfaces on eBay

chasil

Re: Nice museum piece

"Single-sided, single-density" is likely the most durable format.

I remember using a hole punch to put the opposing notches on my 5.25" floppies, so I could flip them for single-sided drives and double my storage.

Things are going to get weird as the nanometer era draws to a close

chasil

Advanced Package

I found this interview to be quite interesting.

https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2022/07/102792671-05-01-acc.pdf

'We use a three generation older technologies and it worked very well... That was the first generation. Xilinx worked with TSMC on CoWoS. Their codename was CoWoS. It’s a funny name for TSMC’s silicon interposer. That was a first-generation advanced package technology.

'Qualcomm was our biggest customer... I talked to one of their VP. I talked to them many, many times, until one time, I had dinner with one of their VP, and he just very casually told me, he said, you know, “If you want to sell that to me, I would only pay one cent per millimeter square.” One cent per millimeter square. He said, “That’s the only cost I will pay for it.” I said, “How come you didn't tell me earlier?” He said, “You should know that. Why I should tell you? You should know that.” But, I didn’t know that.

"I said, “Please go to figure out how much that CoWoS costs us.” Seven cents per millimeter square. So that's why we couldn't sell it. I said, “Let’s develop something that costs one cent, and you can relax the performance, and you sacrifice performance.” Our second generation called InFO meet that criteria and it was sell like a hotcake. So that one word saved my life and the InFO was why Apple was hooked by TSMC. Earlier, why TSMC couldn't get Apple business, early stage, because Samsung offer them a package solution by wire bond DRAM on top of CPU, on top of the AP, and TSMC couldn’t do that.'

What if Microsoft had given us Windows XP 2024?

chasil

Themes must live forever.

Microsoft should be forbidden from ever removing a previous UI that they have introduced for the good of the product.

Witness the nostalgia of a Windows 7 theme for KDE:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38711003

The reason that Aero was removed was because it was not efficient phones and tablets, so Microsoft resorted to insulting it by calling it "cheesy" as an excuse for Windows 8:

https://advyon.com/microsoft-saying-goodbye-to-aero-in-windows-8/

If every previous Windows UI is "dated and cheesy," then there is no reason to grow attached to the current incarnation.

If they are all slated to die, then the faster, the better.

RHEL and Alma Linux 9.3 arrive – one is free, one merely free of charge

chasil

Re: Advanced Kernel

I have heard elsewhere that SuSE maintains its own set of custom backport patches for btrfs, since it is used as the root fileystem within their main distribution.

Oracle at one point actually distributed tools that would format btrfs with advanced hashes (sha256, xxhash, etc.), but their UEK didn't have the driver support for anything but crc32c - I don't think SuSE would have shipped anything so disjoint.

I'm assuming that Rocky doesn't really bring anything to the table from this perspective - they just rpm-rebuild whatever RedHat shipped. If Oracle and SuSE pooled their efforts, then I think the result would offer great advantages over stock rhel.

In the 90s, IBM/DEC/HP used POSIX to seize control of UNIX from AT&T and Sun. OpenELA would be able to do the same to IBM, if the advantages were compelling.

chasil

I actually used RedHat for many years, starting with the original RedHat 4.2. My company forced me onto Oracle Linux around 2009, and I haven't seen any need to go back.

I do find the rhel license changes disturbing, but this is an opportunity for OpenELA to make a better rhel than IBM can. The rhel kernel is highly objectionable.

I'm removing one of your downvotes.

chasil

Advanced Kernel

I am hoping that OpenELA releases a common kernel that takes the best from all the members.

It would include btrfs, io_uring (for rhel8 variants), all the hardware support that rhel kernels strip, and probably more features that RedHat would otherwise frown upon.

Alma's adoption of such a kernel would be a major blow.

Intel CEO Gelsinger dismisses 'pretty insignificant' Arm PC challenge

chasil

Hubris, thy name is Gelsinger.

This "pretty insignificant" competitive threat held the position as the top supercomputer in the Fujitsu design, and dominates mobile. The majority of this is fabbed at TSMC, who also dominates Intel.

ARM1 was 25,000 transistors, while the 80386 was 290,000 for a lesser-quality machine.

Does this guy need new glasses?

Microsoft gives unexpected tutorial on how to install Linux

chasil

Re: Windows isn’t needed for all home use any more

Many, many people have Android phones and tablets that completely suffice for app collections and computing needs.

Many others have iPhones and iPads in the same situation.

Microsoft has only one consumer environment - the desktop PC. An ocean has rolled both over and under that, which is why the old animosity is gone.

chasil

WinBtrFS

It would be very pleasant if Microsoft abandoned ReFS, and put all of the effort into btrfs instead.

ReFS has fewer features and is less capable, but the GPL on btrfs would be a major stumbling block.

chasil

NT "Personalities"

In this case, "personalities" does not refer to the plethora of Linux distributions, but instead to the NT kernel API interfaces.

NT was originally written as a foreign kernel (reimplementing VMS in C), meant to assume Win16/32, OS/2, and POSIX "personalities."

'Broad software compatibility was initially achieved with support for several API "personalities", including Windows API, POSIX, and OS/2 APIs – the latter two were phased out starting with Windows XP. Partial MS-DOS and Windows 16-bit compatibility is achieved on IA-32 via an integrated DOS Virtual Machine – although this feature is not available on other architectures.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT

I understand that PostgreSQL will run better under Linux emulation because fork() is faster than the native Windows equivalent. I wonder how that was implemented under the "LXSS" service mentioned in the parent article, as opposed to directly interfacing with the NT kernel as the POSIX system did.

Assuming a stable system call interface, (modern) NT is able to run many Linux distributions. My Windows 10 PC at work tells me that the following are available:

C:\>wsl.exe -l -o

The following is a list of valid distributions that can be installed.

The default distribution is denoted by '*'.

Install using 'wsl --install -d <Distro>'.

NAME FRIENDLY NAME

* Ubuntu Ubuntu

Debian Debian GNU/Linux

kali-linux Kali Linux Rolling

Ubuntu-18.04 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Ubuntu-20.04 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Ubuntu-22.04 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

OracleLinux_7_9 Oracle Linux 7.9

OracleLinux_8_7 Oracle Linux 8.7

OracleLinux_9_1 Oracle Linux 9.1

openSUSE-Leap-15.5 openSUSE Leap 15.5

SUSE-Linux-Enterprise-Server-15-SP4 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP4

SUSE-Linux-Enterprise-15-SP5 SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP5

openSUSE-Tumbleweed openSUSE Tumbleweed

Chinese meme-makers crown US Commerce Secretary as Huawei brand ambassador

chasil

Low yeilds

SMIC has actually been able to manufacture a 7nm process node for over a year, but it uses deep ultraviolet (DUV) and the yields are low.

Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) is achieved by vaporizing molten tin with a laser in the latest equipment from ASML. This technology remains unavailable.

One problem with America's chip ambitions: Not quite enough staff

chasil

TSMC management in Arizona

There have been two fatalities in the construction effort so far. There is also a lack of clarity from the management organization.

This may be an ongoing problem with U.S. operations.

"People were told that there was an active-shooting drill, and they were running, and [told] to evacuate the area. So our guys got out of the area. And they found out later that it was a gas leak. And they were just trying to hide that. So no one trusts them."

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-06-22-tsmc-semiconductor-factory-phoenix-accidents/

GlobalFoundries claims German chip subsidies will 'distort competition'

chasil

Acquisition

Global Foundries has failed to deliver advanced process nodes beyond 14nm (despite contractual obligations to do so).

They have pursued litigation against IBM for the 2nm GAA research, and otherwise do not appear to be as productive as their peers.

The best outcome might be if they ended up inside of Samsung. That would solve most of the problems.

Red Hat's open source rot took root when IBM walked in

chasil

Re: It's about Oracle

Oracle actually contributes quite a bit to the Linux kernel. They are very active in XFS and btrfs development, and (briefly) held the role as top contributor.

https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/post/oracle-is-the-1-contributor-to-the-linux-kernel

Oracle is actually more expensive than Red Hat's lowest support offerings, charging $499/year for basic support, and $1,399/year for premier. Both tiers allow 24x7 access to file service requests (SRs).

https://www.oracle.com/linux/support/

Red Hat has a more complicated support structure, starting with workstation-self support: $179, workstation-8x5 support: $299, server-self support: $349, server-8x5 support: $799, server-24x7 support: $1,299.

https://www.redhat.com/en/store/linux-platforms

Oracle is substantially undercutting both of the server supported tiers, but the question is somewhat more nuanced than at first glance.

Oracle has also indicated that they will never conduct hostile software audits over Linux licensing. That is a big reason to avoid Red Hat, as those audits are unpleasant.

Rocky Linux details the loopholes that will help its RHEL rebuild live on

chasil

Re: Oracle/RedHat pricing

I see that RHEL pricing is also tiered, on 8x5 and 24x7. I guess this is a more complete list:

Oracle Linux Basic: $499/year; Premier: $1,399/year

https://www.oracle.com/linux/support/

Workstation self-support: $179; 8x5 support: $299

Server self support: $349; 8x5 support: $799; 24x7 support: $1,299

https://www.redhat.com/en/store/linux-platforms

chasil

Oracle/RedHat pricing

Oracle Linux support is not cheaper than Red Hat.

Oracle Linux Basic: $499/year Premier: $1,399/year

https://www.oracle.com/linux/support/

Red Hat Workstation: $179 Server $349

https://www.redhat.com/en/store/linux-platforms

Oracle certifies its database for Arm architecture on-prem and in cloud

chasil

you forgot the biggest one of all...

...SQLite.

Kinder, gentler Oracle says it's changed, and now wants you to succeed

chasil

Great language?

Run ADA with PostgreSQL and you will swear that you never left.

chasil

run SQLite...

...and they can both agree on zero.

I'm losing admiration for the idea of SQL involving thousands in licensing depending upon the number of my processor cores.

The challenges Intel faces to compete with TSMC, Samsung

chasil

A recent interview with Shang-Yi Chiang, former Vice President of R&D at TSMC (also held positions at TI, HP, and SMIC) had insightful commentary on the speed of bringing up a new node.

"We all take two years to develop one generation, how come you guys can do it in one or one-and-a-half year?" And they asked if some of your customer transfer technology to you or what not? And I told him, "No," I told him that, "That's not true." I think he probably implied we steal technology from customer, the way he talk.

And I say, "I'll tell you why." I said that, "When we develop one node, basically you have some learning cycles. First, you do some simulation. And you have some idea, then you run wafers to prove that. So, you run a group of wafers according to simulation and you have some splits. The wafer runs through the fab, they come out and you measure them, you analyze them, and you try to improve and you run this again. This again, you run. So, this is learning cycle." At that time, "It takes about six learning cycle, roughly, to complete one generation." Of course, you had some short loops and not just one. I said that, "My R&D wafer in the fab run much faster than yours, because my R&D engineer works three shifts and you only work one shift. So, your R&D wafer move eight hours a day, my work/move 24-hours a day. So, my wafers go three times faster, even if you are twice smarter than me, I still beat you up." <laughter>

https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102792671

Fancy trying the granddaddy of Windows NT for free? Now's your chance

chasil

Free VT240 terminal...

For the full effect, you can also get the ROMs for a DEC VT240 terminal, and emulate it on a telnet socket with MAME.

https://www.mail-archive.com/simh@trailing-edge.com/msg09086.html

I ended up using these command line options to get it running (change 2323 below to 6666 for a VMS 1.0 install):

mame -rp . vt240 -window -nothrottle -host null_modem -bitb socket.target.hostname.com:2323

chasil

Kernel design

One major design decision shared by VMS and NT is hard file locking, and that has vast consequences on uptime/availability.

Linux is able to apply patches to underlying libraries that are in use. Processes that have linked in the older library report when their mapped libraries are unlinked:

# grep deleted /proc/1/maps | head -1

7ff80804e000-7ff80805c000 r--p 00000000 fc:00 201330314 /usr/lib64/libgcrypt.so.20.4.0 (deleted)

Because NT cannot do this, you get to enjoy "Patch Tuesday."

chasil

VMS 1.0...

...that is available for free (mentioned above) comes with Basic, Fortran and COBOL compilers. Alas, it does not appear to include C.

$ help fortran

FORTRAN - Invokes the VAX-11 FORTRAN IV-PLUS compiler to compile one or more source programs.

$ help cob

COBOL - Invokes the PDP-11 COBOL-74/VAX compiler. The /RSX11 qualifier is required.

$ help basic

BASIC - Invokes the PDP-11 BASIC-PLUS-2/VAX compiler.

chasil

Free VMS 1.0 for VAX

If you want to remember a very small amount of VMS, you can download this free OS image, and run it in the Simh emulator.

Dave Cutler wrote some of the VMS 1.0 kernel in assembler, which he later regretted after leading the Windows NT kernel project.

You will get: VAX/VMS Version 1.00 21-AUG-1978 15:54

I got it running on Oracle Linux 9. Direct networking isn't needed, as it will open a telnet socket on a "VAX780 simulator DZ device, line 0" within the host OS.

I don't think there is a TCP stack for VMS 1.0.

https://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_VMS_V1.0_on_SIMH

Warning on SolarWinds-like supply-chain attacks: 'They're just getting bigger'

chasil

Free Wordperfect for Linux

I doubt that limit applies to this version for X/Windows.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/20/wordperfect_for_unix_for_linux/

The quest to make Linux bulletproof

chasil

Columbus UNIX

This assertion by the author is not correct:

"In the Linux world, this first appeared with journaling file systems."

What is actually needed for databases is System V IPC - semaphores, message queues, and shared memory.

Columbus UNIX introduced these, long before journaling file systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CB_UNIX

"CB UNIX was developed to address deficiencies inherent in Research Unix, notably the lack of interprocess communication (IPC) and file locking, considered essential for a database management system... The interprocess communication features developed for CB UNIX were message queues, semaphores and shared memory support. These eventually appeared in mainstream Unix systems starting with System V in 1983, and are now collectively known as System V IPC."

Debian dev to the rescue after proposal to remove Itanium from Linux kernel

chasil

Alpha != Itanium

Alpha had several problems that precluded its adoption as a mainstream ISA.

The first was power, and DEC ended up choosing the winner themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM

"According to Allen Baum, the StrongARM traces its history to attempts to make a low-power version of the DEC Alpha, which DEC's engineers quickly concluded was not possible."

The second was the weak memory barriers.

https://redvice.org/2021/memory-barriers-alpha/

"Of relevance to this piece, however, is Alpha’s exceedingly lax memory model. Unlike ARM, which will respect data dependencies for reordering, Alpha can reorder reads regardless. This is really hard to reason about, even for people comfortable with lock-free programming."

The third was their own software licensing, which was outrageously expensive.

An AIX license for a single user was included in an RS/6000 purchase (participated in a 43p purchase in the mid-90s), while OSF/1 was over $40k, ruling the Alpha out. Third-party Alpha resellers with beta versions of Linux and Windows were not sufficient to overcome this.

ARM definitely deserved to be the survivor.

Microsoft switches Edge’s PDF reader to pay-to-play Adobe Acrobat

chasil

Re: firefox & pdf24

The Mozilla Javascript solution is generally available at this URL:

https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/

I have used it as an extension in Edge, where is was an option for me to view PDF attachments (the Edge PDF engine does not allow this).

The Javascript solution is likely more secure, and presents less of an attack surface. Adobe PDF has seen *so many security bugs* that I really do prefer something else.

Oracle cozies up to IBM, adds Red Hat Enterprise Linux

chasil

"Unbreakable" UEK

The Oracle "Unbreakable" Enterprise Kernel (UEK) is actually far superior to RedHat's for several reasons.

It adds full support for btrfs. RedHat explicitly removes this from Fedora, for motivations that are not clear at this point.

RedHat also removes many drivers and supported devices from later kernels, which the UEK retains. SATA RAID cards are notably back among other deprecated devices and modules, with no need to go to El Repo for a tainted driver.

The latest UEKs are all v5 kernels, much better than the v3 and v4 that we see on RedHat 7 and 8.

This does solve many different classes of problems on the platform, even when loaded into an upstream OS.

Experts warn of steep increase in Java costs under changes to Oracle license regime

chasil

Re: Right, but do all those businesses...

Oracle Linux also bundles OpenJDK, and support is certainly available.

Arm shells Qualcomm's Snapdragon launch party with latest salvo in license war

chasil

Qualcomm RISC-V "KomodoDragon"

Wouldn't it be interesting if a new SoC family were announced sometime this quarter, shipping next year, the lowest tiers of which were released as public domain?

Microsoft offers SQL Server 2022 release candidate to Linux world

chasil

Sybase

Microsoft SQL Server was forked from Sybase 4.8, which was already multiplatform on all the commercial UNIXen of the time.

I understand that there is a "shim" layer for kernel services translation, but SQL Server is faster on Linux than it is on Windows.

In a way, it has finally come home.

chasil

Hope to see ISO compliance

Microsoft's lack of an implementation of the SQL/PSM standard is a real problem where I work. We have hundreds of thousands of lines of PL/SQL, and Db2 is a better porting candidate than all the SQL Servers that we run.

Microsoft, please implement the whole of SQL/PSM.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL/PSM

I also wish that my own management would start using SQL Server on Linux. It's faster, and the patching is far easier. Microsoft themselves publish leading TPC-H scores on Linux, with Windows a distant second (Exasol towers above both).

https://www.tpc.org/tpch/results/tpch_perf_results5.asp?resulttype=all&version=3

No longer prepared to svn commit: WebKit migrates to GitHub

chasil

All repositories are equal

A central tenant of git is that all repositories are equal.

To work on a single file in a repo, you must clone or pull the entire repository.

A central repository is not really special.

Open source databases: What are they and why do they matter?

chasil

SQL/PSM

This is not entirely true.

Fragments of PL/SQL have been adopted as an ISO standard, and implemented by several databases.

The exception is Microsoft.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL/PSM

Solaris is in maintenance mode – but Oracle added a significant feature anyway

chasil

SPARC

I don't know of any Solaris descendants that fully support SPARC.

One of the BSDs is really the only option with a long term future for this platform, if Oracle Solaris is eschewed.

chasil

Solaris Premier Support

I just confirmed that Oracle Solaris support is $1,000 per year. You can find this on https://shop.oracle.com then browse products / operating systems.

There are plenty of versions of Solaris. A lot of people like OpenIndiana, and Samsung was such a fan of SmartOS that they bought Joyent.

Give some of these a try!

https://www.oracle.com/solaris

https://www.openindiana.org/

https://tritondatacenter.com/smartos

Dealing with legacy issues around Red Hat crypto versions? Here's a fix

chasil

Re: Why is it difficult to add new encryption/hash methods to old OS?

I have successfully compiled both tinysshd and dropbear on an RHEL5 clone.

They both can solve the RHEL9 connectivity problem. The tinyssh server is more restrictive, but has a better security record than dropbear.

chasil

hmac

The use of hmac-sha1 remains secure, as hmac tolerates a weak hashing algorithm that is prone to collisions (which means that hmac-md5 is also still secure). However, sha-1 is also used within the original RSA key specification, which also cannot be used with modern SSH.

One easy solution is to install tinysshd on the RHEL6 release, which supports the latest (DJB) ciphers. It can be somewhat more difficult to use, as only ed25519 keys are allowed for logins (it does not allow a login with a password).

EPEL for RHEL9 does not yet have PuTTY packages. When they arrive, they will support the older ciphers. They can also be built from source.

Battle of the retro Unix desktops: NsCDE versus CDE

chasil

OpenBSD fvwm

You will be very pleased with OpenBSD's default window manager.

It's not quite mwm, but it's very close.

chasil

HP VUE

You might find it interesting to know that the predecessor to CDE was HP VUE under HP-UX.

I graduated from the university of Iowa. When I matriculated, the engineering computer lab had Macs and Apollo Domain workstations. The Apollos migrated to PA-RISC running HP-UX v9.

This was shortly before the attempt on DCE standardization, and I think that HP submitted VUE for this reason.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_User_Environment

One unsung jewel of CDE was the dtksh, a Korn shell variant that allowed direct access to Xlib, Xt, and Motif widgets from a shell script. This code was owned by Novell, and the author documented the final version in this book:

https://www.amazon.com.au/Desktop-Kornshell-Graphical-Programming-Pendergrast/dp/0201633752

Good times.

'Unbreakable' Oracle Linux 9 is a RHEL rebuild with built-in Btrfs support

chasil

loopback only

I have not checked, but the installer for Oracle Linux 9 will likely only allow XFS filesystems to be created. Any btrfs filesystems will have to be created on separate storage, or on loopback files that live on XFS.

The RHCK will not recognize any btrfs filesystems. These can only be mounted when the UEK is running.

The UEK is definitely able to utilize btrfs, the the OS really was not built for it. Fedora or Suse is a better choice for well-integrated btrfs.

Intel’s CEO shouldn’t be surprised America can’t get CHIPS Act together

chasil

Re: TSMC & RCA

After reading that whole article, all of RCA's technology actually went to UMC.

TSMC got something better:

"TSMC entered the market with technology much more advanced than UMC... Dutch corporation Philips (continuing a history of close Dutch-Taiwanese ties) provided technological input on the 1.5 micron process that would make up TSMC's core service."

I didn't know that.

chasil

Re: TSMC & RCA

https://meet-global.bnext.com.tw/articles/view/47727

"RCA invited a team of some 30-40 engineers to their campus for a year to teach them not just the raw science of semiconductors but also management techniques and industrial knowledge... a few years later, RCA pulled out of the semiconductor industry altogether and left Taiwan with a license for all of its technologies."

chasil

TSMC & RCA

It's important to understand that RCA agreed to train TSMC workers in the late 70s at the RCA semiconductor foundry in Ohio.

TSMC acquired vast experience from RCA.

RCA was a leader in semiconductor manufacturing at that time, but attempted to become a conglomerate with acquisitions of unrelated businesses that detracted from their core competence. The nickname of the firm was "Rugs, Chickens, and Automobiles" as they bought a carpet company, a frozen food company, and a rental car company.

RCA as a semiconductor manufacturer withered on the vine in the ensuing management distraction.

There are many reasons that TSMC would never survive in the United States. Perhaps Intel is better served in another country.

Page: