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Elon Musk told Ron Baron he's building a chip that will be 2 to 3 times better than NVIDIA - at 10% of the cost

S

soAsian

Well-known member
Elon Musk told Ron Baron he's building a chip that will be 2 to 3 times better than NVIDIA - at 10% of the cost "I have the entire physical design of the chip laid out in memory - I can visualize the whole thing "when TSMC told him a new fab takes 5 years he said: "five years to me is an eternity - my timelines go one year, two year, and at year three it goes to infinity" so he's building his own Tesla's self-driving has logged 10 billion miles - 4 times safer than a human driver - with the new chip it will be 10x"I don't own any vacation homes - just one house in Austin and a tiny house at Starbase - friends come to visit and they think I'm kidding" watch the full conversation ↓

https://twitter.com/x/status/2064102037193695404

"I have the entire physical design of the chip laid out in memory - I can visualize the whole thing". 😲
 
10% of the cost, or 10% of the price? Nvidia's gross margins on GPUs are at least 75%... I hope Musk uses more precision in his mental physical design than his bravado statements.

It is also interesting to ask, where are the EUV machines coming from? All of the other fab machinery necessary from back-ordered companies like Applied Materials, Lam Research, KLA, Tokyo Electron? And it's all going to be up and running in three years? With a team that probably hasn't worked together before? Color me skeptical.

Maybe there is one way... Musk could acquire IFS from Intel. 🙄
 
blueone said:
10% of the cost, or 10% of the price? Nvidia's gross margins on GPUs are at least 75%... I hope Musk uses more precision in his mental physical design than his bravado statements.
Click to expand...

For the math to work, Musk would end up needing a chip that is 3X more efficient per die area for whatever the use case is, at comparable (or better) yields.

A 75% margin means Nvidia is making $3 for every $4 sold, reducing the margin to $0 gives you your first ~ 3X improvement in cost.

3X more efficient per die area for a specific function doesn't seem implausible given Nvidia has been projecting >100X improvements in some use cases between Hopper and Vera Rubin.

..

That said - this is definitely a hubris conversation, and there's never going to be enough technical details available to make a judgment during a call/podcast like this.
 
Xebec said:
That said - this is definitely a hubris conversation, and there's never going to be enough technical details available to make a judgment during a call/podcast like this.
Click to expand...
I agree. Musk should take the advice of my early career mentor. My mentor advocated "Precision, Rigor, and Clarity". Musk communicates with none of these.

It's amazing that Musk is the richest person in the world, considering his, uh, lack of discipline and sensitivity to the impact of what he says on others. Two of our children were and are shopping for EVs this year. Both adamantly refuse to consider a Tesla because of Musk's communications. One chose a Hyundai, and the other is on the waitlist for a new Rivian. I warned both I thought the Model Y was a better deal overall, but their pushback was absolute. I wonder if they'll refuse to use Starlink Internet on airline flights to spite Musk, even if it's free. :ROFLMAO:
 
blueone said:
Both adamantly refuse to consider a Tesla because of Musk's communications. One chose a Hyundai, and the other is on the waitlist for a new Rivian. I warned both I thought the Model Y was a better deal overall, but their pushback was absolute. I wonder if they'll refuse to use Starlink Internet on airline flights to spite Musk, even if it's free. :ROFLMAO:
Click to expand...

Found the family redditors ;-)

EDIT: Hope they don't run into the scenario where if the Hyaundai battery fails, they ask more for a new battery than the price of a whole new EV :) -- https://globalnews.ca/news/10103753/electric-car-shock-50000-battery/ (this has happened a few times)
 
Even Tesla thought wireless power was the future. His fans claim he actually delivered on it. Sometimes brilliant people are idiots at times LOL

Just ask Elon for dates and commits and then hold him accountable.
 
Xebec said:
Found the family redditors ;-)

EDIT: Hope they don't run into the scenario where if the Hyaundai battery fails, they ask more for a new battery than the price of a whole new EV :) -- https://globalnews.ca/news/10103753/electric-car-shock-50000-battery/ (this has happened a few times)
Click to expand...
Which is why for EVs I always recommend a lease over a purchase, and both listen to me on that factor. I drove the new Hyundai during my last visit, and I admit I liked it more than I thought I would. As an aside however, why the hell does every manufacturer now make their driver controls unique and different, so that when you get any EV you can't figure out what-does-what without minutes of exploration? When I got into the driver's seat of the Hyundai I told my daughter I had two words for the designer of the controls, and that those words were not "Happy Easter"!
 
blueone said:
Which is why for EVs I always recommend a lease over a purchase, and both listen to me on that factor. I drove the new Hyundai during my last visit, and I admit I liked it more than I thought I would. As an aside however, why the hell does every manufacturer now make their driver controls unique and different, so that when you get any EV you can't figure out what-does-what without minutes of exploration? When I got into the driver's seat of the Hyundai I told my daughter I had two words for the designer of the controls, and that those words were not "Happy Easter"!
Click to expand...
Last post because OT. I rented a Hyundai EV once. The radio volume was loud but the navigation was too low to hear. I had to stop the car and go three menus deep to adjust navigation volume, be used there was no other way to do it.

Good luck for your children but unfortunately EVs from legacy automakers make bad impressions because of terrible UIs and sluggish infotainment systems and navigation. They also put unneeded maintenance requirements in place to please the dealers - wasting the owners time and money unnecessarily. That's not behavior I'd want to reward with a purchase.
 
soAsian said:
Elon Musk told Ron Baron he's building a chip that will be 2 to 3 times better than NVIDIA - at 10% of the cost "I have the entire physical design of the chip laid out in memory - I can visualize the whole thing "when TSMC told him a new fab takes 5 years he said: "five years to me is an eternity - my timelines go one year, two year, and at year three it goes to infinity" so he's building his own Tesla's self-driving has logged 10 billion miles - 4 times safer than a human driver - with the new chip it will be 10x"I don't own any vacation homes - just one house in Austin and a tiny house at Starbase - friends come to visit and they think I'm kidding" watch the full conversation ↓

https://twitter.com/x/status/2064102037193695404

"I have the entire physical design of the chip laid out in memory - I can visualize the whole thing". 😲
Click to expand...

Being a glass half full guy I can appreciate Elon Musk's enthusiasm and I do believe he is a great asset for the semiconductor industry. Based on his "enthusiasm record" I do however feel you have to double his time expectations and/or half his performance claims. Exciting times in the semiconductor industry, absolutely.
 
1781038506593.png


1781038676525.png



See you in 5 years again!
 
Xebec said:
For the math to work, Musk would end up needing a chip that is 3X more efficient per die area for whatever the use case is, at comparable (or better) yields.

A 75% margin means Nvidia is making $3 for every $4 sold, reducing the margin to $0 gives you your first ~ 3X improvement in cost.

3X more efficient per die area for a specific function doesn't seem implausible given Nvidia has been projecting >100X improvements in some use cases between Hopper and Vera Rubin.

..

That said - this is definitely a hubris conversation, and there's never going to be enough technical details available to make a judgment during a call/podcast like this.
Click to expand...

Elon Musk loves the character ‘X.’ Many of his companies, projects, and associates’ names contain ‘X,’ such as:

SpaceX
X (Twitter)
xAI
xAI Hotshot
X.AI Holdings Corp
X Æ A‑Xii (one of his sons, often nicknamed simply ‘X’)
X Holdings I & II

Consequently, Elon Musk also likes to add ‘x’ to many numbers he spells out: 3x, 4x, 5x, 10x, 50x, 100x, 110x, 1000x - based on his past statements.

So probably none of the busy analysts can keep track of the real meanings and the actually achieved results of the many ‘X’s.
 
hist78 said:
Elon Musk loves the character ‘X.’ Many of his companies, projects, and associates’ names contain ‘X,’ such as:

SpaceX
X (Twitter)
xAI
xAI Hotshot
X.AI Holdings Corp
X Æ A‑Xii (one of his sons, often nicknamed simply ‘X’)
X Holdings I & II

Consequently, Elon Musk also likes to add ‘x’ to many numbers he spells out: 3x, 4x, 5x, 10x, 50x, 100x, 110x, 1000x - based on his past statements.

So probably none of the busy analysts can keep track of the real meanings and the actually achieved results of the many ‘X’s.
Click to expand...

Too bad that so many people are waisting their energy on discussing EM and how he likes to burn other people's (especially the small investor's pocket money and the passive investor's retirement's money) by moving money between X-businesses all the time, including Tesla.

Wall Street (and their affiliations around the word) likes "playing with society's rent to expose people to risk", as long as they can skim off 2-20% of every exposure bet to risk. What a job! Well people stay people over many millennia, biology changes quite slowly.

Send EM to Mars and let him tweet from Mars, it takes some 3-22 minutes. By the time his tweet from Mars arrives at Earth his tweet is too old news for all the fast moving smart AI-agents and is automatically parsed to go to /dev/null.

Finally, people will start doing something usefull again with their energy!

See EM again in 5 years! And let POTUS join EM to Mars, lots of real-estate to develop on Mars !
 
hist78 said:
From 2016 to 2025, TSMC’s net profits covered 102 percent of its CapEx. Moreover, TSMC distributed dividends every year throughout this period. Achieving this required a high degree of financial discipline.
Click to expand...

Of course, I mean the slot machines located on Mars! CC Wei and his people are a very different species from the X-people.
 
user nl said:
Of course, I mean the slot machines located on Mars! CC Wei and his people are a very different species from the X-people.
Click to expand...

Following your analysis, I calculated Intel’s figures from 2016 to 2025. Over that period, Intel generated approximately $67.7 billion in GAAP net income but spent $175 billion on capital expenditures. I also calculated that from 2016 to 2025 (Intel stopped buying shares back after 2021), Intel spent $47.15 billion on share repurchases and paid roughly $25.75 billion in common stock dividends.

In total, from 2016 to 2025, Intel’s net profit covered only 38.69% of its CapEx, while the company simultaneously doled out $72.9 billion in cash ($47.15 billion in share repurchases and $25.75 billion in dividends).

In essence, Intel exhausted the resources needed to reinvest in itself. It is a mess.

I have to ask whether Intel hired a sufficient number of qualified MBA professionals to oversee its financial management.
 
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