'Twas The Night Before Tom's Christmas 2024

It was holiday time but Santa felt like trash
because he needed gifts but he didn't have cash.
So he hatched up a scheme that he thought could be funny:
He'd build a U.S.-based fab for some sweet CHIPS Act money.

To start up he'd need funds that left him dazed,
So he borrowed from billions that Sam Altman raised.
To dream up the plans that would save the North Pole:
A CPU partially made out of coal.

Santa bought plots of land — plum realty
in Arizona near Intel and TSMC.
He could get fab tools that weren't sent to China
and source quartz from a mine out in North Carolina.

Somehow Santa made the whole thing become real.
He was building a fab and was offered a deal.
But he thought local workers couldn't do the job themselves
So beyond Arizonans, he brought in some elves.

It was a move that the locals thought seemed pretty selfish.
And to make things worse they held meetings in Elvish!
The locals would win by hem and by haw —
Santa couldn't get payouts if he broke labor law.

As the time stretched on Santa worried something was wrong.
"I've invested my loans, this is taking too long!"
With delays until the CHIPS act would pay out to suppliers,
Santa had to show somehow that he would have buyers.

He hadn't thought that far, things weren't going well.
Santa brainstormed that his new fab could merge with Intel.
And in a moment of crisis and much indecision,
He thought the North Pole could spin off the division.

But then Santa's worries increased tenfold,
when the program's funding was put on hold.
He needed to do something, the nice list was growing,
And giving gifts wasn't something he could be foregoing!

So Santa put on his gift-giving persona.
He'd do it for the people of warm Arizona!
He'd come up with a plan that used all his might
for a holiday with snow cloaked in soft Steam Deck white.

Instead of deciding he was facing defeat
He puts the fab's assets in a huge Excel sheet.
Then he reached out to friends who could help him do better,
though Outlook crashed when he opened those emails together.

The most valuable companies and their execs
weren't exactly racing to write Santa checks.
But with all of the goodness in all of their hearts
they agreed to buy up all of Santa's fab's parts.

He found a UPS worker who had been quite naughty,
They'd used stolen iPhones to pay off their Audi.
As part of an offer to stay out of jail,
They offered Santa money as part of their bail. 

With the help of the techies and even the thief,
Santa could breathe a sigh of relief.
So he put on his roomy red gift-giving pants,
To help replace a rig that was riddled with ants.

The elves packed Mac Minis and AI PCs,
and AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3Ds.
While Santa and Mrs. Claus filled up the sleigh
With PC peripherals to help Spielberg play.

Building a fab was more than Santa could take.
He had felt as unstable as poor Raptor Lake.
He'd stick to the projects he could easily clear,
Like giving gifts to the world from the back of reindeer.

But just when he felt the year was becoming a ringer
Intel went and pushed out CEO Pat Gelsinger.
He left in a rush, and as he Arc'ed out the door,
he released B580, promising B570 and more.

No matter what you’re celebrating this year,
Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Christmas with cheer;
We at Tom’s Hardware wish you the best.
We’ll be at our benches, running our tests.

The Tom’s Hardware staff first published a holiday poem in 2014 on Christmas Eve. It was updated a little bit and published again each year at the same time. The poem was given a complete overhaul in 2018 and has been rewritten with new stories and references every year since. (Also see the versions from 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.)