It's interesting to me that this is in Phoenix. Does that mean good things for the city? I thought they were in a desert and running out of water, and not well positioned for climate change. On the other hand, maybe with more solar panels, electricity and manufacturing will be cheaper there in the future?
There's no problem with residential water use in Phoenix. There are still farms that could be shut down if water is needed.
The biggest problem seems to be parochial NIMBYs. People don't like that TSMC needed to bring in Taiwanese workers to staff up the plant. They are currently posting AI generated renderings of factories with billowing smoke stacks when talking about the proposed Amkor semiconductor packaging plant in Peoria.
It’s also worth nothing that the TSMC plant is basically as far north as it’s possible to be while still counting as part of the (huge) Phoenix metro area. The vast majority of the 5 million residents of that metro area are nowhere near the plant and very unlikely to be affected by it in any way.
Water in the fabs gets mostly recycled. There’s an old slidedeck from Intel’s Chandler (Phoenix metro area suburb) fab about it. This includes discharging what isn’t recycled to refill ground aquifer.
From what I understand, the area is more seismically stable, so the special building structures and equipment for more seismically active places are not needed.
There is the presence of ASU. The ASU president had been hired a while back to implement a very different kind of university system focused on broadening (not gate keeping) higher education and building up innovation. This includes both improving graduation rates in the traditional tracks and expanding non-traditional educational tracks. I don’t know if all those were considered by TSMC; they like hiring engineers straight out of college and training them in their methods.
Phoenix the city is limited by its existing water rights but the geographical area isn't really that constrained; water rights are just held by private parties, particulaly farmers. ~70% of all water used in the state is used in agriculture. Industrial and residential consumers simply have to purchase those rights if they want to continue to expand in the area and chip making is a high value add industry.
Is there any historical reason why farming is a big industry in a state associated with deserts? Did manufacturing never take root there until after WW2 when air conditioning became more affordable?
Looks like the fab requires about 40,000 acre-ft/yr of water. If they really do start running out of water, adding desal of AZ's brackish aquifers would cost the fab about $20m/year. Not really worth it for farming, but completely fine for a fab.
I live here and we are definitely looking toward impending water shortages, and no one care at all. Nestle is in the process of building a 200 acre coffee creamer factory. The major flower delivery services grow their flowers here. We have tons of cotton and alfalfa fields. There are 100s of golf courses and in the wealthier areas everyone has a lush green lawn.
No information, but at least it doesn't mislead into thinking there are 4nm transistors, or transistor gates, or some discrete feature of any sort that's that small.
German TSMC fab will produce 16nm there, not 4nm though. Useful for the auto industry but much lower margin and less strategically important than 4nm fab in the US.
Strategic for that same German auto industry, though. I assume that the Covid disruption to the supply of boring but essential microcontrollers for cars was a wake-up call.
Speaking of the leading edge, though: while industrial policy, like other kinds of investment, is easier with the benefit of hindsight, there must be some regret at having let Global Foundries drop out of the peloton.
That's still nice, especially considering that it’s somewhere between Haswell and Broadwell from 2014.
Maybe not the kind of progress or initiative that gets headlines, but neither is it trying to push as far as what Intel has been trying to do for the past few years.
What Europe wants is not necessarily profitability but rather resilience. You can't leave this kind of decision up to the irrationality of market forces. So—you're correct, germany (or the EU) should subsidize chips if they want to weather the future.
chip fabs are big and contain a lot of things like pumps (and even a few very exotic lasers). but they're not power-intensive the way a steel plant is - or even a datacenter.
IIRC, this isn't happening because Europe doesn't have a large enough industry to purchase chips at the scale required to have such a huge investment.
This one in USA is for political reasons and likely will be feasible only if US manages to preserve the global political order.
Maybe Europe could have had force having a latest node FAB by banning exports of EUV machines and have factories built in Europe through flying Taiwanese engineers to build and operate it and call it huge success like USA is doing now.
I don't know if its worth the cost though. Sure it is good to have it bu in USA's case they even haven't built the industry around it, they will produce the chips in USA, call it "Made in America", collect the political points and ship the chips to the other side of the planet for further processing.
Is it really that big of a deal to have European machines being operated by the Taiwanese in the USA to print chips that need a visit to China to become useful? If the global world order collapses, will the 330M Americans be able to sustain the FAB? If it doesn't collapse, will that be still a good investment considering that Taiwanese have the good stuff for themselves and integrated into the full chain without flying parts across the world?
That narrative doesn't make sense, making Taiwanese build and run a factory in USA is not much different than an oil rich Arab country luring a western institution opening a campus in their desert. Its good to have but it doesn't make you a superconductor superpower.
To be fair, the USA does have many of the key companies and technologies that make these ICs possible in first place so it's not exactly like that but in the case of TSMC it kind of is.
Says the US who can't manufacture anything modern unless they urge a Taiwanese manufacturer using European lithography machines to make chips. Let's please not do this senseless patriotism that so en vogue in the US right now.
They do in Dresden Germany, but not nearly as cutting edge as the ones in US and Taiwan. US is a more useful strategic ally for Taiwan than EU. Not to mention the more expensive energy in Germany vs the US.
EU finds out the hard way that not having had energy independence plus a weak/non-existent military relying mostly on the US, has costly second order externalities that voters never think about or factor in their decisions(I'm European).
The best way to have peace is to always be ready for war. Being a non-armed hippie pacifist nation sounds good in some utopic fantasy world like the Smurfs, but in reality it only invites aggression from powerful despots like Putin and Xi and even your strong ally, the US, can exploit your moment of weakness and security dependence on it, to push its own agenda and trade terms on you.
That's true, but there is a large financial cost to always being ready for war. The US has spent 80 years being the "policeman of the world" for good or bad. Lots of bad decisions but the world also takes for granted the open seas, etc. that come at a great cost to Americans in reduced social services like health insurance and higher education.
well, EU are enjoying NATO Protection (what I mean nato is only few nato country that really spend money on their military)
some country didn't spend as much even almost downscale its military and you expect the same benefit while didn't want any cost associated with it, how it make sense and fair for everyone???
TSMC also builds facilities in europe but they are not as advanced. Europe's strategic budget to finance such moves is much smaller. And this is purely strategic, these plants are a technology transfer program meant to de-risk the Taiwan/SK issue getting ugly. From an economic point of view, production in Asia is cheaper.
Many commenters on HN have this weird idea that if Taiwan is slightly ahead of competition, US would defend Taiwan against a country with nukes. Or that TSMC superiority is Taiwan's national security issue.
Not on the I want it to fail side but my main question is why we put this water intensive industry in Arizona instead of further east where water is less stressed as a resource?
Seems like it would be way better off being somewhere in the eastern half of the country or at least not in the Southwest.
They could do that -- then equity would correct investors would be like wait what. Exec and employee comp would decrease. Pressure to deliver consistent returns is real assuming its a material cost difference.
Readit News
I seem to recall some detail about how they don't do the packaging, and that' still on the mother island.
This suggests that may be the case: https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/04/tsmc_amkor_arizona/
It's a move in the right direction, but not as much as may be needed.
Packaging is extremely low value and commodified, so companies prefer to contract it out to OSATs like Amkor.
Same reason why most companies became fabless - margins are much more competitive this way compared to owning your own fab.
Final packaging is.
The biggest problem seems to be parochial NIMBYs. People don't like that TSMC needed to bring in Taiwanese workers to staff up the plant. They are currently posting AI generated renderings of factories with billowing smoke stacks when talking about the proposed Amkor semiconductor packaging plant in Peoria.
From what I understand, the area is more seismically stable, so the special building structures and equipment for more seismically active places are not needed.
There is the presence of ASU. The ASU president had been hired a while back to implement a very different kind of university system focused on broadening (not gate keeping) higher education and building up innovation. This includes both improving graduation rates in the traditional tracks and expanding non-traditional educational tracks. I don’t know if all those were considered by TSMC; they like hiring engineers straight out of college and training them in their methods.
Looks like the fab requires about 40,000 acre-ft/yr of water. If they really do start running out of water, adding desal of AZ's brackish aquifers would cost the fab about $20m/year. Not really worth it for farming, but completely fine for a fab.
... is "acre feet" a common measurement of volume in the USA?
Dead Comment
Speaking of the leading edge, though: while industrial policy, like other kinds of investment, is easier with the benefit of hindsight, there must be some regret at having let Global Foundries drop out of the peloton.
Maybe not the kind of progress or initiative that gets headlines, but neither is it trying to push as far as what Intel has been trying to do for the past few years.
Dead Comment
This one in USA is for political reasons and likely will be feasible only if US manages to preserve the global political order.
Maybe Europe could have had force having a latest node FAB by banning exports of EUV machines and have factories built in Europe through flying Taiwanese engineers to build and operate it and call it huge success like USA is doing now.
I don't know if its worth the cost though. Sure it is good to have it bu in USA's case they even haven't built the industry around it, they will produce the chips in USA, call it "Made in America", collect the political points and ship the chips to the other side of the planet for further processing.
Is it really that big of a deal to have European machines being operated by the Taiwanese in the USA to print chips that need a visit to China to become useful? If the global world order collapses, will the 330M Americans be able to sustain the FAB? If it doesn't collapse, will that be still a good investment considering that Taiwanese have the good stuff for themselves and integrated into the full chain without flying parts across the world?
To be fair, the USA does have many of the key companies and technologies that make these ICs possible in first place so it's not exactly like that but in the case of TSMC it kind of is.
Dead Comment
Fail.
Sold the fundamental industries out to Philips who sold it to the Chinese.
EU finds out the hard way that not having had energy independence plus a weak/non-existent military relying mostly on the US, has costly second order externalities that voters never think about or factor in their decisions(I'm European).
The best way to have peace is to always be ready for war. Being a non-armed hippie pacifist nation sounds good in some utopic fantasy world like the Smurfs, but in reality it only invites aggression from powerful despots like Putin and Xi and even your strong ally, the US, can exploit your moment of weakness and security dependence on it, to push its own agenda and trade terms on you.
After all, whenever EU falters, America gains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE-E1lQunm0
some country didn't spend as much even almost downscale its military and you expect the same benefit while didn't want any cost associated with it, how it make sense and fair for everyone???
Dead Comment
Some people are against Biden/Dems.
Some people are clueless about the foreign policy and the geopolitical reality in Asia and take the status quo regional power balance as a given.
Dead Comment
Seems like it would be way better off being somewhere in the eastern half of the country or at least not in the Southwest.
Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab (tomshardware.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42699977
https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/after-federal-break-appl...
Or do you have consumers who will pay for the difference?
Deleted Comment
But doubtful, it'll definitely be a premium made-inthe-usa labeling for government & school use.
Just grift grift grift, then graft graft graft.