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> If China marches into Taiwan, the U.S. will be left with no advanced-node manufacturing and it will have lost the technology race Can you explain this? If Ch
by marcell 6y ago
> If China marches into Taiwan, the U.S. will be left with no advanced-node manufacturing and it will have lost the technology race
Can you explain this? If China takes over Taiwan, couldn't the US just take over whatever TSMC plants exist in America?
- lliamander 6y agoNo TSMC plants exist in America right now.
- gok 6y agoActually, TSMC has operated a fab in Camas, Washington for many years.
- lliamander 6y agoOh, interesting! Thanks for the correction.
- rrss 6y agoNote that the wafertech/TSMC fab11 only does processes down to 0.16 um. https://www.wafertech.com/en/foundry/technology.html https://www.wafertech.com/en/foundry/technology.html
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- marcell 6y agoI'm not really following the logic... GP said this (TSMC intending to build a factory in US) was bad for US, because China could march into Taiwan and cut off US ability to make chips. Wouldn't a TSMC plant in US be good? Since US would have the factory on its own soil? What am I missing?
- lliamander 6y agoMy understanding of the GP is that the current situation with TSMC only in Taiwan is a disaster. So I think they are actually in agreement with you and I that this is (or could be) a good thing.
- marcell 6y agoAh, got it. I mis-parsed the comment.
- londons_explore 6y agoVarious DRM-like schemes can be used to make a chip useless without the software that goes with it. If TSMC was concerned about the US taking over their factory, they could design lots of elements of the process to require a connection to HQ in Taiwan, and to stop working when that connection is broken. When every piece of equipment has no working firmware, the factory is pretty much useless, and would probably take years to get running again.
- thu2111 6y agoThe TSMC fab in Taiwan is the world's most advanced. There are no other sources for 7nm manufacturing at the moment. Moreover chip designs can't just be immediately re-spun onto older processes: if it were lost to China then basically the rest of the world would completely lose access to a fresh supply of the best chips. Tech would immediately have to roll back a generation of two, hardware wise, and of course software that relied on that performance would also need to roll back, etc.
- jotm 6y agoFinally, programmers would have to actually optimize :D