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5nm in the USA: TSMC's Board Approves $3.5B Fab in Arizona
- mech422 6y agoOdd..I live in AZ and local news is reporting the Fab at $12B, and the total project at $38B over 20 years (including 2K new jobs(1)(2) also, they want to have it production ready by 2024, which seems incredibly tight timeline. My understanding is even the air handlers have to run for like 6 months before production can start. Anyway, I'm hoping this will give the local economy a nice post-covid boost. 1: https://azbigmedia.com/real-estate/taiwan-semiconductor-launches-38b-phoenix-presence-by-signing-major-lease/ https://azbigmedia.com/real-estate/taiwan-semiconductor-laun... 2: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4089176 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4089176 edit: formating
- jraby3 6y agoFrom the article: A $12 Billion Plan "Approved an investment to establish a wholly-owned subsidiary in Arizona, United States of America, with a paid-in capital of US$3.5 billion (approximately NT$99.75 billion)," the statement by TSMC reads.
- mech422 6y agoFrom the first article I linked above: "a new North Phoenix manufacturing facility and up to 1,900 new local jobs over a five-year period. With an estimated 20-year economic impact of $38.2 billion, TSMC represents Arizona’s largest-ever foreign direct investment." From the second article I linked above: "ahead of its planned US$12 billion wafer fab north of the city. " So there seems to be some confusion... Edit: ahh the OP seems to be referring to just the first payments. The Toms Hardware article goes on to say: "In total, TSMC plans to spend $12 billion on its fab in Arizona from 2021 to 2029. The factory will employ about 1,600 people directly and thousands more indirectly." Edit: add quote from first link
- supernova87a 6y agoWell, the problem with these factory $ value figures (and I wish reporters would dig a little deeper) is that it doesn't really correctly depict the impact to the local economy very well. Either in the construction phase or ongoing operations phase. In some ways the construction is little different than building an office park or warehouse, modulo some very special installed equipment and ventilation / power systems. Most of that $xB capital invested is going to the companies that make the extremely sophisticated line equipment, and that is not local. As for the operations phase, it might employ 1,000 people, optimistically? Not saying it's not a benefit to the Arizona economy. And certainly the economic calculations for something like this are far better than the bullshit $ thrown around for a sport stadium or team, for example. Just saying that the $12-$38B figure is not what Arizonans will feel.
- mech422 6y agoyeah - there will definitely be a huge equipment budget. But the construction work will be substantial as well. I have a friend that's doing pipe fitting at the Intel plant, and he's looking at being booked solid for like the next 5 years. Not to mention all the road improvements, etc. the local municipalities have committed to. I believe they're predicting more like 2K jobs for the operations phase. Though, the 2019 phoenix economic output was about 260 billion. So even the full 1 billion / year is just a half percent increase. Still I'm optimistic this can help PHX recover from the covid slump, and start getting the local economy back on track.
- csomar 6y agoLong term, however, it'll attract high-yield jobs. These jobs (and the people working on them) will have a high impact on employment. People who have high salaries can afford eating out regularly, Uber/Uber Eats and expensive custom made stuff. This helps the lower strata of society.
- mywittyname 6y agoThey also demand better schools and have kids who largely end up being educated and are anchored to the region.
- mey 6y agoThis is from Nov 2020
- monadic3 6y agoWith modern fabs, how much of the operating cost is labor?
- cbozeman 6y agoIts mostly equipment and design. The fab has to be extraordinarily well-protected against seismic disturbance, and the equipment is highly, highly automated. This will produce jobs, of course, and high paying ones at that, but it won't be a "game changer" for the state. That city, possibly. EDIT: Article says 1,600 for the fab when its at full capacity and "thousands indirectly", which of course means restaurants and services nearby. Looks like its going to be built north of Peoria, which puts it near Glendale, Phoenix, Tempe, Scottsdale, etc. This'll probably add jobs worth about $100,000,000 - $150,000,000 a year. Somewhere in that neighborhood. The support-based jobs probably $150,000,000 to $200,000,000. Adds another $8.5 to $28 million a year in tax revenues for the state and cities.
- mech422 6y agoThis actually surprised me, as I would have guessed it would have been closer to Intel, to make use of infrastructure already in place.. Also, not sure how the jobs will break down, but when I was at Intel, techs actually working in the clean rooms were not making anywhere near 6 figures. They commonly told me, they were just there for the stock.
- dud7eyy4 6y agoI'm always surprised more American cities don't pander to host high-end factories. I don't know what just chips would do for the city, but I imagine hosting something like a Samsung phone factory in exchange for a massive local discount on the product would be a pretty nice perk for the citizens.
- redisman 6y agoThere was the Foxconn Wisconsin thing which seems to not really turned to much as of yet.
- helge9210 6y agoLast time I checked the process is very water intensive. Where does one get enough water in Arizona?
- mardiyah 6y agoTrying to imitate Intel tech? https://ktar.com/story/76977/intel-plant-replenishes-water-supply-in-chandler/ https://ktar.com/story/76977/intel-plant-replenishes-water-s...
- potiuper 6y ago"Each day, 2 million gallons of industrial wastewater are piped from Intel plants in Chandler, Arizona, to a facility a mile away where it’s treated, then returned to an underground aquifer. Intel, the city’s largest employer, recycles about 60 percent of its water" So, 40% is not recycled, which seems high? given that "the leftover effluent[s] or concentrated dissolved salts that result from making chips" are claimed to be filtered with reverse osmosis before being returned to the aquifer. It is also disappointing that it seems to be more cost effective to have the RO instead of an evaporation + optional vapor collection setup to get 100% recycled or at least to collect the salt waste given the hot dry ambient desert location would seem like the most cost effective place to do so.
- baq 6y agoyou sure you want heavy metal salts just laying around in a huge lake of brine? not sure if this is a workable proposition.
- potiuper 6y agoPersonally, I am not in a position to be cognizant of all the solution options and their considerations. I did not intend to imply that current solution was inappropriate, but only express my feelings towards the current in the face of likely alternatives. In regards to an evaporation pool, it too has risks such as the heavy metal salts being turned into dust and blown across the land if not contained and managed.
- synaesthesisx 6y agoThis factory is going to specialize in EUV and is "financed" indirectly by Apple.
- teruakohatu 6y agoIf Apple didn't buy up the 5nm capacity, the next highest bidder would have for slightly less than Apple was willing to pay.
- mardiyah 6y agoYup, if it means Apple needed TSMC more than in the other way around
- lotsofpulp 6y agoIt’s more complicated. Apple has the branding to have a higher probability of extracting a higher profit margins at higher volumes compared to other brands, so a different buyer is probably not able to guarantee the level of payments Apple can to TSMC. I don’t think it’s useful to think of it in terms of Apple needs TSMC more or the other way around. They’re both benefiting quite nicely from the cooperation.
- tooltalk 6y ago>>> the next highest bidder would have for slightly less than Apple was willing to pay. What makes you think Apple pays top dollars? Apple is notorious for squeezing their suppliers to save their margin and they often use their sales volume as the main leverage to gain discounts. It seems the demand for TSMC is however so high that now TSMC doesn't have to offer such incentive for large customers: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tmsc-is-reportedly-terminating-discounts-and-increasing-prices https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tmsc-is-reportedly-termina...
- someperson 6y agoYou could say its financed by Apple, or your could say its financed by every user of a smartphone or GPU. TSMC will manufacture relative low volumes of chips (at presumably high prices) chips for industries which require domestic sourcing like the military so its not going into an iPhone.
- Animats 6y agoBut not 3nm technology. That doesn't leave Taiwan.
- jp555 6y agoOnly if ASML in The Netherlands allows it; they control the most critical bits of Taiwan's fab tech.
- the-dude 6y agoNo, only if the US allows it. ASML has no say in the actual export restrictions. And when the US asks NL to jump, we ask how high?
- jp555 6y agoThere's a story about how in the mid 20th Century Russia asked to buy one of Britain's cool new jet engines and Britain obliged. Then Europe found itself worrying about MIG fighter jets with essentially that British jet engine inside. Once bitten, twice shy?
- Inconel 6y agoI've always thought that TSMC's dominance in fab processes are a strategic asset in the defense of Taiwan against potential PRC encroachment. I would assume that as long as a large part of the global tech industry relies on TSMC, countries such as the USA would have a strong incentive to potentially protect Taiwan against threats. Does anyone have insight into the geopolitical impacts of Taiwan - USA relations in regards to TSMC fabs on US soil? Would Taiwan view this a strengthening of relations between the two, as I would assume this provides the USA with some "domestic" 5nm fab capacity, or is there some risk in that once this fab comes online the USA may see Taiwan as less critical? Anyone know some good sources discussing the above?
- unnah 6y agoIt seems that the arrangement is a win-win for both sides. By the time the 5nm fab is in operation in 2024, it will be old tech for TSMC, since they are planning to have 3nm in high-volume production and 2nm already in risk production. The fab may very well still be the most advanced in the US, depending on whether Intel gets their 5nm process ready as planned in 2023.
- frogcoder 6y agoYour guess is pretty on the point. TSMC has been jokingly hailed as "The protector of the country" by the Taiwanese media. The chips have military significance for the USA, as it has been trying to avoid China made electronics in all (or most?) equipments.
- YetAnotherNick 6y agoWhile TMSC is no doubt ahead of competition, it is just by margin of 1-2 generations at max, which accounts for max 2-3 years for friendly country like Korea to catch up. So if some Taiwan politics comes into play, we will just lose the progress for some years of semiconductor fab tech, not a small thing but it is not that the chips couldn't be built if not for Taiwan. We would just lose something like 10-20% of performance in the chip.
- Buraksr 6y ago
- gautamcgoel 6y agoI've asked this question before but didn't get a good answer. Suppose I had $100M to blow. Could I build a fab in the USA that produced chips at, say, 65nm? I understand that a cutting-edge node like 7nm would be out of reach at that price point, but I'm curious what exactly is in reach.
- deaddodo 6y agoThe reason you aren't getting an answer is because you're asking about something that isn't mass produced. So every single build is going to be a contracted cost with many variables. Saying "I want a 65nm fab" doesn't mean anything. What type of EUV scanners do you want, how large of wafers do you want to handle, how many wafers at once, size of the clean room, etc. There is no answer, it's whatever you could get someone to do the job for + materials cost. We only have estimates for cutting edge facilities because we know what public companies have recently spent to produce those fabs. It's like asking "if I had $100m, how large of a secret underground meth production facility could I have built"....who knows, it's bespoke.
- jrwr 6y agoSome light research shows that it would cost closer to 3-4 billion dollars to build a fab from 2014[1] This makes a good bit of sense since the clean rooms required are massive and require a good bit of work to get right. Also from my experience with auditing PCB manufacturing in the united states. 100M might be able to get you a old TI Fab to make some TTL Parts at. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plant#cite_note-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plan...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- s_dev 6y agoTIL: TMSC partly comes from a guy not getting a promotion at Texas Instruments and Taiwan wanting to getting in the semiconductor industry at the time with nothing but a plan. >In 1983, a 52-year-old senior executive at Texas Instruments was passed over for the company's top job. >He would go on to found and build the most strategically important company in the world. https://twitter.com/SahilBloom/status/1353369463190560773 https://twitter.com/SahilBloom/status/1353369463190560773
- tooltalk 6y agoIronically, that's what Mong Song Liang who was passed over for the top position at TSMC and now heads SMIC in China, has been doing.
- hungryhobo 6y agoHe's also the one that got samsung where they are with semi fab.
- tooltalk 6y agoHe was responsible for Samsung's EUV development?
- RajuVarghese 6y agoThought I would point out that The Economist has two articles on this topic in the latest issue. The geostrategic nature of the TSMC fab is only going to increase in the coming years. The articles explain the context to people like me who did not think much about the recent developments. 1. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/01/23/the-struggle-over-chips-enters-a-new-phase https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/01/23/the-struggle-ov... 2. https://www.economist.com/business/2021/01/23/chipmaking-is-being-redesigned-effects-will-be-far-reaching https://www.economist.com/business/2021/01/23/chipmaking-is-...
- mark_l_watson 6y agoAs a resident of Arizona, this is especially good news. It is also good news for the US in general. Advanced chip manufacturing is a key strategic concern.
- mywittyname 6y agoThere's tons of advanced chip manufacturing in the USA. There are fabs all over the USA for companies like Intel, Infineon, Texas Instruments, ON, NXP (Motorola). It's the country's fourth largest manufacturing export. TSMC leveraged a huge gap in the market early on. Since most fabrication plants were owned by companies that also designed and sold chips, it was hard to get contracts for production volumes. This made it basically impossible to be a fab-less design company, like nVidia, because Intel/TI/etc might not produce your chips if they didn't have spare capacity. With a foundry, that's not a concern.
- api 6y agoEven if this is a small fab, it's a win for the USA in a way I don't see mentioned: it creates more fab jobs and experience in the USA. This in turn will improve the employee pool here for this particular skill set. It also means that if a nightmare scenario happened we'd have a TSMC 5nm fab to reverse engineer China-style.