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How does this change with TSMC opening a fab in arizona? (And Samsung in Austin)

• gsnedders 6y ago
  The TSMC fab in Arizona as announced is 20k wafers/month, their total production is over a million a month. It's a tiny drop in the ocean.
  • dnautics 6y ago
    there is this announcement: https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2021/03/02/taiwan-semiconductor-phoenix-plant-35-billion.html https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2021/03/02/taiwan-s... Still relatively small, but closer to an order of magnitude than two.
• emteycz 6y ago
  Well this is pure speculation, but that branch of TSMC is going to be an American company. As it will definitely be totally dependent on its mother corporation, making problems for that mother corporation could make problems for the American company - so IMHO the USA will protect the mother corporation more than they did up until now.
  • lazide 6y ago
    The Arizona play is most certainly a concession demanded by the US gov’t. The US has a major problem with dependence on chips made elsewhere - if China started shelling Taiwan and put an embargo in place for electronics, the US would have major major issues in very short order. It isn’t JUST Chinese chips of course, but that is a pretty visible one for sure.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • dnautics 6y ago
    that's my speculation too, but amended with the provision that "it will be Nationalized iff taiwan gets invaded" (kind of like what happened to Merck, during WWII).
  • baybal2 6y ago
    The entire semi industry depends on Taiwan. No fab in the world these days works without some single vendor on the planet consumable from Taiwan. So, the entirety of semi industry will likely go down as it is today.
• hayst4ck 6y ago
  I believe this branch of TSMC is to ensure that the American supply chain for weaponry remains intact even if something happens to Taiwan. edit: Apparently the plant is expected to be a 5nm fab