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1. can we afford to just build fab without consideration of profit? what you going to do when you can't turn a profit with all the fabs in the US? 2. TSMC and

1. can we afford to just build fab without consideration of profit? what you going to do when you can't turn a profit with all the fabs in the US? 2. TSMC and the rest of the foundry industry are exposed to the highly cyclical nature of the semiconductor industry. we are seeing the high demands for chip because of covid and car vendors' f'ck up. what you going to do with all the fabs build in the US when you are hit with downturn? we saw Intel struggle with 10nm and 7nm delay. i think its wiser to invite fab company like TSMC and Samsung to build fab in the US even with smaller capacity.

ip26 6y ago
1. Yeah, we certainly could, but profit is what got us from 50um to 3nm.
dirtyid 6y ago
Some choice quotes from Mark Liu, chairman of TSMC this week agreeing with you: * "It's economically unrealistic for all the countries to build additional chip production capacity," * “Uncertainties led to double booking, but actual capacity is larger than demand,” How quickly those concerns are resolved “really depends on future U.S.-China negotiations.” * each country developing its own domestic semiconductor industry would lead to a lot of “nonprofitable” capacity. >what you going to do with all the fabs build in the US when you are hit with downturn? Priority sourcing from domestic fabs, let TSMC whither, by design. Semi is oil now, there's more strategic/geopolitical considerations than supply/demand curve. US/EU/CN do not want Taiwan to have semi dominance, it's not in anyone's interest. Current TSMC position is happenstance due to poor industrial policies that countries are scrambling to address. IMO press releases and capex spending around Arizona announcement suggest TSMC wasn't prepared to built US fab, let alone 6. US pressured them, EU failed to. There's a good chance TSMC/Taiwan will try to delay their silicon shield evaporating for as long as they can. Probably not a coincidence big ticket US weapons sales are scheduled around when fabs would be up.
- genmud 6y ago
  Speaking as someone in AZ, the fact that we can get a 5nm fab going here in the US speaks volumes to how effective that pressure was. I actually disagree with Mark Liu, on his opinion on it leading to a lot of nonprofitable business... I think that for the US and EU it is actually critical from a national security and economic standpoint to develop new semiconductor capabilities. I think that there will be profit in doing domestic semiconductor, but only because the government is going to have to subsidize the buildout of this capability. I do think that its going to become a race to the bottom for wafer/ic costs, but that is actually a really good thing. I think there are going to be more companies that are developing in house technology and more focus on things like FPGA and edge-based compute. If TSMC, GlobalFoundries, UMC and Intel are smart, they will focus on pivoting towards the software/simulation side of things, IP cores and flexible logic like FPGA type of solutions. Ideally they would want every big company developing their own CPUs, edge devices, etc. and have them optimized for their process nodes. I suspect this won't be the last major fab push, especially since people are seeing how fragile the supply chain is.

ip26 6y ago

1. Yeah, we certainly could, but profit is what got us from 50um to 3nm.

dirtyid 6y ago

Some choice quotes from Mark Liu, chairman of TSMC this week agreeing with you: * "It's economically unrealistic for all the countries to build additional chip production capacity," * “Uncertainties led to double booking, but actual capacity is larger than demand,” How quickly those concerns are resolved “really depends on future U.S.-China negotiations.” * each country developing its own domestic semiconductor industry would lead to a lot of “nonprofitable” capacity. >what you going to do with all the fabs build in the US when you are hit with downturn? Priority sourcing from domestic fabs, let TSMC whither, by design. Semi is oil now, there's more strategic/geopolitical considerations than supply/demand curve. US/EU/CN do not want Taiwan to have semi dominance, it's not in anyone's interest. Current TSMC position is happenstance due to poor industrial policies that countries are scrambling to address. IMO press releases and capex spending around Arizona announcement suggest TSMC wasn't prepared to built US fab, let alone 6. US pressured them, EU failed to. There's a good chance TSMC/Taiwan will try to delay their silicon shield evaporating for as long as they can. Probably not a coincidence big ticket US weapons sales are scheduled around when fabs would be up.

genmud 6y ago
Speaking as someone in AZ, the fact that we can get a 5nm fab going here in the US speaks volumes to how effective that pressure was. I actually disagree with Mark Liu, on his opinion on it leading to a lot of nonprofitable business... I think that for the US and EU it is actually critical from a national security and economic standpoint to develop new semiconductor capabilities. I think that there will be profit in doing domestic semiconductor, but only because the government is going to have to subsidize the buildout of this capability. I do think that its going to become a race to the bottom for wafer/ic costs, but that is actually a really good thing. I think there are going to be more companies that are developing in house technology and more focus on things like FPGA and edge-based compute. If TSMC, GlobalFoundries, UMC and Intel are smart, they will focus on pivoting towards the software/simulation side of things, IP cores and flexible logic like FPGA type of solutions. Ideally they would want every big company developing their own CPUs, edge devices, etc. and have them optimized for their process nodes. I suspect this won't be the last major fab push, especially since people are seeing how fragile the supply chain is.