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Interestingly this came as a loss to Washington, where there is already a significant fab owned by TSMC called WaferTech. Their facility is on the WA side of th

Interestingly this came as a loss to Washington, where there is already a significant fab owned by TSMC called WaferTech. Their facility is on the WA side of the Portland suburbs. Many felt WA was in the running because of the talent already there. This caused concerns that the future of the WaferTech fab facility is dimmer than before, since it probably makes less sense to pump billions more into it in the future.

bpodgursky 5y ago
I live in WA and I don't blame them. The state government is not on a pro-business bent right now; most of the discussion is about how to make corporations pay their "fair share". (also, the gross receipts tax is... pretty dumb) If there's a more business-friendly state, absolutely would take it in a heartbeat.
- KirillPanov 5y ago
  The kneejerk downvotes of this post make me ashamed of HN. > (also, the gross receipts tax is... pretty dumb) ... for manufacturers who aren't Boeing. It's true though. Taxing revenue instead of profit is a ridiculous policy which punishes manufacturers and favors every other industry at their expense. Giving one company (Boeing) its own special preferential revenue tax rate [1] of $\epsilon$ percent is not a solution. [1] https://j7dfh9pbumnyhazfmcsfgm9m.apnews.com/article/37d21240880df9b2e17bdea7c689e25f https://j7dfh9pbumnyhazfmcsfgm9m.apnews.com/article/37d21240... [*] [*] (apparently AP news is trying real hard to make their links look like malware or something)
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    The kneejerk downvotes here make me ashamed of HN. Lots of subs on Reddit grew tremendously during the pandemic. I'm guessing HN did too and has a worse case than usual of "eternal September."
    - KirillPanov 5y ago
      Sadly, no; it's a side effect of how the HN voting system works -- it encourages virtue-signaling rather than curiosity.
      - JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
        Rather than that, maybe people on HN want corporations to pay their taxes?
- 0134340 5y ago
  Are you saying it's not fair in comparison to individuals? Is it any more than individuals pay (see graph) [0]? Because I see so many complaints here about poor businesses and the taxes they do (don't) pay. Don't forget that businesses need people, it's a symbiotic relationship, one isn't more important than the other. 0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2015/10/31/a-brief-history-of-the-individual-and-corporate-income-tax/?sh=6e54a866b5b6 https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2015/10/31/a-brief-h...
sircastor 5y ago
Apple picked up a lot of talent out west Of Portland where a lot of Intel’s home base is. But I imagine trying to find space out here would be rough.
- irrational 5y ago
  There is actually quite a lot of room because of the Urban Growth Boundary.
  - KirillPanov 5y ago
    Aren't manufacturing plants required to be inside a UGB? In Washington State they are, although existing plants are grandfathered. I guess they could expand the UGB, which is what the Eastern Washington counties do in order to attract manufacturers.
irrational 5y ago
I would think the western suburbs of Portland would be more attractive. Intel has 5 huge fabrication plants in the Aloha/Hillsboro area. That is a large talent base to hire for the plant.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  From the article, Taiwan's estimation of the U.S. talent base is rather low: '"TSMC chairman and founder Morris Chang warned last month of higher operating costs and a thin talent pool for the U.S. plans in a rare public speech attended by Wei and chairman Mark Liu. "In the United States, the level of professional dedication is no match to that in Taiwan, at least for engineers," Chang said. He warned that "short-term subsidy can't make up for long-term operational disadvantage."' The body of the article also casts doubt on the total amount of U.S. investment, unlike the headline.
  - nwiswell 5y ago
    > In the United States, the level of professional dedication is no match to that in Taiwan, at least for engineers What does this even mean? That US engineers expect benefits and work-life balance?
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      It could be that. Or, for example, California Teachers angrily denouncing accelerated math classes as being immoral. Or perhaps a combination of the two.
      - whoknowswhat11 5y ago
        I wouldn't call it angrily, but yes, a big focus has been on equity and eliminating different levels for students. Some elements make sense or I think would do little harm. I was high achieving in math - but the push to calc in high school does feel overdone I think - it's often a shallow understanding. They are very focused particularly on issues like 30%+ of Asian students and only 3-4% of other minorities being in advanced tracks of math education so they are trying to reduce those. Some neat ideas around doing more open ended tasks (cool!) in make that integration work better. That said, will likely be some tough corners because there are can be some pretty significant skill differences across a student body in a given grade. They are going to try and do more group work, and also one of the 5 new principles is to teach towards social justice in math as well as other areas which may provide more opportunity for engagement by all students.
magicsmoke 5y ago
Also surprising is that TSMC was recently hit by water shortages due to a drought in Taiwan. Arizona isn't exactly drought resistant, yet they built there instead of rainy Washington.
- ckozlowski 5y ago
  This made me scratch my head as well. The desert isn't exactly known for water supply, and given what I'd read elsewhere about how crucial water is for the process, I wondered if I was missing something somewhere. I did a quick search and found this: https://www.investors.com/news/technology/intel-stock-tsm-stock-seek-waterway-to-easing-chip-shortage-in-dry-arizona/ https://www.investors.com/news/technology/intel-stock-tsm-st... The takeaways: - Fab companies have invested in a lot of water reclamation and recycling regardless of location, as there's a lot of metals and other chemicals that need to be filtered out. (Asianometry goes over this more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=785Uzi1mGAA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=785Uzi1mGAA ) - Intel claims Arizona's water usage has stayed level in the area as industrial use has replaced agricultural, which uses less. I'm sure there's a cost-benefit play here, where the tax and other incentives outweigh the increased costs of water reclamation.
- baybal2 5y ago
  There was a few hours long blackout in Taiwan today night, that was way beyond the time UPSes can last. Expect last 6 month worth of wafers in production to go down the drain in fabs which relied on battery backups only.
  - Alupis 5y ago
    The backup power supplies for these types of facilities are actually generators powered off gasoline or diesel, not just batteries, and can theoretically run forever (or at least as much fuel you can get).
    - baybal2 5y ago
      You cannot backup power a whole modern fab, unless you build a small power station just for it. UPSes there are just to keep cleanroom clean, and most critical processes which can't be gracefully shut down.

bpodgursky 5y ago

I live in WA and I don't blame them. The state government is not on a pro-business bent right now; most of the discussion is about how to make corporations pay their "fair share". (also, the gross receipts tax is... pretty dumb) If there's a more business-friendly state, absolutely would take it in a heartbeat.

KirillPanov 5y ago
The kneejerk downvotes of this post make me ashamed of HN. > (also, the gross receipts tax is... pretty dumb) ... for manufacturers who aren't Boeing. It's true though. Taxing revenue instead of profit is a ridiculous policy which punishes manufacturers and favors every other industry at their expense. Giving one company (Boeing) its own special preferential revenue tax rate [1] of $\epsilon$ percent is not a solution. [1] https://j7dfh9pbumnyhazfmcsfgm9m.apnews.com/article/37d21240880df9b2e17bdea7c689e25f https://j7dfh9pbumnyhazfmcsfgm9m.apnews.com/article/37d21240... [*] [*] (apparently AP news is trying real hard to make their links look like malware or something)
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  The kneejerk downvotes here make me ashamed of HN. Lots of subs on Reddit grew tremendously during the pandemic. I'm guessing HN did too and has a worse case than usual of "eternal September."
  - KirillPanov 5y ago
    Sadly, no; it's a side effect of how the HN voting system works -- it encourages virtue-signaling rather than curiosity.
    - JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
      Rather than that, maybe people on HN want corporations to pay their taxes?
0134340 5y ago
Are you saying it's not fair in comparison to individuals? Is it any more than individuals pay (see graph) [0]? Because I see so many complaints here about poor businesses and the taxes they do (don't) pay. Don't forget that businesses need people, it's a symbiotic relationship, one isn't more important than the other. 0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2015/10/31/a-brief-history-of-the-individual-and-corporate-income-tax/?sh=6e54a866b5b6 https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2015/10/31/a-brief-h...

sircastor 5y ago

Apple picked up a lot of talent out west Of Portland where a lot of Intel’s home base is. But I imagine trying to find space out here would be rough.

irrational 5y ago
There is actually quite a lot of room because of the Urban Growth Boundary.
- KirillPanov 5y ago
  Aren't manufacturing plants required to be inside a UGB? In Washington State they are, although existing plants are grandfathered. I guess they could expand the UGB, which is what the Eastern Washington counties do in order to attract manufacturers.

irrational 5y ago

I would think the western suburbs of Portland would be more attractive. Intel has 5 huge fabrication plants in the Aloha/Hillsboro area. That is a large talent base to hire for the plant.

rsj_hn 5y ago
From the article, Taiwan's estimation of the U.S. talent base is rather low: '"TSMC chairman and founder Morris Chang warned last month of higher operating costs and a thin talent pool for the U.S. plans in a rare public speech attended by Wei and chairman Mark Liu. "In the United States, the level of professional dedication is no match to that in Taiwan, at least for engineers," Chang said. He warned that "short-term subsidy can't make up for long-term operational disadvantage."' The body of the article also casts doubt on the total amount of U.S. investment, unlike the headline.
- nwiswell 5y ago
  > In the United States, the level of professional dedication is no match to that in Taiwan, at least for engineers What does this even mean? That US engineers expect benefits and work-life balance?
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    It could be that. Or, for example, California Teachers angrily denouncing accelerated math classes as being immoral. Or perhaps a combination of the two.
    - whoknowswhat11 5y ago
      I wouldn't call it angrily, but yes, a big focus has been on equity and eliminating different levels for students. Some elements make sense or I think would do little harm. I was high achieving in math - but the push to calc in high school does feel overdone I think - it's often a shallow understanding. They are very focused particularly on issues like 30%+ of Asian students and only 3-4% of other minorities being in advanced tracks of math education so they are trying to reduce those. Some neat ideas around doing more open ended tasks (cool!) in make that integration work better. That said, will likely be some tough corners because there are can be some pretty significant skill differences across a student body in a given grade. They are going to try and do more group work, and also one of the 5 new principles is to teach towards social justice in math as well as other areas which may provide more opportunity for engagement by all students.

magicsmoke 5y ago

Also surprising is that TSMC was recently hit by water shortages due to a drought in Taiwan. Arizona isn't exactly drought resistant, yet they built there instead of rainy Washington.

ckozlowski 5y ago
This made me scratch my head as well. The desert isn't exactly known for water supply, and given what I'd read elsewhere about how crucial water is for the process, I wondered if I was missing something somewhere. I did a quick search and found this: https://www.investors.com/news/technology/intel-stock-tsm-stock-seek-waterway-to-easing-chip-shortage-in-dry-arizona/ https://www.investors.com/news/technology/intel-stock-tsm-st... The takeaways: - Fab companies have invested in a lot of water reclamation and recycling regardless of location, as there's a lot of metals and other chemicals that need to be filtered out. (Asianometry goes over this more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=785Uzi1mGAA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=785Uzi1mGAA ) - Intel claims Arizona's water usage has stayed level in the area as industrial use has replaced agricultural, which uses less. I'm sure there's a cost-benefit play here, where the tax and other incentives outweigh the increased costs of water reclamation.
baybal2 5y ago
There was a few hours long blackout in Taiwan today night, that was way beyond the time UPSes can last. Expect last 6 month worth of wafers in production to go down the drain in fabs which relied on battery backups only.
- Alupis 5y ago
  The backup power supplies for these types of facilities are actually generators powered off gasoline or diesel, not just batteries, and can theoretically run forever (or at least as much fuel you can get).
  - baybal2 5y ago
    You cannot backup power a whole modern fab, unless you build a small power station just for it. UPSes there are just to keep cleanroom clean, and most critical processes which can't be gracefully shut down.