13 ms·

So everyone is on the "Let's build a Fab in the USA" train, will that eventually bring down the chip production costs? (not an expert in the field, so asking na

by bnt 5y ago

So everyone is on the "Let's build a Fab in the USA" train, will that eventually bring down the chip production costs? (not an expert in the field, so asking naively)

lkbm 5y ago
(Also not an expert.) In general I wouldn't expect US manufacturing to do a lot to lower production costs. More capacity in general obviously helps, and I could definitely see the US doing a lot to subsidize domestic production, if that counts as bringing down the costs. Maybe higher wages will lead to more automation.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- fabfabfab 5y ago
  Expert here. Worked in a Fab (Automated Material Handling Systems or AMHS group). You might be suprised how automated it already is [1]. Notice the OHTs (Overhead Hoist Transport)[2] running on a system of highways and superhighways on the ceiling. Each of these OHTs carry a box inside it called a FOUPs (Front Opening Unified Pods)[3] carrying upto 25 wafers. That can easily be worth $1M+ per box. They have standardized JEDEC interfaces so any process tool can accept a FOUP and get wafers out of it. The environment inside these FOUPs is ridiculously clean and each one costs $15k for what most people would think is a plastic box with a door in the front. FOUPs are used internally. If wafers are shipped, they're shipped in a similar box called FOSB or Front Opening Shipping Boxes [4]. These boxes are the reason automation happens with standardized "APIs". We don't need to know who made the process tool to hand them a box of wafers. Another automation feature are the AGVs or Automated Guided Vehicles [5] that carry the same FOUPs and FOSBs [5]. They also can be equipped with a robot arm that takes a wafer out of the box and hands it over to the tool. The AGVs run on specialized roads inside the Fab and remains docked on the tool during processing. Usually, there are hardly any humans around the tool. Material (wafer) is fed by AMHS systems, picked up by the same. Fab is probably one of the most automated manufacturing places out there. Way more than Automotive manfacturing. If you're looking to do software engineering, I would highly encourage people to go work in semiconductor industry. It is just a fucking cool place and lot of room for improvement still. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRlcZqqyBM8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRlcZqqyBM8 [2] https://www.muratec.net/cfa/products/ https://www.muratec.net/cfa/products/ [3] https://www.entegris.com/shop/en/USD/Products/Wafer-Handling/Wafer-Processing/300-mm-Front-Opening-Unified-Pods-%28FOUPs%29/c/300mmfrontopeningunifiedpodsfoups https://www.entegris.com/shop/en/USD/Products/Wafer-Handling... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOUP#/media/File:Front_opening_shipping_box_(front_side).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOUP#/media/File:Front_opening... [5] https://www.muratec-usa.com/machinery/clean-room/transport/AGV/ https://www.muratec-usa.com/machinery/clean-room/transport/A...
  - edge17 5y ago
    For someone interested in robotics and automation, what types of groups/jobs would one look for specifically in this industry? Also geographically where are these types of jobs located?
    - fabfabfab 5y ago
      If you want to work on robotics, you should look into working for one of the major semiconductor equipment manufacturers, not a Fab. To name a few: KLA Tencor (US), Applied Materials (US), ASM, ASML (Netherlands), Advantech (US), TEL(Japan), Besi (Netherlands), etc.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    thanks for this highly interesting comment about the fab floor.
- jason-phillips 5y ago
  > Maybe higher wages will lead to more automation. Samsung Austin Semiconductor has been fully automated since 2008-ish. One number I was quoted was that you only need 19 technicians on the floor to run the fab, compared to 500+ pre-automation.
justinzollars 5y ago
No, it increases the security and continuity of our civilization when China invades Taiwan.
- consumer451 5y ago
  Well, there's a huge benefit of COVID. The related chip shortage finally woke up the US gov on supply chains. My question is why did it take this long? I have been worried about this for nearly a decade. My next question is how many mask factories have we built in the US since we realized that was important?
  - echelon 5y ago
    We shouldn't stop there. America needs to make steel again. Plastics. Chemicals. We need to make electronics, fertilizers, tools. Everything we need should be onshored. Especially if we expect a cold war with our biggest producer.
    - lkbm 5y ago
      The "imperialist" model can still work fine if we want to stick with it. We can keep production in poorer countries with poor worker and environmental protections so long as those countries will clearly side with us and aren't all concentrated in China's sphere of influence. No one's doing a naval blockade of the entire US coastline. And even if they did, we also have some long land borders with allies.
      - markus_zhang 5y ago
        The problem is that US needs to find responsible governments other than the ones close to China. There are not many in the world. They are poor for some reasons. BTW when I say responsible governments I don't mean democratic, but mean they care about people's education, can keep long term policies and build good infrastructures.
  - lkbm 5y ago
echelon 5y ago
Globalization led to an erosion of US wages and the hollowing out of our middle class. If we buy local, it creates domestic jobs. Wages go up too. We need to onshore more.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  Protectionism makes everyone worse off.
  - kesselvon 5y ago
    Hollowing out the industrial base leaves us even worse off.
    - oneplane 5y ago
      It only leaves lower tiered hierarchies worse off and only in the short term. Extracting value that way is never a long-term plan since the needs will either be fulfilled or the extraction will be complete and no more value can be created. If people don't want to buy a product because it is inferior in some way, the solution isn't to ban superior products but to upgrade those inferior products to be superior again. And inferiority/superiority doesn't just mean quality, it can also mean features and the price-quality balance in itself. At the same time, the rest of the world doesn't "go away" if you construct an island within your borders that nobody is allowed to join, so at best it's going to end up in some sort of useless industrial-cold-war.
      - newaccount2021 5y ago
        > It only leaves lower tiered hierarchies worse off and only in the short term. not when your offshore solution is more educated, industrially advanced, yet still cheaper you are thinking of pillow factories moving to Mexico
      - yourapostasy 5y ago
        > It only leaves lower tiered hierarchies worse off and only in the short term. This is the refrain of those who do not understand reflexivity, and third-order analysis. This analysis is correct to the first and even second-order effects, but completely misses the importance of slipstreaming floor expertise / experience into design and engineering iterating, or even holistic support. This kind of economic caste system thinking just as surely shackles the US as the Indian social caste system shackles that nation with enormous untapped potential. I routinely make LinkedIn friends and actively solicit input from the operations people in all of my client organizations, and this has repaid me many times over. Where others within their very own organizations, much less outside consultants, snub these "lower tiered hierarchies", shedding light upon their experiences and expertise has taught me many valuable lessons about software design, debugging, implementation, and product management, among many other areas. I learned to do this from reading about the nuts and bolts of how Japanese automakers applied Deming's quality principles. IMHO the buried lede in those stories wasn't all the charts and reports artifacts (similar to the Agile artifacts we use in our industry), but to my mind it was the attitudinal changes that flew in the face of common human hierarchical predispositions. Because it is a massive organizational cultural shift often enmeshed in wider prevailing ethnographic contexts, it is one of the most difficult leadership-led transformations to conduct. One can get away with the hollowing out effect in the beginning, and if there is sufficient "mass" of value to strip in the industry to mask the effect, it can even be carried out through a couple more product and technology cycles to second-order ramifications as various affiliated supply chains are also stripped out. But once it reaches third-order ramifications often loftily projected as, "while we lead the toiling-for-peanuts offshore masses with our brilliant sales/marketing/product/accounting insights, the supercharged stock bonuses will just roll on in!", it is when reality slaps them in the face and they find out that those same "junior", "lower tiered hierarchies" toss aside the "onshore leadership" to cut out the middlemen to the customers. After one is never too proud nor too lofty to lead from the front, be happily willing to (if even for a moment) do anything one would ask their direct reports or even their recursive direct reports to do, so to speak "sleep on the factory floor" if need be, a torrent of insights that would normally do not occur during design and engineering stages become available.
sleepysysadmin 5y ago
This is about the war with china. Europe: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/tech-is-make-or-break-issue-eu-chief-executive-says-2021-09-15/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/tech-is-make-or-break-i... Germany: https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/about-infineon/press/press-releases/2021/INFXX202109-098.html https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/about-infineon/press/press-r... Korea: https://fortune.com/2021/05/13/south-korea-chip-semiconductor-samsung-hynix/ https://fortune.com/2021/05/13/south-korea-chip-semiconducto... Japan: https://www.aroged.com/2021/11/23/japan-has-allocated-5-2-billion-for-the-construction-of-new-chip-production-in-the-country-of-which-3-5-billion-will-go-to-tsmc/ https://www.aroged.com/2021/11/23/japan-has-allocated-5-2-bi... Non-OP USA: https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/09/us-chip-production-52b/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/09/us-chip-production-52b/ Key players are expecting an all out war with China: France: https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/03/31/the-french-armed-forces-are-planning-for-high-intensity-war https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/03/31/the-french-armed... Taiwan: https://thediplomat.com/2021/10/taiwan-says-it-is-preparing-for-war-but-are-taiwanese-mentally-ready/ https://thediplomat.com/2021/10/taiwan-says-it-is-preparing-... Australia: https://au.news.yahoo.com/chilling-warning-of-australias-role-in-likely-china-war-104601826.html https://au.news.yahoo.com/chilling-warning-of-australias-rol... AUKUS: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/16/what-is-the-aukus-alliance-and-what-are-its-implications https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/16/what-is-the... Japan: https://hamlinemidwayhistory.org/japanese-aircraft-carriers-after-76-years-japan-has-aircraft-carriers-again/ https://hamlinemidwayhistory.org/japanese-aircraft-carriers-... China is fully aware of the cold war: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/chinas-leader-xi-warns-cold-war-indo-pacific-81096107 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/chinas-leader-xi-w... Let me blow your mind far more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos These aren't hillbillies. This is US government technology recording and confirming UFOs. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-ufo-report-released-many-uap-cases-remain-unexplained/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-ufo-report-released-ma... And nobody is talking about it? This is completely related to the war with china. It's all an attempt to prevent war with China. Though that does mean a peasant revolt in china is coming.
- ericmay 5y ago
  > This is about the war with china. > It's all an attempt to prevent war with China. So the Chinese have UFOs and we have a war with China but we are moving chip production to all these countries you mentioned to prevent the ongoing war with China? I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt here though. I think if you were able to be a little more clear I’d at least understand what you intend to say, but I find your comments here a bit confusing. > And nobody is talking about it? This is completely related to the war with china. Who isn’t talking about it? Assuming you’re talking about poor relations (“Cold War”) and/or loving chip production. It seems to me to be pretty common knowledge and is widely reported in global media sources and the Internet. Don’t the links you provide demonstrate that?
dv_dt 5y ago
I don’t know if it will bring down production costs, but it may reduce logistical shortages and bring down chip prices.
Robotbeat 5y ago
Well in principle Texas has lower (almost half) industrial energy costs than Taiwan, which could help reduce wafer production costs especially at the lower resolution nodes. As Moore’s Law slows, things like energy and raw material costs may matter more. And having wafer plants close to fab plants can help. Rough order of magnitude, but for a lower cost wafer (think like 90nm or above, not 7nm), electricity and energy could be about 10% of the overall cost. As a lot of the capital cost of the automation and industrial equipment is the same wherever in the world you are, that might be an important factor. Taiwan is an island that imports almost all of its energy. Texas is an energy rich state with lots of wind, solar, and especially natural gas that is exported to the world. We talk about higher natural gas prices in the US with Texas seeing slightly above $4/MMBTU, but LNG prices in Asia are above $35/MMBTU at the moment, nearly an order of magnitude higher. The government of Taiwan is basically eating half the entire cost of LNG right now to keep costs low for businesses and consumers, but that’s not a sustainable strategy. (At the moment, industrial electricity is about 13¢/kWh in Taiwan even with the government subsidizing most of the LNG cost and 7-8¢/kWh in Texas.)
- mrweasel 5y ago
  I was wondering why Texas keep coming up when new US fabs a being talked about. From an outsider it just looks like the low energy cost comes from failing to properly manage and upgrade the Texas energy grid.
  - megaman821 5y ago
    The Texas grid has been diversified and transmission upgraded. The problem is that it hasn't been winterized. While this is costly, I doubt this is the main reason why prices are low. Texas has a large, cheap supply of natural gas and good areas for both wind and solar.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    The energy prices are low because Texas has tons of oil and gas and wind. The energy grid is actually more efficiently managed than California, which has had similar problems with electricity supply. But the main reason Texas comes up is it has a very long history in semiconductors with a big workforce and lots of semiconductor companies.
gmadsen 5y ago
is there a labor demand for electronic assembly? we can barely get workers for decently tipped restaurants, and we now going to have 1000s lining up to twist a screw for 8 hours straight?
politician 5y ago
It’ll reduce geopolitical strategic risk.
deelowe 5y ago
This is more about national security and business continuity than cost. Costs matter most when things are running smoothly. However, COVID has taught us a hard lesson. When SHTF, you better have a back up plan. Making money on IP alone while someone else handles all of the manufacturing and integration work looks great on a spreadsheet. Then some state actor cuts off the supply chain (or a virus) and your genius MBAs start to not look so smart after all. With any luck, COVID (and tariffs) has transformed business for the future.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  > With any luck, COVID (and tarrifs) has transformed business for the future. Until we're far enough removed from the situation, everything is comfortable again, and the MBAs start saying "you know, if we just offshored fabrication..."
  - notyourwork 5y ago
    The pendulum swings back and forth similar to how politics have shifting tides that ebb and flow.
- optimalsolver 5y ago
  How is relying on a foreign company helping the situation?
  - kube-system 5y ago
    Samsung is probably more accurately described as a multinational company in this context. The location of a company's headquarters is not a primary determining factor for all different types of geopolitical risk. Like other multinationals, they have some ability to pick the jurisdictions they operate, and each of those locations have their own geopolitical contexts. However, in this case, South Korea is also a close US ally. There is little risk to the US that the headquarters of Samsung is in South Korea.
    - 5y ago
cxr 5y ago
> the "Let's build a Fab in the USA" train We have fabs in the USA right now. To speak of Austin alone, Samsung's own S2 has been here since the late 90s, and there are a handful of others here, too.
rossdavidh 5y ago
So chip production does have a labor cost, but the equipment used is quite pricey, and so the relative cost of labor is less. Also, given how pricey the equipment and how demanding the cleanroom protocol (which, if not followed, reduces yield of saleable products), there are a lot of incentives to make sure you have long-term employees who are well trained and motivated to keep their job. Also, Austin (and other parts of Texas) already have a fair number of chip fabs, and have for decades. I used to work in some of them. Samsung even has existing fab capacity in Texas. So it's not such a new thing.

by bnt 5y ago

So everyone is on the "Let's build a Fab in the USA" train, will that eventually bring down the chip production costs? (not an expert in the field, so asking naively)

lkbm 5y ago

(Also not an expert.) In general I wouldn't expect US manufacturing to do a lot to lower production costs. More capacity in general obviously helps, and I could definitely see the US doing a lot to subsidize domestic production, if that counts as bringing down the costs. Maybe higher wages will lead to more automation.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
fabfabfab 5y ago
Expert here. Worked in a Fab (Automated Material Handling Systems or AMHS group). You might be suprised how automated it already is [1]. Notice the OHTs (Overhead Hoist Transport)[2] running on a system of highways and superhighways on the ceiling. Each of these OHTs carry a box inside it called a FOUPs (Front Opening Unified Pods)[3] carrying upto 25 wafers. That can easily be worth $1M+ per box. They have standardized JEDEC interfaces so any process tool can accept a FOUP and get wafers out of it. The environment inside these FOUPs is ridiculously clean and each one costs $15k for what most people would think is a plastic box with a door in the front. FOUPs are used internally. If wafers are shipped, they're shipped in a similar box called FOSB or Front Opening Shipping Boxes [4]. These boxes are the reason automation happens with standardized "APIs". We don't need to know who made the process tool to hand them a box of wafers. Another automation feature are the AGVs or Automated Guided Vehicles [5] that carry the same FOUPs and FOSBs [5]. They also can be equipped with a robot arm that takes a wafer out of the box and hands it over to the tool. The AGVs run on specialized roads inside the Fab and remains docked on the tool during processing. Usually, there are hardly any humans around the tool. Material (wafer) is fed by AMHS systems, picked up by the same. Fab is probably one of the most automated manufacturing places out there. Way more than Automotive manfacturing. If you're looking to do software engineering, I would highly encourage people to go work in semiconductor industry. It is just a fucking cool place and lot of room for improvement still. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRlcZqqyBM8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRlcZqqyBM8 [2] https://www.muratec.net/cfa/products/ https://www.muratec.net/cfa/products/ [3] https://www.entegris.com/shop/en/USD/Products/Wafer-Handling/Wafer-Processing/300-mm-Front-Opening-Unified-Pods-%28FOUPs%29/c/300mmfrontopeningunifiedpodsfoups https://www.entegris.com/shop/en/USD/Products/Wafer-Handling... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOUP#/media/File:Front_opening_shipping_box_(front_side).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOUP#/media/File:Front_opening... [5] https://www.muratec-usa.com/machinery/clean-room/transport/AGV/ https://www.muratec-usa.com/machinery/clean-room/transport/A...
- edge17 5y ago
  For someone interested in robotics and automation, what types of groups/jobs would one look for specifically in this industry? Also geographically where are these types of jobs located?
  - fabfabfab 5y ago
    If you want to work on robotics, you should look into working for one of the major semiconductor equipment manufacturers, not a Fab. To name a few: KLA Tencor (US), Applied Materials (US), ASM, ASML (Netherlands), Advantech (US), TEL(Japan), Besi (Netherlands), etc.
- dekhn 5y ago
  thanks for this highly interesting comment about the fab floor.
jason-phillips 5y ago
> Maybe higher wages will lead to more automation. Samsung Austin Semiconductor has been fully automated since 2008-ish. One number I was quoted was that you only need 19 technicians on the floor to run the fab, compared to 500+ pre-automation.

justinzollars 5y ago

No, it increases the security and continuity of our civilization when China invades Taiwan.

consumer451 5y ago
Well, there's a huge benefit of COVID. The related chip shortage finally woke up the US gov on supply chains. My question is why did it take this long? I have been worried about this for nearly a decade. My next question is how many mask factories have we built in the US since we realized that was important?
- echelon 5y ago
  We shouldn't stop there. America needs to make steel again. Plastics. Chemicals. We need to make electronics, fertilizers, tools. Everything we need should be onshored. Especially if we expect a cold war with our biggest producer.
  - lkbm 5y ago
    The "imperialist" model can still work fine if we want to stick with it. We can keep production in poorer countries with poor worker and environmental protections so long as those countries will clearly side with us and aren't all concentrated in China's sphere of influence. No one's doing a naval blockade of the entire US coastline. And even if they did, we also have some long land borders with allies.
    - markus_zhang 5y ago
      The problem is that US needs to find responsible governments other than the ones close to China. There are not many in the world. They are poor for some reasons. BTW when I say responsible governments I don't mean democratic, but mean they care about people's education, can keep long term policies and build good infrastructures.
- lkbm 5y ago

echelon 5y ago

Globalization led to an erosion of US wages and the hollowing out of our middle class. If we buy local, it creates domestic jobs. Wages go up too. We need to onshore more.

colinmhayes 5y ago
Protectionism makes everyone worse off.
- kesselvon 5y ago
  Hollowing out the industrial base leaves us even worse off.
  - oneplane 5y ago
    It only leaves lower tiered hierarchies worse off and only in the short term. Extracting value that way is never a long-term plan since the needs will either be fulfilled or the extraction will be complete and no more value can be created. If people don't want to buy a product because it is inferior in some way, the solution isn't to ban superior products but to upgrade those inferior products to be superior again. And inferiority/superiority doesn't just mean quality, it can also mean features and the price-quality balance in itself. At the same time, the rest of the world doesn't "go away" if you construct an island within your borders that nobody is allowed to join, so at best it's going to end up in some sort of useless industrial-cold-war.
    - newaccount2021 5y ago
      > It only leaves lower tiered hierarchies worse off and only in the short term. not when your offshore solution is more educated, industrially advanced, yet still cheaper you are thinking of pillow factories moving to Mexico
    - yourapostasy 5y ago
      > It only leaves lower tiered hierarchies worse off and only in the short term. This is the refrain of those who do not understand reflexivity, and third-order analysis. This analysis is correct to the first and even second-order effects, but completely misses the importance of slipstreaming floor expertise / experience into design and engineering iterating, or even holistic support. This kind of economic caste system thinking just as surely shackles the US as the Indian social caste system shackles that nation with enormous untapped potential. I routinely make LinkedIn friends and actively solicit input from the operations people in all of my client organizations, and this has repaid me many times over. Where others within their very own organizations, much less outside consultants, snub these "lower tiered hierarchies", shedding light upon their experiences and expertise has taught me many valuable lessons about software design, debugging, implementation, and product management, among many other areas. I learned to do this from reading about the nuts and bolts of how Japanese automakers applied Deming's quality principles. IMHO the buried lede in those stories wasn't all the charts and reports artifacts (similar to the Agile artifacts we use in our industry), but to my mind it was the attitudinal changes that flew in the face of common human hierarchical predispositions. Because it is a massive organizational cultural shift often enmeshed in wider prevailing ethnographic contexts, it is one of the most difficult leadership-led transformations to conduct. One can get away with the hollowing out effect in the beginning, and if there is sufficient "mass" of value to strip in the industry to mask the effect, it can even be carried out through a couple more product and technology cycles to second-order ramifications as various affiliated supply chains are also stripped out. But once it reaches third-order ramifications often loftily projected as, "while we lead the toiling-for-peanuts offshore masses with our brilliant sales/marketing/product/accounting insights, the supercharged stock bonuses will just roll on in!", it is when reality slaps them in the face and they find out that those same "junior", "lower tiered hierarchies" toss aside the "onshore leadership" to cut out the middlemen to the customers. After one is never too proud nor too lofty to lead from the front, be happily willing to (if even for a moment) do anything one would ask their direct reports or even their recursive direct reports to do, so to speak "sleep on the factory floor" if need be, a torrent of insights that would normally do not occur during design and engineering stages become available.

sleepysysadmin 5y ago

This is about the war with china. Europe: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/tech-is-make-or-break-issue-eu-chief-executive-says-2021-09-15/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/tech-is-make-or-break-i... Germany: https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/about-infineon/press/press-releases/2021/INFXX202109-098.html https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/about-infineon/press/press-r... Korea: https://fortune.com/2021/05/13/south-korea-chip-semiconductor-samsung-hynix/ https://fortune.com/2021/05/13/south-korea-chip-semiconducto... Japan: https://www.aroged.com/2021/11/23/japan-has-allocated-5-2-billion-for-the-construction-of-new-chip-production-in-the-country-of-which-3-5-billion-will-go-to-tsmc/ https://www.aroged.com/2021/11/23/japan-has-allocated-5-2-bi... Non-OP USA: https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/09/us-chip-production-52b/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/09/us-chip-production-52b/ Key players are expecting an all out war with China: France: https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/03/31/the-french-armed-forces-are-planning-for-high-intensity-war https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/03/31/the-french-armed... Taiwan: https://thediplomat.com/2021/10/taiwan-says-it-is-preparing-for-war-but-are-taiwanese-mentally-ready/ https://thediplomat.com/2021/10/taiwan-says-it-is-preparing-... Australia: https://au.news.yahoo.com/chilling-warning-of-australias-role-in-likely-china-war-104601826.html https://au.news.yahoo.com/chilling-warning-of-australias-rol... AUKUS: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/16/what-is-the-aukus-alliance-and-what-are-its-implications https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/16/what-is-the... Japan: https://hamlinemidwayhistory.org/japanese-aircraft-carriers-after-76-years-japan-has-aircraft-carriers-again/ https://hamlinemidwayhistory.org/japanese-aircraft-carriers-... China is fully aware of the cold war: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/chinas-leader-xi-warns-cold-war-indo-pacific-81096107 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/chinas-leader-xi-w... Let me blow your mind far more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos These aren't hillbillies. This is US government technology recording and confirming UFOs. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-ufo-report-released-many-uap-cases-remain-unexplained/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-ufo-report-released-ma... And nobody is talking about it? This is completely related to the war with china. It's all an attempt to prevent war with China. Though that does mean a peasant revolt in china is coming.

ericmay 5y ago
> This is about the war with china. > It's all an attempt to prevent war with China. So the Chinese have UFOs and we have a war with China but we are moving chip production to all these countries you mentioned to prevent the ongoing war with China? I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt here though. I think if you were able to be a little more clear I’d at least understand what you intend to say, but I find your comments here a bit confusing. > And nobody is talking about it? This is completely related to the war with china. Who isn’t talking about it? Assuming you’re talking about poor relations (“Cold War”) and/or loving chip production. It seems to me to be pretty common knowledge and is widely reported in global media sources and the Internet. Don’t the links you provide demonstrate that?

dv_dt 5y ago

I don’t know if it will bring down production costs, but it may reduce logistical shortages and bring down chip prices.

Robotbeat 5y ago

Well in principle Texas has lower (almost half) industrial energy costs than Taiwan, which could help reduce wafer production costs especially at the lower resolution nodes. As Moore’s Law slows, things like energy and raw material costs may matter more. And having wafer plants close to fab plants can help. Rough order of magnitude, but for a lower cost wafer (think like 90nm or above, not 7nm), electricity and energy could be about 10% of the overall cost. As a lot of the capital cost of the automation and industrial equipment is the same wherever in the world you are, that might be an important factor. Taiwan is an island that imports almost all of its energy. Texas is an energy rich state with lots of wind, solar, and especially natural gas that is exported to the world. We talk about higher natural gas prices in the US with Texas seeing slightly above $4/MMBTU, but LNG prices in Asia are above $35/MMBTU at the moment, nearly an order of magnitude higher. The government of Taiwan is basically eating half the entire cost of LNG right now to keep costs low for businesses and consumers, but that’s not a sustainable strategy. (At the moment, industrial electricity is about 13¢/kWh in Taiwan even with the government subsidizing most of the LNG cost and 7-8¢/kWh in Texas.)

mrweasel 5y ago
I was wondering why Texas keep coming up when new US fabs a being talked about. From an outsider it just looks like the low energy cost comes from failing to properly manage and upgrade the Texas energy grid.
- megaman821 5y ago
  The Texas grid has been diversified and transmission upgraded. The problem is that it hasn't been winterized. While this is costly, I doubt this is the main reason why prices are low. Texas has a large, cheap supply of natural gas and good areas for both wind and solar.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  The energy prices are low because Texas has tons of oil and gas and wind. The energy grid is actually more efficiently managed than California, which has had similar problems with electricity supply. But the main reason Texas comes up is it has a very long history in semiconductors with a big workforce and lots of semiconductor companies.

gmadsen 5y ago

is there a labor demand for electronic assembly? we can barely get workers for decently tipped restaurants, and we now going to have 1000s lining up to twist a screw for 8 hours straight?

politician 5y ago

It’ll reduce geopolitical strategic risk.

deelowe 5y ago

This is more about national security and business continuity than cost. Costs matter most when things are running smoothly. However, COVID has taught us a hard lesson. When SHTF, you better have a back up plan. Making money on IP alone while someone else handles all of the manufacturing and integration work looks great on a spreadsheet. Then some state actor cuts off the supply chain (or a virus) and your genius MBAs start to not look so smart after all. With any luck, COVID (and tariffs) has transformed business for the future.

jaywalk 5y ago
> With any luck, COVID (and tarrifs) has transformed business for the future. Until we're far enough removed from the situation, everything is comfortable again, and the MBAs start saying "you know, if we just offshored fabrication..."
- notyourwork 5y ago
  The pendulum swings back and forth similar to how politics have shifting tides that ebb and flow.
optimalsolver 5y ago
How is relying on a foreign company helping the situation?
- kube-system 5y ago
  Samsung is probably more accurately described as a multinational company in this context. The location of a company's headquarters is not a primary determining factor for all different types of geopolitical risk. Like other multinationals, they have some ability to pick the jurisdictions they operate, and each of those locations have their own geopolitical contexts. However, in this case, South Korea is also a close US ally. There is little risk to the US that the headquarters of Samsung is in South Korea.
  - 5y ago

cxr 5y ago

> the "Let's build a Fab in the USA" train We have fabs in the USA right now. To speak of Austin alone, Samsung's own S2 has been here since the late 90s, and there are a handful of others here, too.

rossdavidh 5y ago

So chip production does have a labor cost, but the equipment used is quite pricey, and so the relative cost of labor is less. Also, given how pricey the equipment and how demanding the cleanroom protocol (which, if not followed, reduces yield of saleable products), there are a lot of incentives to make sure you have long-term employees who are well trained and motivated to keep their job. Also, Austin (and other parts of Texas) already have a fair number of chip fabs, and have for decades. I used to work in some of them. Samsung even has existing fab capacity in Texas. So it's not such a new thing.