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TSMC's Arizona Trials Put Plant Productivity on Par with Taiwan
- jtbayly 2y agohttps://archive.vn/Obe0D https://archive.vn/Obe0D
- ls612 2y ago[flagged]
- bpodgursky 2y agoHalf the workers are currently Taiwanese.
- verdverm 2y agoIt's also a trial. I worked in an IBM fab many years ago. We were lazy, granted we were basically babysitting machines most of the time for 12 hours shifts
- actinium226 2y agoSo you're saying half the workers are American?
- superhuzza 2y agoAh yes, the two nationalities, Taiwanese and American.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rurp 2y agoThe reported issues dissipated awfully quickly once the federal subsidy money was locked down, and there was credible reporting that it wasn't a coincidence. The situation really looks like normal business wrangling that some sources blew way out of proportion to push a narrative. Shocking, I know...
- akfHanv 2y ago[flagged]
- SoftTalker 2y agoWhy Phoenix? I would assume a plant like this has high cooling and water demands?
- newsclues 2y agoWorkforces are in or like cities.
- monkmartinez 2y agoI have heard the water needs are massive, but the reclamation tech is mind blowing. I haven't dug into it. It is hot here in Arizona, but its generally a dry heat. We have humidity in 15% range for most of the year. Our winters are very, very awesome and generally dry as well.
- pfdietz 2y agoJust replace Palo Verde with PV and batteries. Huge amounts of evaporated cooling water would be saved. 6.6 GW of waste heat is a lot of evaporation.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoIt will happen eventually, as Palo Verede continues to have to reduce its use of wastewater for cooling [1]. The US gov recently approved 31 million acres of federal land in the west for solar generation [2]. Assuming ~8 acres per MW of solar generation capacity (per the NREL) and 20% capacity factor, total land needed is ~168k acres (4.2GW nuclear vs 21GW solar needed). Plenty of land available directly near Palo Verde for this, and some already used for solar immediately south and southwest (Mesquite Solar Complex, Sun Stream Solar Park, Agave Solar). Edit: Fixed my land use math. [1] https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2020/02/25/palo-verde-nuclear-water-use/ https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2020/02/25/palo-verde-nuclear... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41407984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41407984 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_...
- monkmartinez 2y agoExciting times! As a resident of Arizona, it is great to see these plants being built here. The intel plant is absolutely massive and the plant I see most often. The TSMC plant is very north of my location and I've only seen it once. I can only hope this brings more high tech jobs to the state and associated wages. A rising tide lifts all boats, que no?
- Workaccount2 2y agoSomething of note is that this is a 4nm fab, whereas 3nm is cutting edge. TSMC wants to keep the crown jewels at home.
- monkmartinez 2y agoHow hard would it be to move to 3nm or 2nm in Arizona if something happened in Taiwan? Genuine question because I don't know much about these plants.
- AnotherGoodName 2y agoThere’s a lot of supply chain involved. For example in the pellicle (a special plastic coating that helps smooth variations in the photoresist layer). https://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=71664 https://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=... It’s one of the reasons intel never got the yields tsmc were getting with the same asml machines. They didn’t have the same supply chain (in fact their insistence on liquid pellicles or no pellicle hurt them a lot). Here’s a thought though. Is the Arizona fab just importing the supply chain from Taiwan? If so it’s not really helping high end silicon independence as much as you’d hope.
- sircastor 2y agoIf enough usage picks up in this fab, the supply chain will build around it. The hard part (and TSMC has said this is an issue internally as well) is replicating the business in the US. The work ethic, job expectations, cultural taboos, etc are all different. If it turns out that TSMC can only do what they do where they do it because of a bunch of external factors, then no one is going to be putting their billion dollar business here. Especially if they can save a few million by doing it in Taiwan.
- dheera 2y agoConsidering ASML makes the machines, probably not that difficult. The knowledge of how to do it exists outside of Taiwan. The bigger problem might be that a whole lot of the rest of the supply chain is in China, and if something happened in Taiwan, the US would fuck up US-China relations and wreck that supply chain.
- monticellicash 2y ago[dead]
- nulltxt 2y agoWhat is the link for?
- ChumpGPT 2y agoThis news is good and timely considering China will take Taiwan this decade and basically control a large portion of chip making. For national security reasons, it is imperative that we have enough domestic chip manufacturing/supply to satisfy Western demand. The entire West needs to decouple it's reliance on Chinese manufacturing and supply chains.
- downrightmike 2y agoNo, Taiwan would rather send chips back a generation than give them up.
- alecco 2y agoMainland China will catch up or even surpass within a decade. They are already paying millions to get the top engineers and researchers in Asia. It's a bumpy ride but they are making a lot of progress. The West dropped the ball. The only edge at the moment is ASML. And China is ahead in silicon photonics R&D.
- Diederich 2y agoPerhaps too provocative of a question for this forum: Assuming that this plant (and potentially others) ends up substantially reproducing the capabilities that are currently available only in Taiwan, how much would that fact change the US'/the west's response to a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan?
- euroderf 2y agoIt enhances the Taiwan plant's blowupability.