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- Over 50% of the workers flew in from Taiwan to work on this plant and make these chips. - The chips still need to fly back to Taiwan to be packaged as there
by digdigdag 2y ago
- Over 50% of the workers flew in from Taiwan to work on this plant and make these chips.
- The chips still need to fly back to Taiwan to be packaged as there are no facilities here with such a capability.
Made in america is a hard sell. But at least showing the glaring STEM field gap in the U.S. is a start to finally addressing the brain drain.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- caycep 2y agoisn't packaging tech mostly from american companies like applied mat/lam research? or am I missing something?
- ge96 2y agobrain drain from where? thought a problem is influx of workers into us although more for software not sure of chip tech
- epicureanideal 2y ago> STEM field gap STEM salary gap I suspect the Taiwan workers have on average much lower salaries.
- lysace 2y agoYes, roughly speaking 1:4 compared to California. Edit: This is not news. This (combined with their higher EE education) is why Taiwan won IBM PC-clone-related manufacturing in the 80s. And why they now have TSMC.
- coliveira 2y agoSuch a great victory for American industry... the future is to bring workers from Taiwan with skills and willingness to receive a fraction of US salaries.
- Cumpiler69 2y agoWhat are your realistic options? Say TSMC pays supper competitive US salaries to attract US-only labor, higher labor cost which is causing the end product to be more expensive, which makes that fab uncompetitive globally causing Apple to go buying from someone else and TSMC either choosing leaving the US or going bust eating the losses. You can't compete with lower-wage countries in a globalized world with no trade barriers and no tariffs, when Apple wants higher profits and consumers want lower prices. Something has to give. You can put tariffs on imported chips to equalize the field, but then iPhones would be more expensive for the average American and Apple's stock would tank. So, pick your poison.
- alt227 2y ago> when Apple wants higher profits and consumers lower prices Trump wants chips that say "Made in 'Merica". I dont think cost comes into it that much.
- Cumpiler69 2y agoThat's the catch, he said "Made in America", not "Made by American workers" :)
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoThe DoD is the driver. They're freaked out about the supply chain vulnerabilities.
- bluGill 2y agoMore automation. Given the chemicals involved in fab work in general I expect this fab is very automated just for safety reasons and so very few employees are needed. Thus the cost of labor isn't a significant factor.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago>Thus the cost of labor isn't a significant factor. It is. Semi fabs aren't fire-and-forget. You need highly skilled people to constantly check and tweak all the operations in a feedback loop 24/7 and every hour of downtime due to any issue means millions lost. You hire the right people to minimize that downtime while also keeping the costs in check. It's a delicate balance.
- hintymad 2y agoHow much does salary contribute to the overall cost of operating TSMC? Perplexity said that the average salary of a TSMC employee is $76K a year, and TSMC had about 80K people. So it cost them around $6B a year on salary. In the meantime, their operational cost was about $46B a year, so that's 13%. TSMC shipped about 16 million 12-in wafers. Each 12-inch wafer can make about 300 to 400 chips. Let's say 200 to stay on the conservative side. That will be 3.2B chips a year. That means the cost per chip on salary will be less than $2 a year. It looks HC cost is not that dominant?
- Xeronate 2y agoI read the main problem with hiring chip factory workers in Arizona was the factory just didnt pay enough for the long hours demanded. I looked up the median salary and its only 50k so I'm assuming it's not crazy skilled labor (e.g. brain drain). Taiwanese workers just seem more willing to do it.
- rkagerer 2y ago...just seem more willing to do it That's why manufacturing offshored in the first place, companies feel they're receiving better value for money on wages elsewhere for this kind of work (and these days not to mention more & larger facilities, proximity to component sources, and a strong ecosystem of supporting and complimentary facilities).
- Teever 2y agoI think that's obviously a major part of it but it ignores other stuff like lax environmental and safety standards. It would be interesting to see how much of the economic advantage of off-shoring is due to lower wages due intrinsic to lower cost of living vs stuff like ignoring/bribing foreign officials or non-existent environmenta/safety standards that objectively should exist.
- hintymad 2y agoPersonally I won't mind paying more to buy manufactured goods. My mom told me that a pair of sneakers before the offshoring back in the late 80s usually cost more than $300 in today's dollars. Yes, it was expensive, but I would just buy fewer and use the one for longer time. The reason is that in the long run the manufacturing cost would get lower due to increased efficiency, and loss of supply chain is detrimental to the entire country - and our living expenses will increase overall. Case in point, how much tax do we have to pay and how much inflation do we have to suffer in order to build those super expensive weapons? Part of the reasons that we had $20K toilet and $100 screws is that we simply don't have large enough supply chain to offset the cost of customized manufacturing. Besides, the US loses know-how on manufacturing, eliminating potentially hundreds of thousands of high-paying engineering jobs - it will also be a pipe dream that we can keep the so-called high-end jobs by sitting in an office drawing boxes all day. Sooner or later, those who work with the actual manufacturing processes on the factor floor will out compete us and grab our the cushy "design" jobs.
- bee_rider 2y agoAlso a lot of US STEM grads have their skills wasted in unproductive fields, like the ad business.
- kobalsky 2y agothe internet ad industry is raking billions from all over the world into the USA, how can you call that unproductive.
- elzbardico 2y agoBecause is fucking undproductive, useless and detrimental to society. Advertising is a cancer, an immoral activity.
- otabdeveloper4 2y agoIf you owned a small business you'd be singing a very different tune.
- adamtaylor_13 2y agoHi. I own a business. I still find ads to be cancer.
- wuliwong 2y agoYou think all businesses should just spread awareness by word of mouth? Can you put a sign on your store or is that an ad? What if you don't have a store? Yes, advertising can be really awful but that doesn't meaning all advertising is "cancer." If you have a good business that creates actual value for people, advertising it can actually be seen as a good thing.
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- isodev 2y ago> The chips still need to fly back to Taiwan The planet burned, but at least we made a few chips in America.
- fooblaster 2y agoyou can fly a few hundred million dollars worth of chips in a single flight. You need not be concerned. The impact from temu shipments is several orders of magnitude higher.
- fooblaster 2y agoe.g. you can get 572 a15 dies per 300mm wafer at 90% yield. These likely weigh a few hundred grams. By my rough calculations a million iPhones of a15s is about 200kg of silicon. excluding packaging, which would dwarf this mass entirely.
- alt227 2y agocan you really say the chip was made in America when it is only the die wafer which was made there and the rest was made and assembled in Taiwan?
- bloomingkales 2y agoOff topic but currently relevant: Over 50% of the workers flew in from Taiwan to work on this plant and make these chips. Those are the 50% we’re willing to bring in no questions asked via any visa program. Not the elusive Java developer.
- Salgat 2y agoFor a new factory with a new entry into the local market it makes perfect sense to bring in experienced workers for knowledge transfer. This is more an issue if a decade later this is still how things are done.
- sct202 2y agoBack when American companies were offshoring, the initial start up teams were comprised of a lot of Americans who would do commissioning and initial ramp ups while training up the foreign workers. It's a lot easier to train people on a production line that is proven to work.
- tokioyoyo 2y agoProblem is, those jobs in emerging markets were desirable compared to other jobs (for pay and opportunities), which helped with talent growth. These factory jobs, in comparison to other jobs, aren’t that desirable.
- jenny91 2y agoI'd think otherwise and imagine these kinds of high-tech chip factory jobs are quite desirable.
- tokioyoyo 2y agoFairly bad locations, average pay. It's not like the newer Japanese towns chip towns where you can get on a train and be in a proper city (ex. 40 min ride from Chitose to Sapporo), with okay pay as well. If pay was really good, it wouldn't matter, but selling this dream to a university grad is a bit hard in the US. I still hope it pans out though, cause NA manufacturing revival would be great. It's just the odds are against it so far.
- hnthrowaway0315 2y agoMaybe that's how US is going to have enough STEM talents -- just like WWI and WWII, take as many talents as possible when the other parts of the world are in shit.
- whatwhaaaaat 2y agoThe scenario that we’re going to be able to fight a war with another first world power, where we will attack their infrastructure but ours will be left untouched, seems unlikely.
- throwaway-blaze 2y agoChina invading Taiwan seems a ton more likely than China lobbing missiles into Arizona.
- mywittyname 2y agoIt seems likely enough if the situation escalates. The conflict could be anything from a naval skirmish where neither side attacks the other's mainland to a total war scenario. It will likely start as naval-only and become gradually more involved if no side backs down. However, it's safe to assume cyber attacks will hit Arizona. It's not unreasonable to assume crazy people will attack critical infrastructure, and we'll have to deal with the social fallout from that.
- hnthrowaway0315 2y agoWe just need to make sure that we never fight directly with another regional power, e.g. China or Russia. IMO, neither of them wants a fight with the US too, because you don't want to push a super power to the corner, EVEN if you think you are good enough to win. In the mean time, the situation in EU and Asia is going to deteriorate and North America can absorb more talents as it sees fit. The last two times it was mostly EU but this time Asia might be the new talent pool we can draw from.
- b112 2y agoI think people are missing something, training. It's a new fab, and people need to be trained on current processes and work roles. If you have a skilled work force, you use them to train.
- nimish 2y ago> glaring STEM field gap in the U.S. There is no such gap. The jobs do not pay Americans enough to tolerate the conditions.
- copperx 2y agoAnd the few people who tolerate such conditions are already employed by game development companies.
- MR4D 2y agoYou have to walk before you can run. You have to crawl before you can walk. Apparently this is where we are at.
- hammock 2y agoIt's a start
- kureikain 2y agoit's first step. you gotta do something to bootstrap, solve chicken-egg problem. From what I can see around me, the "made in america" is a no joke branding. a lot of pppl going tobuyjust because of that. and may even consider it as social status and their policial support.
- someperson 2y agoThe Purism Librem 5 phone is very expensive and unfortunately not that popular. Haven't met anyone who uses one yet
- MBCook 2y agoThat’s very niche. Very few people in the general population will have heard of them. Apple is well known. If they say the new iPhone SE 7 has a Made In America chip, people will know about it to buy if they care about that.
- cbozeman 2y agoAnd it's also a pile of shit compared to an iPhone or a Galaxy S device. There's your real issue right there. People are already paying $1199 for new phones. According to this article: https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/9/13/17851052/apple-iphone-price-china-trump-us-trade https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/9/13/17851052/apple-ipho... Another $100. That's a little over six years old now though, so bump it up to $200. Would I pay $1399 for an American made iPhone with American made internals, as the article suggests it would cost ($100, but I doubled it for inflation, because, why not?)? You bet your sweet ass I would.
- nimbius 2y agomade in america is also a federally defined standard that these chips categorically fail to meet. assembled in the united states is more appropriate, and even then if you didnt hire americans to do it, what was the point? this is starting to feel like the best of intentions that has spiraled into a political theatricality where close-enough will be good-enough. given the current state of declining US college enrollment, the affordability crisis of college, the growing wage gap, the failure of the minimum wage to keep up with the cost of living, and the failure to reform predatory US student lending practices I do not see how the US will in the next 25 years ever manage to curate the type of braintrust for which it was once renowned across the globe.
- enragedcacti 2y agoThis is so disconnected from reality. They've gone from breaking ground to replicating one of the most advanced fabrication processes in the history of the world _at scale_ in about 4 years, but they'll be sending the dies off for packaging while their packaging partner comes online so its just political theatre? Also, over half of the employees are local hires and the ratio will increase as more of the fab spins up. IMO it would be much worse political theatre to delay and balloon the cost of the project by forcing TSMC to exclusively use a workforce that has no experience with the companies tools and processes.
- tobiasdorge 2y agoDoes anyone know the general path to get involved in this? Perhaps its romantic, but this seems important, it seems hard, and it seems like something I can be proud of working on (as opposed to maximizing ad clicks). I'm just a SWE w/ a Comp sci degree, so what's the entry-point here?
- someperson 2y agoEDA software?
- stevenwoo 2y agoIt might be possible but domain knowledge might give some candidates a leg up on the competition, going in blind just seems suboptimal, though most of the relevant EE undergraduate classes were in sophomore and junior level for me in the late 1980's and I only got to use EDA software when working a couple of semesters for AMD as a junior.
- Gomer1800 2y agoYour entry point is a masters and probably Phd in Electrical Engineering, specializing in some aspect of semiconductor manufacturing. It’s definitely not CS.
- tobiasdorge 2y agoSurely there is a lot of software involved in the design / operation of these fabs, it's not just designing the chip directly. Another commenter mentioned EDA so maybe I'll look into that.
- hn3er1q 2y agoThere is a huge amount of software in every single step of making an ASIC, digital or analog. Or even a PCB for that matter. Long gone are the days of cutting tape and etching anything yourself. Apple's M3 has 25 billion transistors. No human drew those.
- deleted 2y ago
- enragedcacti 2y agoThe chips still need to fly back to Taiwan to be packaged as packaging partner Amkor's facility in Arizona won't be ready until 2027*. I'm not sure the cause of the delta but it could be in part because Fab 21 got back on schedule rather impressively following earlier delays. * updated to reflect newer article that Amkor's facility is delayed beyond late-2025
- TacticalCoder 2y ago[dead]
- MisterTea 2y agoI was about to say, surly at some point in the near future the USA will introduce this capability. Shame they did not match each other in completion time.
- enragedcacti 2y agoYeah definitely unfortunate. That said, I'm guessing the overall cost of overseas packaging is really tiny, otherwise Intel would've made a great customer since they are already packaging TSMC N6, N5, and N3 in New Mexico for their Arrow Lake CPUs.
- thehappypm 2y agoIt basically rounds down to $0 if you’re willing for it to be slow. A single shipping container can fit millions of chips
- ggm 2y agoThis is not adversarial thinking. Ukraine would be delighted to hit one container with all Russia's advanced chips going to e.g. Vietnam or China to be packaged and sent back. This is a massive supply chain weakness and presumably will be addressed as soon as possible.
- programmertote 2y agoThe 'brain drain' (as you refer to it) stems from intelligent/motivated grads in the US for the last two decades (at least) pursuing more lucrative fields like finance and adtech (re: Google, Facebook). Or some pursue management route (attending big MBA schools and switching to management roles where they climb corporate ladder). In other words, there are not a lot of college/grad students who want to pursue traditional engineering routes in the US. I myself was an electrical engineering (EE) major until I switched to computer science in my third (junior) year of college because like a friend of mine at the time told me, "<my name>, if you don't major in computer science, you will not be able to find a job easily after graduation". He was right. All of my former college friends in EE ended up pursuing programming jobs (a few of them now works for FAANG; I used to work for one but left a year ago due to RTO). That is why the US has no sufficient personnel to do traditional engineering jobs and we have shipped off a lot of those to foreign countries.
- binarymax 2y agoDefinitely true, as there weren’t EE jobs here. Now that we’re moving chip manufacturing back, and with programming job market being saturated, perhaps it will shift and EE will pay more due to being more in demand
- jopsen 2y agoI suspect the kinds of salaries that's possible in Silicon Valley only happens because: (A) Skills are fairly transferable. (B) There is a lot of employers competing for workers. (C) An awful lot of value is created along the way. If you specialize in some tiny part of chip manufacturing, there aren't many places you can transfer your skills. Even if, in the future, you have multiple chip vendors. They won't all use the same processes, and you might only fit into one role at each of these businesses. Maybe it's not that simple. But few chip companies have to compete against startups for workers. And that probably won't change. Not saying the jobs can't be well paid, just that it's not unlikely that it won't be absurd SV level salaries.
- wbl 2y ago
- baxtr 2y agoRe the first point: Why do you think it is so difficult to transfer chip production off Taiwan? I don’t think this is about salaries. Nor is this about facilities. This is about process know-how. And it’s currently not available outside of Taiwan. I’m glad we’re finally starting to transfer knowledge. It will take a couple more years.
- blobbers 2y agoThat's really a training issue. Making chips isn't something you learn the details of at University. You can take all the classes you want in advanced semiconductor techniques but the simple fact is University level manufacturing is nowhere close to SOTA. Basically, you need fab workers to spend time in Taiwan/China, and then return to USA. It's the same model that most foreign students use at schools in USA/Canada. Get USA/Canadian name brand school on resume, learn english, and go back to home country = profit.
- Nickersf 2y agoI have two kids in grade school and middle school and I see why we have a STEM gap. I have to constantly correct the learning at home in math. Also, I think it's fair to assume that in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China the school kids are actually put on an academic grindset unlike here where there is such little academic rigor or discipline being enforced by the school it makes sense why the k-12 education numbers are as bad as they are in the USA. It might be worth getting up in front of the kids in middle school + and saying "Hey you're in competition at a global scale here. You're going to have to work your butts off to stay relevant."
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago> - The chips still need to fly back to Taiwan to be packaged as there are no facilities here with such a capability. This seems to be a much more achievable barrier to work around than not having a fab.
- matwood 2y agoSure, but this is how a supply chain gets bootstrapped. All those factories in China didn't magically appear one day. Just like they didn't appear when Apple started moving operations to Vietnam. You start piecemeal and build out.
- maxglute 2y ago>50% of the workers flew in from Taiwan to work on this plant I wonder what % of work they did.
- comte7092 2y agoHaving a STEM degree isn’t a substitute for real world experience in a production facility. Clustering is a feedback loop where production creates people with experience in production, something needs to kickstart that process.
- wink 2y agoI have no specific info regarding this plant, but for anyone who never experienced this: flying in people from other plants at the starts (and all 3rd party vendors for a hypercare phase at launch) seems pretty normal. If they have to keep staffing it that way, that's different.
- bakies 2y agothis is how chick-fil-a does it