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TSMC looks to double down on U.S. chip factories as talks in Europe falter

reuters.com

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Re: TSMC looks to double down on U.S. chip factories as talks in Europe falter

#241

Post by whazor »

_the_inflator wrote: post #228

"European chip and auto companies, for their part, are mostly lined up against the idea. They would prefer subsidies for the older-generation chips that are heavily used by car manufacturers and are in short supply. Many of TSMC's most lucrative customers, such as Apple, are U.S.-based, while its European customer base is made up of mostly of automakers buying less-advanced chips." Oh boy... This is exactly why EU wi…

As far as I understand, both Tesla and VW use the same older automotive chips (in the thousands). The self driving and infotainment chips are of course newer but very few. They send messages to the older more reliable chips.

Re: TSMC looks to double down on U.S. chip factories as talks in Europe falter

#242

Post by numpad0 »

stdgy wrote: post #231
_the_inflator wrote: post #228

"European chip and auto companies, for their part, are mostly lined up against the idea. They would prefer subsidies for the older-generation chips that are heavily used by car manufacturers and are in short supply. Many of TSMC's most lucrative customers, such as Apple, are U.S.-based, while its European customer base is made up of mostly of automakers buying less-advanced chips." Oh boy... This is exactly why EU wi…

Not to mention it takes years to build these fabs. Do they think the automotive industry will use the same chips forever?

Tesla Model S is a 2009 design if you think about it, though they did upgrade the touchscreen computer once in 2019

Re: TSMC looks to double down on U.S. chip factories as talks in Europe falter

#243

Post by neonological »

samatman wrote: post #51
neonological wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me make it clear. I never said Texas is bad. The other guy who replied to me thought I was saying California was bad. I'm giving an unbiased view. Both are bad, and both are good at the same time. I'm saying the pros and cons are not clear. California laws favor the people at the expense of business. So business leaves and people follow. Texas favors business at the expense of the people. Businesses chase profit…

I don't think this framing is useful at all. People want to work a job and keep as much of the income as possible. They want to found businesses and make money. They also don't want poison in their water supply, or any of the numerous externalities which industry is in the habit of creating. Texas and California strike a very different balance in that landscape. The net result of which is that people are leaving Cali…

It's not weird. It's not even a frame. It's reality.

All regulation is created for the purpose of protecting people. California has more people protecting laws than Texas therefore California favors people over Texas.

There's literally no other reason why regulation exists. And all businesses that have less regulation have more options to succeed financially that would otherwise be restricted by regulation. Regulation therefore exists to serve people. So by logic less regulation means conditions more favorable for business and less favorable to people.

Unless you can think of some other reason why regulations exist this is the only possible logical deduction. Does California create laws that don't favor business because California just wants to screw with businesses for no reason? Let's be real.

Make no mistake. There is no frame here, this is reality unfiltered.

Additionally keep in mind businesses cannot directly screw people over. Profit comes from people and companies cannot directly screw over the thing they derive profit from. When businesses screw people over it's usually obscured in some way. Think again to the antics of big oil and big tobacco. If deregulated businesses are harming the people of Texas in some way you likely won't know until many years from now.

Re: TSMC looks to double down on U.S. chip factories as talks in Europe falter

#244

Post by Alupis »

baybal2 wrote: post #222
magicsmoke wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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).

Re: TSMC looks to double down on U.S. chip factories as talks in Europe falter

#245

Post by dougmwne »

_the_inflator wrote: post #228

"European chip and auto companies, for their part, are mostly lined up against the idea. They would prefer subsidies for the older-generation chips that are heavily used by car manufacturers and are in short supply. Many of TSMC's most lucrative customers, such as Apple, are U.S.-based, while its European customer base is made up of mostly of automakers buying less-advanced chips." Oh boy... This is exactly why EU wi…

That sounds like a pretty low information hot take. While it's probably true that car manufacturers are calling for more manufacturing of the chips they use right now to deal with the shortages, that's a 2021 and 2022 issue. I don't see any plausible reason why Europe would not see the value in having advanced chip fabs over the next 15 years. It's mostly likely that behind the scenes TSMC demanded more in subsidies than Europe was willing to give and that the Americans' pocket books are wide open at the moment.

I think Europe is more likely to remain third due to bureaucracy, multilateralism and a regulatory and investment philosophy that favors European businesses and citizens over international businesses. The cost of being first is high anyway.

Re: TSMC looks to double down on U.S. chip factories as talks in Europe falter

#246

Post by enchiridion »

numpad0 wrote: post #242
stdgy wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention it takes years to build these fabs. Do they think the automotive industry will use the same chips forever?

Tesla Model S is a 2009 design if you think about it, though they did upgrade the touchscreen computer once in 2019

Eh, yes and no. New computer, new screen, new grill, new batteries, new engine, probably a bunch of other stuff I can't think of off the top.

Re: TSMC looks to double down on U.S. chip factories as talks in Europe falter

#247

Post by TMWNN »

magila wrote: post #21
ciabattabread wrote: post #19

So where would a EU fab be located?

Most likely Germany. Specifically Dresden since it already has a significant fabrication industry so there's a good supply of local expertise.

... and there went any interest in Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Madrid, Lisbon, Warsaw, and Vienna in subsidizing that fab's construction.

Re: TSMC looks to double down on U.S. chip factories as talks in Europe falter

#248

Post by baybal2 »

Alupis wrote: post #244
baybal2 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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).

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.

Re: TSMC looks to double down on U.S. chip factories as talks in Europe falter

#249

Post by dougmwne »

mjgs wrote: post #232

I wonder how significant it is that there is all this worldwide expansion of chip making factories just as we get to 3nm architectures, I say that because there aren’t very many nm’s left, what happens when we get to zero?

I wonder if the end of chip performance improvements could cause a short term boost in manufacturing investment and sales. Instead of chip investments in products and data centers surely becoming obsolete in a few years, useable lifetimes could be measured in decades if the chip designs and performance are not expected to change. If you can get 30 years out of a data center investment instead of 5, you can spend a lot more money and amortized it for longer.

Re: TSMC looks to double down on U.S. chip factories as talks in Europe falter

#250

Post by TMWNN »

foepys wrote: post #224
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

> EU industry commissioner Thierry Breton, who has championed the Eurofab idea, also spoke with TSMC's Europe president, Maria Marced, last month. Although Breton publicly called the TSMC talk a "good exchange," a second person familiar with the matter said the TSMC talks in Europe have gone "very poorly." Sometimes it seems that EU politicians want to be seen as cutting a hard bargain with industry that they actuall…

The EU exported over 200 million doses. If the EU wanted, they could've issued an export ban like the US did. People tend to forget that 3* (with Curevac soon to be 4) of the most effective vaccines are actually from the EU. * not counting Sputnik V as study results currently seem not very reliable, although that might only be because Russia isn't particularly interested in the EU market

>The EU exported over 200 million doses. If the EU wanted, they could've issued an export ban like the US did.

Please stop repeating this lie. There is and has never been a US vaccine export ban, and the US has not seized vaccines meant for other countries.

The Trump administration last year signed gigantic contracts for every planned vaccine (Operation Warp Speed), because no one knew which ones would work. Like, enough for every American from one manufacturer, let alone the current four major available ones. More importantly, the contracts guaranteed the US the earliest deliveries.

The UK signed a similar contract for the AstraZeneca vaccine. The EU and Canada did not assure themselves of such quantities; as RcouF1uZ4gsC said, the former wasted time by trying to get a better price. Canada also bet on CanSino, a Chinese vaccine, because it was afraid that the US would ban vaccine exports (which, again, never happened). Of course, the Chinese did not live up to the contract.

Before you say "But what about—", the Trump executive order from December 2020 merely sets up the legal framework to prohibit exports if desired. But that does not mean that the framework is invoked. Let me repeat: The US signed contracts that were a) huge in size/scope and b) from every pharmaceutical company working on a vaccine, which c) got the country the largest and among the first deliveries. The UK did the same thing with the AstraZeneca vaccine, and spent a lot of money to retool domestic plants to produce it.

If the situation were different, might the US have implemented a ban on exports, similar to what the EU did implement recently? Perhaps. But, fortunately, the US never faced this issue, because of the huge amounts of money it invested a year ago and the contracts it signed with said money.

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