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

reuters.com

281–290 of 511 posts

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

#281
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Although at these scales, a CCP at 400MW output is "only" ~$300M, so building that small power station might not be that big a deal compared with the cost of turning off?

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

#282
>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."

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

#283
So, one thing that people seem to miss is that there are two Moore's Laws. Everybody knows about the 1st one, but the second one is as follows:

> says that the cost of a semiconductor chip fabrication plant doubles every four years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_second_law

And I fear that's what's going to be our stone wall in the evolution.

Yes, building the most modern plants make sense. But producing more of the older generation chips also make sense (don't think all the stuff in your phone is the latest generation neither!)

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

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Regulatio…

> All regulation is created for the purpose of protecting people.

That is a politically naive, idealistic perspective that does not align with reality.

Regulation often exists to serve entrenched monopolies and to raise barriers to entry. Sometimes, regulation is a purely emotional knee-jerk reaction to a particular wave of passing news or events. It's often ill-considered over the long term. Long after a society or economy has changed or evolved to the point of rendering the regulation obsolete, the regulation continues to impose costs and burdens on the subjects of that regulation.

It turns out that laws are easier to enact than to roll back. There's a bias to keep existing laws, no matter the opportunity costs.

And that's without digging into my former point, which is that much regulation is the result of cronyism at the highest levels to serve special interest groups.

> Profit comes from people do anything they screw people over for is usually obscured in some way.

Profit comes from economic value creation or perceived economic value creation in the marketplace (as determined by the market). It is revenue minus expenses. It comes from any economic activity that is conducted between two parties in a mutually agreed upon transaction in which both parties trade one type of value for another.

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

#285
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?

We already ran out of microns in the 1990's.

Silicon atoms are only 0.235nm apart. So at 1nm you only have 5 atoms left. At 0.2nm you have one atom lleft and it stops behaving like a semiconductor. So there are real physical limits to nm scale devices that don't apply to micron sized ones.

Admittedly were not as close to those limits as it seems since "nm" quoted on CPUs etc is no longer a literal size of the object. But we're getting there...

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

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Older lithography is what European automakers need, and the same can be said for robotics. The only reason for EU to demand fabrication of leading edge chips in Europe is hubris. How many laptops and mobile phones, in percent terms relative to those respective markets, are assembled in Europe?

I've actually always wondered why automakers never try to make consumer electronics. They wouldn't even need to compete with Apple or Dell; would you consider an Audi or Toyota laptop in place of a Panasonic Toughbook? Caterpillar does it with phones[1], and their main business is heavy industry. Why not auto manufacturers? Could easier access to smaller process nodes incentivize them to branch out into new markets l…

I've always wondered why most household appliances recycling factories don't sell the parts, but hey, I'm just a lowly employee, not a CEO getting paid five+ figures a year.

When I looked into it, the most cited reasons were "that's not our business" (really? then what is?) and "it costs more than it's worth" (it doesn't, plus you get government subsidies for green initiatives).

No mention of contracts forbidding that, some manufacturers do forbid resale of whole units, but not of spare parts.

Caterpillar sold/licensed their brand for use in industries they're not competing in, btw, just like many other big companies.

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

#287
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla owns VW? Telsa is overvalued and still doesn't make profit from car manufacturing. And it's USPs get fewer and fewer and especially full driving autonomous won't happen in the near future despite Musk's claims

You've bought the CNBC fud. Tesla made 4x the profit from cars than bitcoin or credits. Valuation is based on the future, not on the past. Exponential growth matters - just look at the last ten years, then extrapolate a few years more. If you did not predict 500k Tesla cars delivered in 2020, back in 2015, then you can not credibily comment on current valuation ( which is based on the future).

If you extrapolate, VW will overtake Tesla soon in electric cars.

The reality is more that untapped markets follow S curves. The electric car market will not be bigger than what the total car market has been but replace it. Electric cars are not there yet, but the market valuation is already far beyond that.

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

#288

"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…

They do have a point, subsidies for something the EU doesn't really use are sort of wasted taxpayer money. But I think a leading edge chip fab in the EU would be strategically important.

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

#289
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why China? Most of the major chip fabs aren't made in China. They're mostly made in Taiwan, South Korea and the US. Unless we're strictly talking about TSMC, which does have 2/18 fabs in China.

This article explains some of the conflict: https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/can-taiwans-silico... China’s stance on Taiwan is clear[1] but given Taiwan doesn’t agree, it has remained independent despite what China says. The same was true for Hong Kong until recently, however, so concerns remain. The US is waking up to realizing that they have a heavy reliance on China for civilian goods and a slight to mode…

> The same was true for Hong Kong until recently, however, so concerns remain.

Not true. HK has been Chinese territory after 1997, there are PLA deployed in HK. There is no doubt about China's military capacity there, had the party really wanted to use it.

For Taiwan that is never the case.

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

#290
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?

It's mostly a marketing term right? They might do something like 0.5 or add some letters like X or whatever.

I think so. IBM recently produced a new "5nm" chip. In reality the physical size is closer to 24nm, if I remember correctly. The numbers you hear don't literally mean the physical size of the transistor, it refers to something else.
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