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Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

bbc.com

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Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#531

Post by dan_quixote »

phreeza wrote: post #433
jvanderbot wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much would it cost to set up TSMC inside US borders? One president cycle? 4 F-35s? One SLS? A nuclear submarine? According to this page, sorting by cost, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... the most expensive fab is 33 Giga$. TSMC is 17G$. pennies on the dollar in our 1-3Trillion infrastructure bill. Make america fab again. EDIT: it appears this is in the 2T infrastructure bill. https:…

I assume that is if you already have the know-how. Starting from (almost) scratch would require more upfront work, right?

This is a huge hurdle. There is actually some chip/silicon fab sites that never left (only scaled down considerably from their peak). A family member has worked at one for many years as an engineer/manager. When he tells me stories about the insane complexity of their process engineering it really hits home. Impurities at the nanometer scale can ruin 10 million dollar batches of silicon. Nasty chemicals are piped everywhere at the plant - the kind that explode if touching oxygen in the atmosphere or acids that dissolve bone before they noticeably affect your skin.

Running such a production is difficult.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#532

Post by Scoundreller »

flavius29663 wrote: post #407
shadowgovt wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every country props up its auto industry, so why worry about a domestic supply? War. In the event a war breaks out, a running auto plant can be re-tooled relatively rapidly into a light and heavy armor plant. It's not even a question of whether allies could supply tanks and troop transports; it's about having domestic capacity to make them because enemies could execute blockades and disrupt allied resource supply.

this. If you look at all the strategic industry subsidies, you will see this common denominator. Corn in the US is stupidly subsidized, so much corn that it ends up in car tanks. But guess who will not have a famine even if the worst war + disasters strike? Car factories might not make good tanks, but the mechanical engineers and tooling knowledge is invaluable and can't be scaled up overnight. Same with solar panels…

> Corn in the US is stupidly subsidized, so much corn that it ends up in car tanks

What would the land be doing without subsidies?

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#533

Post by throwaway894345 »

acdha wrote: post #213
throwaway894345 wrote: post #131

What are these chips and what is preventing us from scaling up capacity? I’m not challenging that it’s difficult, but the reporting seems shoddy. Maybe I’m the only one who wants to understand this stuff, but these kinds of questions always seem obvious to me (same with COVID vaccine manufacturing).

Here’s a good rundown: it ultimately all comes back to chip fabs being huge operations with massive upfront costs which makes them sensitive to both the pandemic’s direct effects and secondary problems like the way the auto manufacturers slashed orders in 2020, forcing the chip manufacturers to sign other contracts to avoid idling that much capacity[1], and unrelated problems happening at the same time like cryptocur…

That's a really good HN comment, thanks for sharing!

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#534

Post by freemint »

jvanderbot wrote: post #417
Scoundreller wrote: post #328

Many countries have a funny concept of strategic industries. In mine, dairy is a strategic industry that is coddled by government so that we can have a local source. But every country thinks that so there’s foes and allies that can supply us UHT or powder milk on a moment’s notice. And if our milk supply disappeared tomorrow, everyone over 1y could substitute with 10000000 different things for nutrition. Cars are ano…

How much would it cost to set up TSMC inside US borders? One president cycle? 4 F-35s? One SLS? A nuclear submarine? According to this page, sorting by cost, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... the most expensive fab is 33 Giga$. TSMC is 17G$. pennies on the dollar in our 1-3Trillion infrastructure bill. Make america fab again. EDIT: it appears this is in the 2T infrastructure bill. https:…

> Make america fab again.

America does fab. However not newest nodes at high capacity. It just doesn't take building an identical factory and hiring away engineers. There is a complete supply chain of specialist companies which produce or fix the part the part that goes into a machine that that ... . Not mentioning that those construction costs are at economies of scale of building factories.

Such a thing can't be build in the US as every state needs a piece of the pie. An US run copy will be more expensive even when you ignore wages. Extra spare capacity for emergencies is not sound either.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#535

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

jvanderbot wrote: post #440
phreeza wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that is if you already have the know-how. Starting from (almost) scratch would require more upfront work, right?

The US isn't starting from scratch. And presumably the total cost includes all the R&D cycles. TSMC was started by a Texas Instruments employee. But, if we assume they were, just double the cost as a sign-on bonus for all the engineers and poach away. This is problem that can be solved with money, and not a lot of it in the grand scheme of things.

You vastly underestimate the institutional knowledge necessary to operate state of the art fabs. Intel has been at the forefront of the field for decades, and even they are stumbling vs the current challenges. TSMC was founded over 3 decades ago. That it was founded by a TI employee says nothing about the situation today.

The US is subsidizing a TSMC plant here, which should help the situation, as it'll give us access to their engineers and cross pollination. But it's still tiny compared to the need if we want to move the majority of our chip imports to domestic.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#536

Post by twobitshifter »

blueblisters wrote: post #513
jvanderbot wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much would it cost to set up TSMC inside US borders? One president cycle? 4 F-35s? One SLS? A nuclear submarine? According to this page, sorting by cost, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... the most expensive fab is 33 Giga$. TSMC is 17G$. pennies on the dollar in our 1-3Trillion infrastructure bill. Make america fab again. EDIT: it appears this is in the 2T infrastructure bill. https:…

Building it is one thing. Making it operational without importing talent and running it profitably is another. Taiwan has some of the best fab engineers who work at US minimum wage salaries. Of course you can pull them away with higher pay like China is doing, but that means profitability will likely go for a toss.

Do you have a source for the best Taiwan engineers working for minimum wage?

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#537

Post by hypertele-Xii »

sonthonax wrote: post #393
shadowgovt wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every country props up its auto industry, so why worry about a domestic supply? War. In the event a war breaks out, a running auto plant can be re-tooled relatively rapidly into a light and heavy armor plant. It's not even a question of whether allies could supply tanks and troop transports; it's about having domestic capacity to make them because enemies could execute blockades and disrupt allied resource supply.

Is that still true now?

Armored vehicles are a little over 100 years old invention. That's only a few human generations.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#538

Post by onepointsixC »

mywittyname wrote: post #418
sonthonax wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that still true now?

Yes. One scary fact that I learned is that, in war games between China and the USA, China almost always wins due to superior production capacity. Those $100B American battle carriers and $40MM advanced fighter jets can be taken out by $50,000 rockets/missiles produced at a rate of hundreds or thousands per day.

This is just wrong.

The US loses many war-games against China in the short term as China has local numerical superiority of weapons. US armed forces are spread all around the world while almost all of the PLA is near mainland China. In the opening salvos of a Taiwan conflict China would flatten US bases in the region which would be devastating.

But long term China is effectively an Island. Its geography means that it imports nearly everything it needs by Sea. It imports 10 Million barrels of oil a day. It is not food secure. It imports nearly all of the raw materials it needs. While the PLAN could dominate their near shore, they cannot escort super tankers from the Middle East all the way back to China. The USN has had a carrier strike group in the Persian Gulf for decades.

The missile argument is also just nonsense.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#539

Post by hypertele-Xii »

mywittyname wrote: post #418
sonthonax wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that still true now?

Yes. One scary fact that I learned is that, in war games between China and the USA, China almost always wins due to superior production capacity. Those $100B American battle carriers and $40MM advanced fighter jets can be taken out by $50,000 rockets/missiles produced at a rate of hundreds or thousands per day.

Explain how a war between nuclear superpowers ends with anyone winning?

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#540

Post by onepointsixC »

mywittyname wrote: post #467
huge87 wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is in line with my intuitions; do you have any sources so I can read more?

Sure! https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2021-07-27/US-China-mili...

That doesn't support your core thesis that the US will lose a protracted war and that mass producing missiles is going to actually led to planes being destroyed. That's not how that works.
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