Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TSMC to make 4nm chips in Arizona for Apple, AMD, Nvidia

techmonitor.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 543 posts

Re: TSMC to make 4nm chips in Arizona for Apple, AMD, Nvidia

#61

Post by holoduke »

neonihil wrote: post #58

Poor Taiwanese people... their security insurance has just been cancelled. I wonder how many days after the first successful batches of chips coming out of the Arizona fab will China invade Taiwan. I do hope not, but realistically: with high-end chips being made on US soil, the US will have very little interest in protecting Taiwan, apart from maybe blocking China from also acquiring the tech.

The current chip making machines in Taiwan are still very valuable for many years. They should not fall into the hands of China.

Re: TSMC to make 4nm chips in Arizona for Apple, AMD, Nvidia

#62

Post by neonihil »

holoduke wrote: post #61
neonihil wrote: post #58

Poor Taiwanese people... their security insurance has just been cancelled. I wonder how many days after the first successful batches of chips coming out of the Arizona fab will China invade Taiwan. I do hope not, but realistically: with high-end chips being made on US soil, the US will have very little interest in protecting Taiwan, apart from maybe blocking China from also acquiring the tech.

The current chip making machines in Taiwan are still very valuable for many years. They should not fall into the hands of China.

Yeah, that's what I'm hoping for.

Re: TSMC to make 4nm chips in Arizona for Apple, AMD, Nvidia

#63

Post by AdamN »

pjc50 wrote: post #32
squarefoot wrote: post #24

Hopefully we'll do something like that here in the EU too. We're experiencing the hard way how's like depending on the energy and resources of warmongering criminal dictators; it would be wise to start moving away from technological dependence on China asap.

There's an "EU Chips Act" happening as well: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/09/a-revitalized-semicon... It makes sense. ASML are in the Netherlands, as are NXP. ST are in France. Germany has quite a bit of semiconductor production for the automotive industry. It'll be slow and expensive to get there though. There's not many places in the EU where you could simply drop a Shenzen in, demolishing historic buildings…

They're not going to build a fab in downtown Heidelberg :-)

There are plenty of industrial parks available near transportation, water, and electricity in Europe to build this out. This also aligns with how the modern chip ecosystem works where the fab components are coming from Europe, the advanced chips are coming from Taiwan, other chips are coming from across SEA, and final assembly is happening in China. What I suspect will happen is that Europe will start printing advanced chips and most of them will be shipped to China for integration. If a conflict/dispute breaks out, switching to European assemblers will be expensive but totally doable with a short-term investment (2-3 years??)

Re: TSMC to make 4nm chips in Arizona for Apple, AMD, Nvidia

#65

Post by AdamN »

neonihil wrote: post #58

Poor Taiwanese people... their security insurance has just been cancelled. I wonder how many days after the first successful batches of chips coming out of the Arizona fab will China invade Taiwan. I do hope not, but realistically: with high-end chips being made on US soil, the US will have very little interest in protecting Taiwan, apart from maybe blocking China from also acquiring the tech.

This is a valid long term concern for Taiwan but 10+ years out.

Re: TSMC to make 4nm chips in Arizona for Apple, AMD, Nvidia

#66

Post by holoduke »

vineyardmike wrote: post #52
midasz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Is the USA going to sell their chips to China? Because when Taiwan gets invaded the Fabs will be destroyed and/or made inoperable with no way to get them functional again.

China is already working on their own chips. It’s only a matter of time before it’s good enough .

They are lightyears behind. 20 years if not more. These chip machines is work of many decates of iterative work. You cannot simply step in and produce similar tech.

Re: TSMC to make 4nm chips in Arizona for Apple, AMD, Nvidia

#67

Post by vineyardmike »

mrtksn wrote: post #53
lazyeye wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I thought advocating for bringing manufacturing back onshore meant you were an economic illiterate and a xenophobe. I guess that was before supply-chain security became important and the only consequence was the people that dont matter losing their jobs.

It's also impossible to bring back horses as main vehicle of transportation until you have a civilisation collapse and can't viably produce machinery and fuel in large scale. I find it unfortunate that we are going back into a partitioned world but let's hope it brings competing ideas at least. I'm even a bit excited about it, as long as it stays a cold war and doesn't turn into WW3 and stays as a competition in ever…

> It's also impossible to bring back horses as main vehicle of transportation until you have a civilisation collapse

That’s a bad read of the situation. It’s not like no one makes chips.

The reasons people cite for why manufacturers don’t come to America are largely political. The reality is that manufacturing is alive and well but those with industry knowledge aren’t American, and America has most left low margin and high labor manufacturing not all manufacturing. In this case, America is literally paying the Taiwanese to bring their knowledge to America.

Is the world collapsing? No one knows but this can be more easily seen as “vertical integration” of a national economy. No one said Samsung was doomed when apple made their own mobile chips, and there’s no reason that the global economy is doomed just because the richest and most powerful economy in the world wanted a strategically important, high margin business.

Re: TSMC to make 4nm chips in Arizona for Apple, AMD, Nvidia

#68

Post by Animatronio »

pjc50 wrote: post #32
squarefoot wrote: post #24

Hopefully we'll do something like that here in the EU too. We're experiencing the hard way how's like depending on the energy and resources of warmongering criminal dictators; it would be wise to start moving away from technological dependence on China asap.

There's an "EU Chips Act" happening as well: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/09/a-revitalized-semicon... It makes sense. ASML are in the Netherlands, as are NXP. ST are in France. Germany has quite a bit of semiconductor production for the automotive industry. It'll be slow and expensive to get there though. There's not many places in the EU where you could simply drop a Shenzen in, demolishing historic buildings…

Yes, those pesky medieval castles all over the place. And narrow cobbled streets, only two riders abreast. Those are the major problems of Europe, not bureaucracy and indecision at the highest level.

Re: TSMC to make 4nm chips in Arizona for Apple, AMD, Nvidia

#69

Post by peoplefromibiza »

squarefoot wrote: post #24

Hopefully we'll do something like that here in the EU too. We're experiencing the hard way how's like depending on the energy and resources of warmongering criminal dictators; it would be wise to start moving away from technological dependence on China asap.

> it would be wise to start moving away from technological dependence on China asap.

Not to defend China, but the west loves their cheap manufacturing, ask Apple, to name one.

You can't blame them only when it suits you.

Re: TSMC to make 4nm chips in Arizona for Apple, AMD, Nvidia

#70

Post by neonihil »

AdamN wrote: post #65
neonihil wrote: post #58

Poor Taiwanese people... their security insurance has just been cancelled. I wonder how many days after the first successful batches of chips coming out of the Arizona fab will China invade Taiwan. I do hope not, but realistically: with high-end chips being made on US soil, the US will have very little interest in protecting Taiwan, apart from maybe blocking China from also acquiring the tech.

This is a valid long term concern for Taiwan but 10+ years out.

I'm afraid there could be a hidden math behind this.

As in: cost of a war with China vs. economic cost of China acquiring TSMC tech.

As long as a war is cheaper, the US is protecting Taiwan.

I'm no expert, but it usually comes down to something like this.

Post reply on HN