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

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

#211

Post by jacooper »

Animatronio wrote: post #68
pjc50 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Both can and are part of the problem.

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

#212

Post by jacooper »

GrinningFool wrote: post #188
phpisthebest wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>- build quality This is part of the marketing delusion, multiple people have done A/B testing to clearly show Apple Build Quality is either on par with the rest of the industry or in many specific examples WORSE, people that claim this often have ZERO experience with non-apple products or are comparing different classes like a budget consumer level Lenovo to the pro line of apple, of course of $500 unit will be of…

> I can also say i have never had an Android phone that I had to hold "correctly" in order for the antenna to work... It feels like you're trying to revive decade-old flamewars here. FWIW, on my Pixel 5 (and 2 before that), if I reverse my phone (hold normally but with camera at bottom) I get a drop in both cellular and wifi signal strength - more so if I'm in a location with marginal signal to begin with.

Steve jobs: you are holding it wrong.

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

#213

Post by marcosdumay »

huijzer wrote: post #185
api wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re your last point: cloud specs are already far beyond that. Cloud companies just pocket the difference. Cloud lets hosting companies benefit from Moore’s law, not you. Look at the machine you can build for one months’ typical AWS cost for a medium size SaaS company. Cloud also charges insanely high rates for bandwidth.

I doubt that. I was not talking about AWS. The price I mentioned is from Hetzner (by heart though, so I might be a bit off) which is pretty cheap. I have also tested multiple budget VPS providers and they all don’t dare to go below aforementioned price even though there is a lot of competition in the VPS market. Sometimes the more budget providers provide more vCPUs but in my tests those usually turn out to be extrem…

Well, it's 2GB of RAM, and 23GB of disk.

It's quite low, but the real costs are on datacenter space and connectivity anyway, I have no idea what their cost structure looks like.

I would expect any real user to switch into renting servers as soon as small VPSs aren't enough. (But yes, the fact that there is a market of large VPSs tells people don't to that. I don't think I will ever understand this, as I don't understand most people usage of AWS.)

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

#214

Post by baxtr »

jacooper wrote: post #212
GrinningFool wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can also say i have never had an Android phone that I had to hold "correctly" in order for the antenna to work... It feels like you're trying to revive decade-old flamewars here. FWIW, on my Pixel 5 (and 2 before that), if I reverse my phone (hold normally but with camera at bottom) I get a drop in both cellular and wifi signal strength - more so if I'm in a location with marginal signal to begin with.

Steve jobs: you are holding it wrong.

I upload anything with Steve Jobs. So: Here you go!

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

#215

Post by itake »

lkbm wrote: post #200
rapsey wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One plant does not change the game that much. You still need TSMC to keep working on whatever the next tech will be as well as all their current production in Taiwan which is fully booked.

I agree that it's not a simple plant opens => China invades, but this does feel like we're starting to see the dominos line up. If it's about talent, it's a lot easier to quickly import people than to import a massive fab plant, and I assume we'll be building talent (either domestic or imported) as we build out the related infrastructure and industry. It would certainly be disruptive, but I assume part of the US's dr…

My cousin is doing a contract with TSMC. Basically they fly over 100 Americans per year to Taiwan and train them for 1-1.5years. Then they fly them back to the usa to work in the US factory.

The problem is TW compensation and work conditions are terrible. Many of them quit before completely their agreements, so they aren’t actually training that many Americans.

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

#216

Post by ajross »

philliphaydon wrote: post #181
ajross wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using what amounts to this definition, under which, yes, Taiwan and China are both majority Han: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Chinese As stated, ethnicity is complicated and people everywhere want to have fights over these subjects. I won't engage, that's pointless.

Oh so it doesn’t actually have anything to do with blood or descent. Just cultural inheritance from han dynasty.

I know I said I wouldn't engage, but just to point out: nothing in the linked page substantiates "doesn't actually have anything to do with". I'm not interested in getting into an ethnicity argument, but please don't misrepresent source material.

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

#217

Post by artjumble »

throwaway82028 wrote: post #183

Where in Arizona specifically? Have they even decided? Did the government decide to pay for the factory and enroll their for-profit prisoners to work for $0.10/per hour, and divert the remaining water supply to the factory? Arizona seems like a terrible choice for a chip factory, unless they've selected an area that gets natural water... and there aren't many.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/TSMC,+Fab+21/@33.7709731,-...

They have been building it for about a year now. Other than the possible water use, other's have stated why it is here.

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

#218

Post by doomlaser »

spamizbad wrote: post #172
spaniard89277 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but local fabs in Europe are far, far away from Intel, TSMC and Samsung. Infineon, NXP and STM are wayy behind.

This is largely because Europe became infatuated with austerity and its industrial policy has suffered as a consequence. You want big, cutting-edge fabs? You’re going to need to spend public money getting them off the ground. TSMC’s success is in part due to Taiwan itself designating semiconductors as a key strategic economic interest years ago and making investments/tax breaks accordingly

Interestingly, in the 1970s, before any fabs on the island, Taiwan arranged for semiconductor engineers from the iconic but slowly dying American company RCA to transfer their technology to a visiting Taiwanese team, establishing what would later become TSMC. RCA pioneered so much: radio, TV, color TV, NBC... And just as it was starting to decline and die, its semiconductor knowledge was transferred to Taiwan!

Asianometry has a great video on YouTube detailing the creation of TSMC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fVrWDdll0g

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

#219

Post by sylware »

spamizbad wrote: post #172
spaniard89277 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but local fabs in Europe are far, far away from Intel, TSMC and Samsung. Infineon, NXP and STM are wayy behind.

This is largely because Europe became infatuated with austerity and its industrial policy has suffered as a consequence. You want big, cutting-edge fabs? You’re going to need to spend public money getting them off the ground. TSMC’s success is in part due to Taiwan itself designating semiconductors as a key strategic economic interest years ago and making investments/tax breaks accordingly

yep.

_leading-edge chip manufacturing_ must be seen like "defence": making money out of it is optional, but it has to stay _really_ leading-edge and should be ready to produce at scale for other failing "friendly" part of the world. Since South-Korea and Taiwan did just that, and the others not, they are now alone on the global market.

To believe the "supply/demand" rule of the economy can magically make the money flow decently and properly is _REALLY_ dangerous, it cannot apply to everything.

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