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

261–270 of 543 posts

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

#261

Post by boringg »

jackpeterfletch wrote: post #247
menshiki wrote: post #235

Great news for the US. Great news for Apple, AMD, and Nvidia. Not so good news for Taiwan. The fact that the whole tech world is dependent on chips produced in Hsinchu is a huge advantage for the safety of Taiwan. Moving the fabs and talent further away from the island will not benefit the people of Taiwan at all. TSMC with its global influence has been a huge factor for guaranteeing safety of the island and peace in…

Thats interesting. My initial thoughts on this came the from the opposite side in terms of Taiwans security. One of the major bounties for invading Taiwan would be in the acquisition and control of their chip manufacturing. Which - as you mention, the entire tech world is dependant on. By moving some of that capability offshore, that incentive is gone. Though I can see it from both sides.

I thought the same thing. I believe it is more nuanced than that.

PRC wants Taiwan regardless of its production value (geopolitical & PRC narrative) though I'm sure they would like the control of chip manufacturing. However if the US did move all of its strategic production off island there would be less value accrued to defending outside that said keeping a close presence on China expansion is important to the US. So it would still have value maybe a bit less so.

Please excuse the human aspect of the population as we are separating that part of the discussion.

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

#262

Post by abakker »

jackpeterfletch wrote: post #247
menshiki wrote: post #235

Great news for the US. Great news for Apple, AMD, and Nvidia. Not so good news for Taiwan. The fact that the whole tech world is dependent on chips produced in Hsinchu is a huge advantage for the safety of Taiwan. Moving the fabs and talent further away from the island will not benefit the people of Taiwan at all. TSMC with its global influence has been a huge factor for guaranteeing safety of the island and peace in…

Thats interesting. My initial thoughts on this came the from the opposite side in terms of Taiwans security. One of the major bounties for invading Taiwan would be in the acquisition and control of their chip manufacturing. Which - as you mention, the entire tech world is dependant on. By moving some of that capability offshore, that incentive is gone. Though I can see it from both sides.

Without the staff from TSMC, the Chinese Government probably can't run those facilities. I suspect there isn't much probability that china could mobilize and take those facilities as-is with no sabotage.

The US has taken steps recently to reduce china's ability to make chips domestically. See - https://www.seattletimes.com/business/chip-gear-maker-asml-a...

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

#263

Post by nimish »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #106
huijzer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, Europe is doing pretty good due to having a monopoly on making chip making machines via ASML in the Netherlands which relies heavily on Carl Zeiss in Germany. Fun fact by the way, at some point Japan and Europe were very close in state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing while the US didn’t have the capabilities anymore because it was outcompeted by Japan. At that point, the US donated funds and 20 years…

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

They have very advanced fabs for non leading edge logic. STM has a major SiC fab or two.

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

#264

Post by ecshafer »

jackpeterfletch wrote: post #247
menshiki wrote: post #235

Great news for the US. Great news for Apple, AMD, and Nvidia. Not so good news for Taiwan. The fact that the whole tech world is dependent on chips produced in Hsinchu is a huge advantage for the safety of Taiwan. Moving the fabs and talent further away from the island will not benefit the people of Taiwan at all. TSMC with its global influence has been a huge factor for guaranteeing safety of the island and peace in…

Thats interesting. My initial thoughts on this came the from the opposite side in terms of Taiwans security. One of the major bounties for invading Taiwan would be in the acquisition and control of their chip manufacturing. Which - as you mention, the entire tech world is dependant on. By moving some of that capability offshore, that incentive is gone. Though I can see it from both sides.

China absolutely wants to be reunited with Taiwan. Taiwan is a constant reminder of the century of humiliation (Translated term that is basically China's term for Opium wars to WWII). Taiwan is an integral part of the Chinese nation and for nationalistic reasons, it would be an issue even if Taiwan had no other benefits.

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

#265

Post by andrecarini »

jackpeterfletch wrote: post #247
menshiki wrote: post #235

Great news for the US. Great news for Apple, AMD, and Nvidia. Not so good news for Taiwan. The fact that the whole tech world is dependent on chips produced in Hsinchu is a huge advantage for the safety of Taiwan. Moving the fabs and talent further away from the island will not benefit the people of Taiwan at all. TSMC with its global influence has been a huge factor for guaranteeing safety of the island and peace in…

Thats interesting. My initial thoughts on this came the from the opposite side in terms of Taiwans security. One of the major bounties for invading Taiwan would be in the acquisition and control of their chip manufacturing. Which - as you mention, the entire tech world is dependant on. By moving some of that capability offshore, that incentive is gone. Though I can see it from both sides.

> By moving some of that capability offshore, that incentive is gone.

I'm not sure if that incentive was significant enough. In my eyes, PRC's interest in Taiwan is at best orthogonal with TSMC's manufacturing capabilities.

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

#266

Post by nequo »

izacus wrote: post #239
spamizbad wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's an interesting thesis - but, for example, Greece with its "let's piss money away without control for anything and everything" somehow hasn't become an industrial powerhouse either... so it might be that austerity (or lack thereof), in general, isn't really such an important factor?

How much money did Greece spend on getting fabs off the ground?

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

#267

Post by stonemetal12 »

atq2119 wrote: post #208
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that odd that international companies would build local facilities for major markets they're selling into. Toyota sold cars to the US, and building plants here made sense relative to that for a variety of economic and political reasons. Everyone makes more money together so everyone's happy with the arrangement. I find it more odd to presume that corporations have some nationalistic competitive interest.

Cars are big and heavy, and so building them near the buyer has a logistics benefit. Chips have higher value per weight and size by orders of magnitude.

Chips are strategically valuable, would the EU back a competitor to have local manufacturing capacity?

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

#268

Post by macspoofing »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #236
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…

Your build quality comparison is off, a cheap $500 laptop should be compared to prior years Macbook Air M1 which is $300 more, not $2000 more. A $800 macbook has far better build quality than any $500 Windows laptop, probably better than most $800 laptops. Its Windows that's the issue for me. Having too many bad experiences and strong bias against Microsoft, I choose Apple because its not MS and it does work vs. tink…

>A $800 macbook has far better build quality than any $500 Windows laptop

Took a peak at the apple store, there is no $800 Macbook for sale. So we're comparing, an older (used?) higher-end Macbook to a budget Windows laptop? Why not compare an older higher-end Windows laptop to an older Macbook? Why not compare a new $500 budget Windows laptop to a $500 used Macbook?

>Its Windows that's the issue for me. Having too many bad experiences and strong bias against Microsoft

You have a have a subjective preference - fine - we all do. So why pretend there is some objective measure here of Apple's superiority? Apple sells very expensive higher-end devices. The reality is that the quality of those devices is about on par with other devices in that class.

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

#269

Post by nradov »

abakker wrote: post #262
jackpeterfletch wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats interesting. My initial thoughts on this came the from the opposite side in terms of Taiwans security. One of the major bounties for invading Taiwan would be in the acquisition and control of their chip manufacturing. Which - as you mention, the entire tech world is dependant on. By moving some of that capability offshore, that incentive is gone. Though I can see it from both sides.

Without the staff from TSMC, the Chinese Government probably can't run those facilities. I suspect there isn't much probability that china could mobilize and take those facilities as-is with no sabotage. The US has taken steps recently to reduce china's ability to make chips domestically. See - https://www.seattletimes.com/business/chip-gear-maker-asml-a...

The Chinese government also wouldn't be able to run those fabs without ongoing support from ASML and other key foreign vendors. The production machinery is extremely complex with many specialized parts and a significant software component. Reverse engineering and duplicating everything would take years.

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

#270

Post by pifm_guy »

whalesalad wrote: post #248
jimbob45 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does China still want Taiwan if it's no longer technologically relevant? My understanding is that China is making similar strides in its own chip industry to the point where TSMC won't be as nearly as useful to them in 10 years as it is now.

Taiwan does far more than just TSMC. That is just one single company, albeit a very essential one. For instance, I don't like to buy hand tools (impact sockets, torque wrenches, etc) made in China, but Taiwanese tools are a higher quality and I have no hesitation purchasing them.

I suspect that the hand tools made in China aren't low quality because China doesn't have the tech to make them better, but instead because making cheap low quality tools is more profitable.

In fact, when taking apart China-made, China-designed products, I am frequently very impressed at cost-cutting measures that are taken with minimal impact on the functionality of the product.

Post reply on HN