TSMC ups Arizona investment from $12B to $40B with second semi fab • Hacker News Board

Re: TSMC ups Arizona investment from $12B to $40B with second semi fab

#91

Post by misterprime » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:24 PM UTC

coredog64 wrote: post #74

tony_cannistra wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing that. At the very least, Arizona has "water budget" in the form of severely curtailing water-intensive agriculture. I am hopeful that the politicians there are smart enough to realize that semiconductor fabs are an industry whose water needs are worth prioritizing more than farming alfalfa in the desert. The problem is that these agricultural water rights are old, and the folks who hold them are of…

Farmers are selling their farmland to developers who then turn it into housing. Everyone wins: Residential water use is significantly lower than agricultural, the farmers get rich, and more housing is being built.

And food still shows up in the grocery stores. Yay!

Re: TSMC ups Arizona investment from $12B to $40B with second semi fab

#92

Post by tony_cannistra » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:25 PM UTC

Mistletoe wrote: post #89

coredog64 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farmers are selling their farmland to developers who then turn it into housing. Everyone wins: Residential water use is significantly lower than agricultural, the farmers get rich, and more housing is being built.

Should people live in an area with no water? It feels like we have so many problems caused by people just not living in the locations in the USA where there is lots of rainfall and water. I have tons of water, my state just uses lakes filled by rainwater. We make electricity with it too. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Average_precipitat... I always find it interesting that people keep cramming into the wes…

I hear you, but I feel like this argument is fraught. We can't (shouldn't) really be telling people what they can/can't do.

We can restructure incentives, though. (e.g.: taxes). Perhaps this is just kicking the ethical quandary down the road.

Re: TSMC ups Arizona investment from $12B to $40B with second semi fab

#93

Post by akiselev » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:25 PM UTC

dsr3 wrote: post #52

_8j50 wrote: post #45

Don't these fabs need like an insane amount of water? Why would they build it of all places in arizona which as far as I know barely meets drinking water requirements (at least at some cities) and is basically mostly a desert?

Some people said because Arizona is in relatively stable seismic region in the US. But I don't buy it. TSMC fab in Taiwan is also located in seismic prone region. Compared to the cost of the fab itself, seismic isolation system is relatively affordable.

They need seismic isolation regardless of where they build. Cutting edge fabs require such precision that a poorly shielded USB port can cause enough noise to create problems, let alone the vibrations from distant earthquakes. (Source: previous work with electron microscopes)

Fabs are expensive because every part of building it from the electrical wiring to the seismic isolation to the HVAC system needs to be perfectly tuned to remove all sources of noise. Most of these costs are superlinear if not exponential with the magnitude of noise.

Re: TSMC ups Arizona investment from $12B to $40B with second semi fab

#94

Post by khuey » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

Mistletoe wrote: post #89

coredog64 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farmers are selling their farmland to developers who then turn it into housing. Everyone wins: Residential water use is significantly lower than agricultural, the farmers get rich, and more housing is being built.

Should people live in an area with no water? It feels like we have so many problems caused by people just not living in the locations in the USA where there is lots of rainfall and water. I have tons of water, my state just uses lakes filled by rainwater. We make electricity with it too. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Average_precipitat... I always find it interesting that people keep cramming into the wes…

The problem is less people living in areas with no water and more people growing water-intensive food in areas with no water. 80% of water usage in California, which has 40 million residents, is agricultural.

Re: TSMC ups Arizona investment from $12B to $40B with second semi fab

#95

Post by jiggyjace » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

Jenkins2000 wrote: post #29

I remember reading that making chips requires a lot of water, something that Arizona is running out of, will this be a problem?

Arizona is not running out of water. There's a lot of fearmongering surrounding water levels at Lake Mead or with the Colorado river, but Arizona doesn't get the majority of its water from those sources. It also uses 10x less water with a population of 7m as it did in 1950 with a population of 0.7m.

Arizona has a state-of-the-art water portfolio that uses lots of reclaimed water and is not reliant on micro or even macro-climate trends. A megadrought has impacted the area for the last few decades and only now are Arizona cities talking about the needs for conservation and possibly cuts in the next decade or so, but if climate models hold up the drought will be over in that time frame anyway.

Re: TSMC ups Arizona investment from $12B to $40B with second semi fab

#96

Post by Rapzid » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:30 PM UTC

FpUser wrote: post #12

I guess this is TSMCs getaway if things will get sour with China.

In a sense.. Currently western liberal democracies have a monopoly on the most advanced microprocessor manufacturing tech.. And they plan to keep it that way indefinitely.

This "sours the milk" so to speak and it makes it easier to take TSMC off the board.

For one, if there was ever any real consideration by China of forceful takeover it would be made clear TSMC would not be a spoil of war. This makes a scorched earth threat even more credible.

For two, it disincentizes playing games with Taiwan as a pawn based on the wests reliance on chips flowing out. Knowing the chips are flowing in large quantities from other countries removes the lynchpin status.

Third, it stabilizes supply in the chance that something does happen. Maybe a natural disaster. Maybe a blockade.

Re: TSMC ups Arizona investment from $12B to $40B with second semi fab

#97

Post by brookst » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

Animatronio wrote: post #72

boc wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or conversely the US will commit even more resources to the defense of Taiwan now that their own domestic supply of chips is safe. The US had no strategic interest in Ukraine yet we’ve all seen the reaction. The US will gladly defend Taiwan and create the hill for the CCP to die upon.

Now please explain why would the US send troops to defend TW if there's nothing actually valuable there anymore? Ukraine was hugely important for it's position next to Russia, and so is TW. And still, no US troops on the ground in Ukraine, and there won't be any in TW. This is a smart way of giving up on TW without actually admitting it, and there's nothing to be ashamed of, really.

You seem to be asserting a few contradictory things:

1. Taiwan can only be defended with US troops on the ground

2. Ukraine has no US troops on the ground and is being successfully defended

3. The US would only put troops on the ground to protect valuable things like TSMC fabs

4. (by implication) if China attacks Taiwan and destroys TSMC fabs tomorrow, the US would have no incentive to defend Taiwan because the fabs are gone

I don't see it. Ukraine looks likely to survive as a country without US troops on the ground. Ukraine, as you note, has no fabs or similarly valuable assets. Why can't those exact same conditions play out in Taiwan, which is also much much much harder to invade with ground troops than Ukraine was?

Re: TSMC ups Arizona investment from $12B to $40B with second semi fab

#98

Post by adam_arthur » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

tony_cannistra wrote: post #87

adam_arthur wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the Colorado River is the only water source in North America right? People have a fetishization with hyping up disappearing water sources as leading to mass forced desertions of population centers, which is not rooted in any kind of reality. We can already pipe oil from texas to Canada with ease, we can do the same from Canada to Arizona with water. Or wherever else. The economics and viability of it is obvious a…

> People have a fetishization with hyping up disappearing water sources as leading to mass forced desertions of population centers, which is not rooted in any kind of reality. I have never heard this. Where are you reading that? Disappearing water sources are a reality. Time and time again, long pipelines like what you suggest just aren't viable. I'd suggest you enjoy some fact-based reporting on the topic: https://g…

Oil pipelines have already proven the economic viability.

The choice of abandoning trillions of real estate vs a 10s of billions infrastructure project is obvious.

Article cites the cost as $14B which is effectively nothing vs the alternative. Even $100B is nothing. These two TSMC fabs are $40B alone

So much fearmongering from economically illiterate people. Use your brain

Re: TSMC ups Arizona investment from $12B to $40B with second semi fab

#99

Post by totalZero » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

adam_arthur wrote: post #63

Onshoring is a logical result of improved automation. When labor costs lessen, transportation and logistics become the primary concern. Wouldn’t be surprised if 100 years from now most final good assembly is done locally. Of course sometimes raw materials and inputs are more expensive to transport than the finished good, so there will always be cases where long distance transportation of finished products is still pr…

It would make more sense to put the mega-fabs where electricity is cheapest in the Americas, and that certainly isn't Arizona.

Re: TSMC ups Arizona investment from $12B to $40B with second semi fab

#100

Post by totalZero » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #45

Don't these fabs need like an insane amount of water? Why would they build it of all places in arizona which as far as I know barely meets drinking water requirements (at least at some cities) and is basically mostly a desert?

Yes, but the cost of ultrapure water is essentially represented by the cost of electricity used for purification.