201–210 of 294 posts
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?
for the Cynical person: Ensuring a future crisis is a sure fire way to get a nice Big Government Bailout in a few years to pay off the rest of the Capital costs that were not already covered by CHIPS....
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Do the plants typically run at night? Also, doesn't the capacity factor account for these variations already?
No, you would need a large storage facility as well. A nameplate capacity of 550 MW with a capacity factor of only 26% almost certainly means there are a lot of times when it isn't generating any power at all , or at least none to speak of.
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Isn’t solar the cheapest energy per KwH? A sunny place like Arizona with tons of empty space should be able to cheaply deploy lots of energy.
I think that depends how much build-out you have to do in order to install the kind of capacity required for a $40B semiconductor fab, which would hypothetically need some kind of major energy storage infrastructure or backup source in the event that solar is the main source of electricity. > Large semiconductor fabs use as much as 100 megawatt-hours of power each hour, which is more than many automotive plants or oi…
The geopolitical context for this is wild; and in some ways is Taiwan selling its crown jewels and sacrifying its strategic relevance for unclear returns. https://asiatimes.com/2022/12/us-mulls-scorched-earth-strate... US mulls scorched earth strategy for Taiwan US strategy to blow up Taiwan’s semiconductor fabs to deter China might do more harm than good The US is mulling disabling or destroying Taiwan’s semiconduct…
Always make it clear for your opponent that your worst-case scenario will result in severe blowback if at all possible. Then you can a) try to ensure that scenario never happens and b) mitigate the outcome or response if it does.
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146 MW on average is still more than this facility needs.
Not during the night and not when it is cloudy. Averages are vey bad numbers for something which is on 24/7.
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No, you would need a large storage facility as well. A nameplate capacity of 550 MW with a capacity factor of only 26% almost certainly means there are a lot of times when it isn't generating any power at all , or at least none to speak of.
Right, but if those align with the times where the plant is not used at all (night), does it matter? That being said, I have no idea what the normal operational schedules are for these types of facilities.
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This isn't onshoring - onshoring would be moving to Taiwan - this is the Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation.
This is onshoring - to the shores of a country whose national sporting league called The World Series . There is a distinctly USA centric view of the world :/)
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The highest costs in Semiconductor fabrication are the specialized machines needed. Most of them are at best dual sourced. Many are single sourced. The fact a technician in the US can make $100k when their counterpart in China would make $50k doesn't matter when the EUV Lithography machine is hundreds of millions of dollars.
Who makes those expensive machines? Are they made in-house by companies like TSMC? Or are they purchased from others? And whats the geopolitics of that part of the supply chain (made in taiwan? made in china? made elsewhere?)
The costs are probably driven by extreme engineering requirements (temperature, pressure, corrosive chemicals, low contamination) and R&D costs to meet these requirements. The production volumes are not high either. Its not like they are building millions of these machines.
Asianometry on YouTube is a good source for this kind of topic.
The geopolitical context for this is wild; and in some ways is Taiwan selling its crown jewels and sacrifying its strategic relevance for unclear returns. https://asiatimes.com/2022/12/us-mulls-scorched-earth-strate... US mulls scorched earth strategy for Taiwan US strategy to blow up Taiwan’s semiconductor fabs to deter China might do more harm than good The US is mulling disabling or destroying Taiwan’s semiconduct…
The "mulls scorched earth strategy" part is completely solid game theory. Always make it clear for your opponent that your worst-case scenario will result in severe blowback if at all possible. Then you can a) try to ensure that scenario never happens and b) mitigate the outcome or response if it does.
For example, during the cold war, the US always had far, far fewer troops in Europe than the Soviet Union, and didn't have anywhere near the sea-lift capacity to transport the quantities of men and material necessary across the Atlantic to defend Europe. But we had nukes, and so we had plans to nuke Germany in case Warsaw pact forces invaded and made sure the Soviets understood those plans. Nuclear weapons nullified the escalatory dominance of the Soviet Union in a land war against NATO.
Now, the question is, who has escalatory dominance in Taiwan? It's clearly China. All the US can do is blow up the chip fabs, but China wants Taiwan for reasons that have nothing to do with the chip fabs, and would still want Taiwan even if it had no chip fabs. Even if it had no industry or population whatsoever. Whereas the US only wants Taiwan for the fabs, which China can destroy whenever it wants.
Unless we actually put nukes in Taiwan or commit to defending Taiwan with nukes, China will have escalatory dominance and not the U.S.
So that leads us to the second question -- what happens when you threaten to escalate but the other side has escalatory dominance? Then you end up making the situation worse, because you are in effect provoking the other side to begin a chain of events in which you are guaranteed to lose. That is not solid game theory.
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?
While water does seem like a serious issue, it also feels very Monday-morning quarterback: of course the largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world knows that Arizona has low rainfall. What I'm curious about is what makes Arizona preferable over, say, Idaho or Tennessee. Proximity to California? No freeze-thaw cycle? Solar energy?