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

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

#211

Post by mikeyouse »

adam_arthur wrote: post #182
mikeyouse wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how arm chair engineers have solved the water crises in the south by suggesting people "just build pipelines!". Just the lack of understanding of like 15 different aspects of the problem with that idea and the confidence to defend regardless is kind of amazing.

You're right, piping water from point A to B is perhaps one of humanity's most challenging problems. What's really sad is that so many people are brainless enough to believe that this is not possible to solve, and easily so, once incentives drive it forward. Your comment does remind me of many of the 0.1-0.5x engineers I've worked with though. We need hundreds of people to maintain a mobile client, it's not possible…

I'm sure those "0.1x" engineers found you a treat to work with. One of the more impressive combinations of abject ignorance and misplaced confidence I've seen in a long time. Believe it or not, but there are indeed people who've designed large volume water piping systems on Hackernews..

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

#212

Post by pvarangot »

totalZero wrote: post #99
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.

ASU has a good optical engineering program too, electricity is no the only variable.

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

#213

Post by mistrial9 »

jupp0r wrote: post #35
klelatti wrote: post #20

I'm interested in the financial aspect of this. Assuming US Fabs are more expensive than in Taiwan that then must mean lower margins or higher prices. I wonder if Apple for example has said that they are prepared to pay a premium to ensure diversity of supply?

Apple doesn't care that much about cost of chips. Their margins are wide enough that even a substantial increase in chip pricing won't significantly impact their profits.

this is profoundly wrong; Apple and other hardware brands have not only practiced material source cost discipline to the extreme, but their internal culture promoting and strengthening that resulted in a nerdy work-a-holic with no life to become CEO of one of the largest companies in the world, specifically because he would, and did, put whole companies out of business with suffocating negotiating tactics over portions of a penny. This is exactly in the pattern of Dell Inc, where the saying about commercial supply partners was "those who do business with Dell, go out of business"

source- electronics recycling business in Silicon Valley for a few years

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

#214

Post by tooltalk »

GeekyBear wrote: post #39
jason-phillips wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPhone SoC was made by Samsung in Austin for many years, so this has already happened. At the time everyone assumed that Apple wanted to diversify away from Samsung for other reasons which were not necessarily financial.

> At the time everyone assumed that Apple wanted to diversify away from Samsung for other reasons which were not necessarily financial. When Apple was dual sourcing chips from both Samsung and TSMC, the Samsung version of the A9 had a ~10% reduction in battery life compared to the TSMC version, although the performance was nearly identical otherwise. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/iphone-6s-a9-samsung-vs-ts...

dual sourcing? I thought TSMC's 16nm was just transitional to wean off Samsung's US operation completely in favor of TSMC in Taiwan. Did Apple "dual-source" at Samsung/TSMC 10nm? or 7nm?

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

#215

Post by j_walter »

totalZero wrote: post #162
CydeWeys wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Large semiconductor fabs use as much as 100 megawatt-hours of power each hour Ooof, this kind of writing where the author doesn't understand units just gets my goat. Just say it uses 100 MW! Geez.

I prefer it as written, because the additional information of timeframe for measurement indicates that the author is not talking about momentary/peak power.

Which indicates the author knows nothing about how semiconductor fabs use power. Power usage is stable with a few percent...and 100MW is really on the low side for this fab. If all 6 phases are completed as they are expected to be...it's more like 250MW.

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

#216

Post by tooltalk »

klelatti wrote: post #25
jason-phillips wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPhone SoC was made by Samsung in Austin for many years, so this has already happened. At the time everyone assumed that Apple wanted to diversify away from Samsung for other reasons which were not necessarily financial.

I bet the Samsung SoC's were a lot cheaper though as less sophisticated. Samsung -> TSMC got them away from a competitor, possibly cheaper (US -> Taiwan) and onto better roadmap. This is quite different and possibly a further sign of Apple spending to diversify supply chains.

It was probably a bit cheaper, but Apple was Samsung's anchor customer since mid 2000's. I don't think Apple used Samsung's 10nm or 7nm -- ie, there was no "dual sourcing" or "diversifying" supply chains to speak of. I think Apple's move to TSMC was largley driven by Apple's China/Taiwan first outsourcing practices.

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

#217

Post by tooltalk »

jupp0r wrote: post #35
klelatti wrote: post #20

I'm interested in the financial aspect of this. Assuming US Fabs are more expensive than in Taiwan that then must mean lower margins or higher prices. I wonder if Apple for example has said that they are prepared to pay a premium to ensure diversity of supply?

Apple doesn't care that much about cost of chips. Their margins are wide enough that even a substantial increase in chip pricing won't significantly impact their profits.

Apple is known for squeezing their suppliers to last penny.

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

#218

Post by CamperBob2 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #195
totalZero wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> would make more sense to put the mega-fabs where electricity is cheapest in the Americas, and that certainly isn't Arizona Geologically stable. And at least for business, politically stable. Same reason Walt Disney is frozen in Phoenix [1]. [1] https://www.alcor.org/

Ah, the lesser-known Pascal's Wager business plan.

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

#219

Post by j_walter »

thehappypm wrote: post #167
Turing_Machine wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 550 MW "nameplate capacity" is peak. The capacity factor of 26.6% means that it actually only produces about 146 MW on average. Nuclear power plants generally have a capacity factor above 90%.

146 MW on average is still more than this facility needs.

Nope...once all phases are built they will be using ~250MW of power.

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

#220

Post by computah4eva »

totalZero wrote: post #122
thehappypm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your EIA source is for generation in the month of august only. Total solar generation in Arizona is much higher than that. Very roughy 1,500x nameplate capacity = total annual generation in Arizona. 5,600 mw capacity in 2021, 8,400,000 mwh annual generation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Arizona

All fabs have battery backup regardless of power source, although with solar you would need a much larger one indeed. Either way, the scale of solar power generation easily supports these new fabs.

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/generatorcosts/ Cost is ~1,65B per GW of solar. 30% subsidy from government = ~1.1B per GW to generate ~ 1,500,000 mwh. They’re dirt cheap. Unfortunately battery storage, while it exists at this level, is more in the range of 800M to be safe (1600 mwh of storage). https://www.tesla.com/megapack/design

So all power infrastructure would be less than 5% of the cost of the plant, and that’s overbuilding solar needs by 4x (meaning even on the crappiest day power wise you’ll have more than enough) and having 16 hours of backup power which is also overkill.

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