221–230 of 294 posts
I've been trying to build a habit lately of finding the primary source of news like this, especially since news agencies seem to be very hit or miss with whether they link to their primary source. So for whoever is interested, this is the original announcement by TSMC themselves: https://pr.tsmc.com/english/news/2977
Well that seems significant. Article says the chips in the 2nd fabs will be better than the first. And will meet all domestic US demand. Not sure what all that includes. I wonder how domestic the full supply chain is. If the US is relying on China for rare earth metals or something.
Chips primarily require silicon, which is not a rare-earth metal (it is rather abundant), but it takes a lot of expensive equipment and energy to purify it and slice it into wafers. TSMC currently sources their wafers from Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Germany and others: https://investor.tsmc.com/static/annualReports/2005/pic/E-3-... (edit: that PDF is out of date, but the wafer supplier list largely isn't)
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Do these plants not require tons of water?
Arizona has the reputation of being a desert, but in reality it is a state that is half-desert and half-mountain, and has a tons of water. Enough to waste on ubiquitous golf courses and alfalfa farms. There is a canal system taking the water from the mountains to the drier south where people live. But the population pressures are realigning who pays what for the water now, so I expect the alfalfa farms are going to g…
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The thing you don't mention is that Arizona is wasting other people's water -- nearly 40% is sourced from rivers originating in other mountainous states https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts
I don't mention it because it's not true. The idea that if a river originates in one state, then that state owns all the water from the river is not how ownership of river water works. And in America, rivers often form the border of states, so there are always competing claims about which state gets which percentage of the river. These are generally settled through treaties and agreements among states, and those agre…
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Do these plants not require tons of water?
from the wikipedia link - they use sewage/greywater for cooling: > The power plant evaporates the water from the treated sewage from several nearby cities and towns to provide the cooling of the steam that it produces.
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…
I think this completely bogus. Firstly, the geopolitical tension in the region isn't about to go off anytime soon -- Taiwan just elected pro-China KMT party last week.
Second, Taiwan is one of the largest investors in China. In fact, most of CCP's chip initiatives in China are spearheaded by Taiwan-expats (ie, ex-TSMC/UMC engineers) dreaming of striking rich in China. Take for instance Mong Sang Liang, a Berkeley PhD and former head of TSMC R&D, now co-CEO of SMIC in China.
Third, those fabs are both capex and opex intensive. These fabs are not self-healing perpetual machines -- those expensive equipments need constant babysitting by various foreign vendors just to ensure they are running 24x7. I doubt that Taiwanese would agree to such an extreme plan.
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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.
But it's only solid game theory if one side doesn't have escalatory dominance. 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 invad…
The reason I say I don't understand any of this is that the same reasoning should have applied to Russia. If they had spent a fraction of the effort and energy they've historically devoted to harming other countries on improving their own country instead, they would be way ahead of the game... yet they didn't, and don't show any indication of changing course.
Is the same irrational thinking present among China's leadership? If so -- and their pathological obsession with Taiwan certainly suggests that it is -- then things are really going to suck for everyone involved.
This + the recent news that Apple is planning to diversify production out of China (1) is hard not to read into regarding the US' view of where US/China relations are heading . . . any geopolitical armchair experts have a view? (1) https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-china-factory-protests-fo...
I guess this is TSMCs getaway if things will get sour with China.
Remember when Warren Buffet invested into TSMC and someone said he must know something we don't?
TSMC is upping their investment in the US, but I agree with Morris Chang that the US operation won't be as lucrative -- ie, thye won't be able to maintain 50+% profit margin. Further, TSMC really didn't have any competition in the last 2-3 nodes and Samsung was largely absent in 7/5/4nm, but Samsung is going mass production with 3nm GAA pretty soon and TSMC is going to have to put up a good fight to maintain their dominance.
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TSMC has had a license to print money for a while now given how huge ASML’s backlog is.
Is ASML even going to be able to meet the demand created by all these fabs opening up across the US (and rest of the world)? The stories I've heard about what it takes to build a single machine would suggest to me that scaling up would be a huge feat and I could only imagine take years to accomplish. Then again, perhaps TSMC and their peers had predicted this kind of growth and already placed their orders long ago?