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Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

tomshardware.com

171–180 of 499 posts

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

996..? doesn't fit into weeks, months or years

Why would they require these hours? In the U.S. I think they would need to pay time and a half for anything north of 40-hours. Seems like it would be cheaper to hire more workers and not force the overtime. Then they might be able to increase the salary some. Everyone wins except the people who are willing to sacrifice the time for time and a half pay.

AIUI almost all salaried employees are exempt from overtime pay in the US.

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a great victory for American industry... the future is to bring workers from Taiwan with skills and willingness to receive a fraction of US salaries.

This solves for the US national security issue; in the event of war between China and Taiwan (and a possible proxy war with US), Taiwan immigration would qualify for asylum.

Would that be the thing that Trump says he wants to stop on day one? Those asylum-seekers? The Trump who is inviting Xi to his inauguration?

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spoke to a Taiwanese person and apparently the salaries there are actually quite good, even by western standards (normal ones; not SF). The downside is they have very very long hours (996, barely any holiday, etc.).

It's also highly-skilled, yet very boring work. The way it was described to me is that every major piece of equipment has a PhD assigned to it and their job is basically to babysit the machine and troubleshoot when things go wrong. US PhDs typically have other options and would consider this sort of work a waste of their time.

> every major piece of equipment has a PhD assigned to it and their job is basically to babysit the machine and troubleshoot when things go wrong

This works in Taiwan. It doesn’t in America. The Taiwanese workers will help transfer knowledge to American workers; it will be the joint responsibility of them both to come up with how those processes are adapted for American preferences. (Probably more automation, rotation between machines or possibly even not being under TSMC.)

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#174
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind the plant they are talking about is in AZ, where median wages and cost of living are generally lower than California.

Medium individual income in AZ is ~37k. I'm not sure how many Americans would give up a 40hour/week job for a 996 that pays 13k more.

AZ minimum wage is 14.70. If it was 996 and you somehow only got straight time for working 72h a week, it would pay 55000. Assuming there's no overtime exemption it would be $67000. I'm pretty sure it's not a 996 in AZ.

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that definition, war is extremely productive

It is though, more value is generated by the MIC than is put in and war has yet to ruin the productive capacity of the United States. The societal ills of this are why it’s popular to call America an evil empire

Ah the broken window fallacy.

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

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a great victory for American industry... the future is to bring workers from Taiwan with skills and willingness to receive a fraction of US salaries.

What are your realistic options? Say TSMC pays supper competitive US salaries to attract US-only labor, higher labor cost which is causing the end product to be more expensive, which makes that fab uncompetitive globally causing Apple to go buying from someone else and TSMC either choosing leaving the US or going bust eating the losses. You can't compete with lower-wage countries in a globalized world with no trade b…

Rather, sounds like paying the real costs rather than playing games to avoid that.

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#177
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind the plant they are talking about is in AZ, where median wages and cost of living are generally lower than California.

Medium individual income in AZ is ~37k. I'm not sure how many Americans would give up a 40hour/week job for a 996 that pays 13k more.

Why does it have to be 996 at TSMC in the US?

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#178

Make America good at slave labor again basically

Maybe this is the discussion worth having. Taiwanese engineers competed to get into TSMC. Their management practically lived in the factory to solve production issues when needed. The local workers in the Arizona factory said the pay was pretty good per another comment. Yet somehow we thought that we were slaving the labors? What is the fundamental difference here? Personally, if I were a worker who could find just a…

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Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#179
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More automation. Given the chemicals involved in fab work in general I expect this fab is very automated just for safety reasons and so very few employees are needed. Thus the cost of labor isn't a significant factor.

>Thus the cost of labor isn't a significant factor. It is. Semi fabs aren't fire-and-forget. You need highly skilled people to constantly check and tweak all the operations in a feedback loop 24/7 and every hour of downtime due to any issue means millions lost. You hire the right people to minimize that downtime while also keeping the costs in check. It's a delicate balance.

What % of the all fab costs over two decades are the people? Including the cost of building it and modernization

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's first step. you gotta do something to bootstrap, solve chicken-egg problem. From what I can see around me, the "made in america" is a no joke branding. a lot of pppl going tobuyjust because of that. and may even consider it as social status and their policial support.

The Purism Librem 5 phone is very expensive and unfortunately not that popular. Haven't met anyone who uses one yet

That’s very niche. Very few people in the general population will have heard of them.

Apple is well known. If they say the new iPhone SE 7 has a Made In America chip, people will know about it to buy if they care about that.

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