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

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

#191

Post by byw »

bugglebeetle wrote: post #128
byw wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost of living can be a lot lower in Taiwan, if your property is already paid off. Unfortunately housing is super overpriced, due to the Asian mentality resulting in high property ownership. Real estate is always the monkey wrench in the gears of capitalism because of high necessity yet limited supply.

> Unfortunately housing is super overpriced, due to the Asian mentality resulting in high property ownership. I have no clue what this means and in countries like Japan, housing is a depreciating asset vs. an investment, so…?

More so in the Chinese-speaking world and South Korea because the industrialization/urbanization is more recent, so there's rising demand in the urban areas with high population growth, resulting in high prices.

Japan's urbanization stopped long ago, and it's not taking in immigrants fast enough, so the urban areas have stopped growing.

The mentality refers to East Asia's deep agrarian root that places high value on owning land that can be passed down the generations (the alternative was often quasi-servile farm labour that locks families in poverty). Property purchases are usually multi-generational efforts, so families can generally take the brunt of overinflated prices.

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

#192

Post by bee_rider »

whatever1 wrote: post #163
elzbardico wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because is fucking undproductive, useless and detrimental to society. Advertising is a cancer, an immoral activity.

Setting aside the moral aspect which is highly subjective and seems to have a price tag (for example tech CEOs quit any sort of morals for a good paycheck), the productivity question is a measurable one. Aka does advertising as a whole increase total consumption or is it a zero sum game (aka send bigger slice of the same pie to a competitor) From what I know advertising does increase total demand aka more things/serv…

Some of the demand induced by ads is useful; people becoming aware of stuff they didn’t know exists, and finding that it provides a useful service for them.

But most ads are trying to convince you to buy their brand’s version of a product that you already know of, or (even worse!) a new version of an old product. Any demand induced there is just wastefulness.

If Amazon can figure out that I’m interested in headphones, I already know more actual information about headphones than their ads will give me.

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

#193

Post by bear141 »

jonas21 wrote: post #133
IshKebab wrote: post #111

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.

I know several people working as customer engineers in a fab based in America. They are very much not PhD‘s or even mechanical engineers.

They are each assigned one tool to maintain as you said. They each make around 100K and 3 12hr days per week.

They were working in the automotive industry before these jobs. Sounds pretty damn good to me, but I suppose that’s one reason American companies cannot compete with TSMC.

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

#194

Post by copperx »

nimish wrote: post #107
digdigdag wrote: post #35

- Over 50% of the workers flew in from Taiwan to work on this plant and make these chips. - The chips still need to fly back to Taiwan to be packaged as there are no facilities here with such a capability. Made in america is a hard sell. But at least showing the glaring STEM field gap in the U.S. is a start to finally addressing the brain drain.

> glaring STEM field gap in the U.S. There is no such gap. The jobs do not pay Americans enough to tolerate the conditions.

And the few people who tolerate such conditions are already employed by game development companies.

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

#195

Post by amelius »

baxtr wrote: post #186
digdigdag wrote: post #35

- Over 50% of the workers flew in from Taiwan to work on this plant and make these chips. - The chips still need to fly back to Taiwan to be packaged as there are no facilities here with such a capability. Made in america is a hard sell. But at least showing the glaring STEM field gap in the U.S. is a start to finally addressing the brain drain.

Re the first point: Why do you think it is so difficult to transfer chip production off Taiwan? I don’t think this is about salaries. Nor is this about facilities. This is about process know-how. And it’s currently not available outside of Taiwan. I’m glad we’re finally starting to transfer knowledge. It will take a couple more years.

How do we know there is knowledge transfer?

If I were Taiwan/TSMC, I would protect my trade secrets as if my life depended on it (which may actually be true).

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

#196

Post by throwaway-blaze »

They'll be flown from the US to Taiwan for packaging, at least until packaging services exist here. Then they'll be flown to China, Southeast Asia, India, or possibly Brazil for final assembly into an iPhone or computer, at least until lower cost assembly plants are built here or someplace cheaper like Mexico.

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

#197

Post by [deleted] »

amelius wrote: post #195
baxtr wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re the first point: Why do you think it is so difficult to transfer chip production off Taiwan? I don’t think this is about salaries. Nor is this about facilities. This is about process know-how. And it’s currently not available outside of Taiwan. I’m glad we’re finally starting to transfer knowledge. It will take a couple more years.

How do we know there is knowledge transfer? If I were Taiwan/TSMC, I would protect my trade secrets as if my life depended on it (which may actually be true).

[deleted]

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

#198

Post by throwaway-blaze »

selimthegrim wrote: post #172
smileysteve wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You can't really be this obtuse. Asylum of high-skilled silicon workers from an ally under invasion isn't nearly the same thing as the asylum being granted over the last 4 years to anyone who could download the CBP One app.

Trump is inviting Xi as a troll / show of power.

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

#199

Post by LittleTimothy »

pjc50 wrote: post #182
bee_rider wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a lot of US STEM grads have their skills wasted in unproductive fields, like the ad business.

If it's so unproductive why does it pay so well?

I think about this quite often. What I'd really like to study at some point is: How much more does the receptionist at JP Morgan's head quarters make than the receptionist at Walmart's headquarters?

Because fundamentally I think there is an effect where the people in proximity to lots of money earn more. Obviously the Walmart receptionist and the JP Morgan receptionist are doing basically the same job. But the JP Morgan receptionist is surrounded by people who wouldn't think twice about doubling the receptionists pay and I would imagine that has a significant effect.

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

#200

Post by binarymax »

programmertote wrote: post #185
digdigdag wrote: post #35

- Over 50% of the workers flew in from Taiwan to work on this plant and make these chips. - The chips still need to fly back to Taiwan to be packaged as there are no facilities here with such a capability. Made in america is a hard sell. But at least showing the glaring STEM field gap in the U.S. is a start to finally addressing the brain drain.

The 'brain drain' (as you refer to it) stems from intelligent/motivated grads in the US for the last two decades (at least) pursuing more lucrative fields like finance and adtech (re: Google, Facebook). Or some pursue management route (attending big MBA schools and switching to management roles where they climb corporate ladder). In other words, there are not a lot of college/grad students who want to pursue traditio…

Definitely true, as there weren’t EE jobs here. Now that we’re moving chip manufacturing back, and with programming job market being saturated, perhaps it will shift and EE will pay more due to being more in demand
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