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AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

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Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#21

Post by reliabilityguy »

RUnconcerned wrote: post #13
dangus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they are, it’s a positive. It is potentially worth pointing out that container ships going back to Asia are basically empty, so that return shipping trip is basically free.

Shipping the chips back to Taiwan to be packaged so they can then be shipped back to the United States for sale is a positive? What are you talking about?

Shipping is a temporary measure.

What’s positive is that we have state of the art domestic manufacturing with potential to onshore more and more of the required supply chains, building/educating local expertise, etc etc.

It’s silly to focus on shipping.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#22

Post by seangrogg »

A 5-20% markup on CPUs isn't the worst thing, but those still need a mobo to socket into and as far as I'm aware we still don't have much capability on the availability of boards. Are there any companies that are spinning up board production, or even just broader consumer electronics in general (arduinos, pis, general controllers and the like)?

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#23

Post by atonse »

dhruvmittal wrote: post #12

Honestly I thought they might be even more expensive than this 5%-20%, it's good to see that it's not a 100% more expensive. While it seems we've learned some lessons about supply chain resiliency, I'm sure there's a number that puts the brakes on this thing.

Probably because they aren’t human labor intensive and most of the costs of fabs are in construction and equipment, and almost all of the expensive lithography stuff comes from ASML (a Dutch company)?

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#25

Post by OtherShrezzing »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #20
dangus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they are, it’s a positive. It is potentially worth pointing out that container ships going back to Asia are basically empty, so that return shipping trip is basically free.

I wonder if chips are literally shipped or just flown. The extra transport cost might not matter for these precious chips. A tray full of Epyc or Blackwell dies is an insane number of potential revenue per kg.

Leading-edge chips are flown almost every time. The opportunity cost of 6 weeks at sea is too high for a chip which can't flow out of the fab fast enough to meet demand.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#26

Post by chazeon »

seangrogg wrote: post #22

A 5-20% markup on CPUs isn't the worst thing, but those still need a mobo to socket into and as far as I'm aware we still don't have much capability on the availability of boards. Are there any companies that are spinning up board production, or even just broader consumer electronics in general (arduinos, pis, general controllers and the like)?

Boards are low tech and low profit, does American company and workers even want to do it?

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#28

Post by xxs »

cheschire wrote: post #19
cm2012 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ocean shipping is very very cheap. Less cost in money and energy to ship a chip across the ocean than for you to drive to best buy to buy the phone its in.

Significantly more pollution though, right?

Sea freight is the least polluting one - due to the extreme amount of cargo. Air is expensive and very pollutant.

However, talking about chips that are hundreds of watts each the pollution produced by them is a lot higher than any transport.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#29

Post by mort96 »

RUnconcerned wrote: post #13
dangus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they are, it’s a positive. It is potentially worth pointing out that container ships going back to Asia are basically empty, so that return shipping trip is basically free.

Shipping the chips back to Taiwan to be packaged so they can then be shipped back to the United States for sale is a positive? What are you talking about?

You can't go all the way in one step. Having built domestic chip capacity is positive for the US, even if domestic packaging capacity isn't there yet. It's obviously not a desirable situation long term.

Re: AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

#30

Post by Scoundreller »

dangus wrote: post #11
gtirloni wrote: post #9

Aren't they shipping the chips back to Taiwan for packaging anyway?

Even if they are, it’s a positive. It is potentially worth pointing out that container ships going back to Asia are basically empty, so that return shipping trip is basically free.

I wouldn’t be surprised if air cargo works the same way: outward loads from Asia subsidize inward loads.
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