21–30 of 142 posts
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I don’t think the mix of engineers we’ve been producing is right for this. We need a whole generation of folks at a higher hardware:software ratio. Check back in a decade to see if we’ve seriously started.
Does America need to produce the talent or can they import it?
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I left the semiconductor industry 30 years ago but back then every company had "a fab that hasn't been completed in Arizona" that people would talk fondly of perhaps opening one day if business picks up. Seems like not much has changed.
I always thought it was funny that for my entire lifetime people have talked about Arizona being perfect for fabs because it's dry there and not subject to tremors meanwhile Taiwan where 60% of all chips are produced (and 90% of the most sensitive ones) is tropical and has earthquakes fairly frequently.
Is America's semiconductor boom real? How much capacity are we building? What processes? What types of semiconductor products? High end? Middle? Low? How much capacity? Can we substitute or replace Taiwan in the future in the event of conflict? I can't watch the video right now, but I'm curious about its claims. Or any additional HNer context.
It's investigative on-the-ground reporting of the TSMC plant in Arizona, and the recent SemiCon West conference.
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Does America need to produce the talent or can they import it?
The talent is already here, the employers just need to pay better.
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The talent is already here, the employers just need to pay better.
And attract them away from what? What are these skilled people doing? Does a photolithography skill set enable you to moonlight at some other gig such that they're here and keeping their skills fresh and we're just not noticing?
To take your photolithography example though, I know someone who went litho tool owner -> camera team at Apple -> Meta reality labs. FAANGs want semiconductor process engineers just so they can spend all day yelling at underpaid Asian vendor semiconductor process engineers who are doing the actual work.
What's TSMC's headcount down in AZ? I ask because Intel has laid off or retired around 40k employees in the past two years and they still need to cut a little more to please the new boss.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always thought it was funny that for my entire lifetime people have talked about Arizona being perfect for fabs because it's dry there and not subject to tremors meanwhile Taiwan where 60% of all chips are produced (and 90% of the most sensitive ones) is tropical and has earthquakes fairly frequently.
I can only imagine what the Taiwanese can do in Arizona. Truly a synergy for the ages.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think the mix of engineers we’ve been producing is right for this. We need a whole generation of folks at a higher hardware:software ratio. Check back in a decade to see if we’ve seriously started.
Does America need to produce the talent or can they import it?