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

tomshardware.com

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

#281

Post by hnfong »

tester756 wrote: post #179
Cumpiler69 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

All money ultimately goes to labor. Rocks don't accept cash as payment.

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

#282

Post by School-Cotton »

CPLX wrote: post #221
m348e912 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this make any financial sense?

These are literally microchips. Tens of thousands of dollars of value in each gram. Shipping cost is fundamentally irrelevant, you can put $100MM worth on a direct flight and have room left over for your family and friends.

Your overall point is probably right, but "tens of thousands of dollars of value in each gram" seems like an exaggeration. How much does one CPU weigh?

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

#283

Post by concordDance »

RobotToaster wrote: post #138
kobalsky wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the internet ad industry is raking billions from all over the world into the USA, how can you call that unproductive.

It's parasitic, not productive. A tick can contain a lot of blood, doesn't mean it produced that blood.

Ticks do not require the consent of the host to drink blood.

Things like Google and Facebook cannot be parasitic, every dollar gained is a voluntary exchange with no threats. People choose to use Google and gain something from doing so.

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

#284

Post by tehjoker »

tombert wrote: post #232
CPLX wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. It's just bullshit, propaganda. There's simply no real reason we can't have a deep and robust manufacturing base in America. Well except for the fact that some specific people made a whole lot of money while letting it fall apart, and have paid for decades of media relations trying to convince everyone otherwise. If you're reading this statement I just made and want to instinctively disagree with me, start by…

> Why do you think America can't compete with China, for example, over the long term? Not saying I necessarily disagree with you, but just to give an example, the US has considerably better labor practices and labor laws than China. It's not perfect but there are protections about making sure people are paid what they're owed, how much you are allowed to work someone, safety protocols, etc. All of those things could,…

Foxconn is a Taiwanese company. China's revolution is about delivering for workers. I don't get where ppl are coming up with "slave labor" when it is American allies possibly operating in China's SEZ that are doing the bad stuff.

It's also simultaneously sanctimonious sounding when development is very difficult and America sacrificed three generations to industrial capitalism, stole half a continent of land, and used slaves to do our own development depending on how you count inputs to the process.

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

#285

Post by concordDance »

bee_rider wrote: post #94
kobalsky wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the internet ad industry is raking billions from all over the world into the USA, how can you call that unproductive.

It doesn’t produce any things.

You cannot be serious it. All of the ad tech companies produce a service people want otherwise no one would use them!

There may be other services that might be better if not for network effects, but it is trivially true that a search engine is better for most people than no search engine at all. And that is what is produced.

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

#286

Post by ecshafer »

bnetd wrote: post #275
ecshafer wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone I know that was in EE falls into two camps basically: 1. Became web developers 2. Work in Defense or some other regulated industry that has protections from being outsourced to China

Is there a somber write-up anywhere as to the future of EE in the West?

I don't know if there is a somber write up. But from what I have heard from a lot of people, is that jobs designing and making say PCB boards and electronic circuits just don't exist. They are all in Shenzhen. Those American firms that have American engineers still, seem to all involve flying to those factories to help fix problems, and are dead end jobs. At least thats my impression.

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

#287

Post by maxglute »

xeromal wrote: post #64
coconut08 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

where did you get that number from

There's a window where China will have it max capability to invade for the next few years. After that their population is going to start shrinking and every year will be harder than the next to invade.

Except TW TFR even worse than PRC TFR, and ultimately scale effect takes over - PRC with crippled TFR still generates about as much male new borns per year than TW has men 18-40 total. PRC still on trend to generate 3-4x more MEN than US projected to add population per year, incidentally around the same as active duty military... having enough bodies is not going to be an issue for decades. Having enough nukes is.

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

#288

Post by upcoming-sesame »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #222
programmertote wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Alternate explanation: electrical engineering is actually really hard and some parts of computer science look comparatively easier. Plus coding is startups is cool, EE is still nerd as in Nerd.

I studied both, can't say for sure EE was harder. Some courses in computer science were extremely hard for me (complexity, discrete math) and some courses in EE engineering were equally hard (most of the physics courses, analog circuits and more)

Both degrees can be made super hard, as hard as the school desires them to be...

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

#289

Post by BlackSwanMan »

whateveracct wrote: post #247
rhubarbtree wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternate explanation: electrical engineering is actually really hard and some parts of computer science look comparatively easier. Plus coding is startups is cool, EE is still nerd as in Nerd.

Nah I did EE and then CompE (which was just replacing some later EE classes with hardware design stuff) and EE is not "actually really hard" - although people like to put it on a pedastel.

[dead]

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

#290

Post by kube-system »

duskwuff wrote: post #231
d3nj4l wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is only accurate inasmuch as most salaried employees are overtime exempt for other reasons (e.g. because they are executive or administrative professionals). Paying employees a salary, on its own, does not make them overtime exempt. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17a-overtime

Is there ever a situation where it makes sense to pay fixed salaries to non-exempt employees?
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