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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

#371
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even brain drain, America's dominance came from the fact that for nearly a century the brightest people in the world were willing to give up everything to come here. That is no longer the case. Today's Einstein probably isn't going to immigrate here.

Einstein didn't emigrate to get rich, he emigrated because the Nazi's took over Germany. Germany had the best universities in the world before they took the path of self-destruction. So that was a second, separate event that helped America. America stills gets a lot of immigrants.

Well, hopefully nothing like that happens in the US - that is to say an ideologue that ruins a country by ostracizing and then removing skilled immigrants or deters them from coming in the first place. Perhaps we can examine some recent large scale survey data to determine if the US populace gives a shit.

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

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even brain drain, America's dominance came from the fact that for nearly a century the brightest people in the world were willing to give up everything to come here. That is no longer the case. Today's Einstein probably isn't going to immigrate here.

That is still the case and no where else is even close. https://www.statista.com/chart/30815/top-destination-countri... https://news.gallup.com/poll/468218/nearly-900-million-world...

Does a want to immigrate necessarily mean that the US is the most favoured destination for the world’s intellectuals?

It might, but how do you measure that?

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

#373

Off topic... Taiwan also machines and heat treats some of the best cutlery steels in the world. Taichung City is famous for this. This is not as delicate a process as producing CPU chips, but it is hard to get right consistently. Most all major cutlery companies have product lines that are produced solely in Taiwan (Spyderco, Cold Steel, Demko, etc.) It would be nice to see Taiwanese steel industy move some productio…

Sorry, don't think that's a national security priority.

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

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even brain drain, America's dominance came from the fact that for nearly a century the brightest people in the world were willing to give up everything to come here. That is no longer the case. Today's Einstein probably isn't going to immigrate here.

The US didn't win World War 2, break the sound barrier, or put a man on the Moon only or primarily due to immigrant workers. We scoured the country's public school system for the sharpest young minds, sent them to institutions of higher learning with rigorous curricula, and found them positions in industry, government, or the military which made good use of their talent. Fetishizing the "nation of immigrants" narrati…

> The US didn't win World War 2

The USSR would like a word.

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

#375

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

I'm a EE and had no problem finding a job and neither did any of my classmates in my EE program (early 2010s). I also didn't exactly go to anything approaching MIT, but it was an engineering school and I had a decent GPA. Particularly, there are a lot of well paying jobs in power systems with good work life balance. We have an energy transition going on, so that helps. Having an internship probably helped me too. I a…

Similar qualifications here, but no internships. Couldn't find anything after grad school in the early 2010s (and still nothing in the mid 2010s after trying again). Went into telcom and I'm a happy little coder now. Nice to actually feel appreciated in this field compared to EE where it felt like I was always working my butt off for scraps.

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

#376
post #221
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.

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/dsv-unveils-details-for-ne...

^certainly there's activity in that space

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

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, rotatio…

I mean, that was exactly the way the job was described when I interviewed at Intel for a process engineer, and everyone doing the same job was at the time a PhD according to the interviewer. Did it change? Being on call 24/7 to troubleshoot million dollar pieces of equipment sounded like a poor life choice, so I didn't take it. But Intel also hasn't exactly done great since then...

> was exactly the way the job was described when I interviewed at Intel for a process engineer, and everyone doing the same job was at the time a PhD according to the interviewer. Did it change?

Not sure. What has changed in recent years is the quality of industrial automation, particularly in semiconductors.

I'm unconvinced the only way to make these chips is for highly-trained engineers to caramelise onions on the stove. (At the very least, they could be allowed time to conduct experiments into new production methods, et cetera. Similar to how universities let professors do research in exchange for putting in teaching hours.)

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

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The way it was described to me is that every major piece of equipment has a PhD assigned to it... did they mean that literally or just that an expert was assigned to it? What kind of PhD would even be relevant to maintaining machinery on an assembly line? Perhaps a PhD on the operations of that specific machine but even then, the person's knowledge would be so focused on whatever physics/chemistry/science is being…

A PhD is really just a project in an academic setting.

There’s likely little real world difference in capability between someone with first class honours and a year in industry, than first class honours plus a PhD.

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

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is, those jobs in emerging markets were desirable compared to other jobs (for pay and opportunities), which helped with talent growth. These factory jobs, in comparison to other jobs, aren’t that desirable.

I'd think otherwise and imagine these kinds of high-tech chip factory jobs are quite desirable.

Fairly bad locations, average pay. It's not like the newer Japanese towns chip towns where you can get on a train and be in a proper city (ex. 40 min ride from Chitose to Sapporo), with okay pay as well. If pay was really good, it wouldn't matter, but selling this dream to a university grad is a bit hard in the US. I still hope it pans out though, cause NA manufacturing revival would be great. It's just the odds are against it so far.

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

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even brain drain, America's dominance came from the fact that for nearly a century the brightest people in the world were willing to give up everything to come here. That is no longer the case. Today's Einstein probably isn't going to immigrate here.

Today's Einstein ARE immigrating to US for such positions as finance, adtech and management, ones that explicitly produce no physical artifact.

Unfortunately, I spent more than a trivial amount of time wondering what an Einstein of Adtech looks like.
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