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

tomshardware.com

451–460 of 499 posts

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

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your entire premise is ridiculous. Advertising is nothing more than bringing attention to your product to your target customer. And without this so called immoral behaviour I fail to see how any business works.

That's when you call any type of promotion advertising, in that case, sure, there is some innocent advertising. People here are (obviously) talking about 'modern' advertising which is what google/fb etc are doing which is just plain bad for everyone except for Google shareholders (I would imagine, besides money, it's not even good for the people working on it as it must do your head in to be a brilliant engineer and…

> tech so miserable and foul as that

The tech is fine. The toxic parts (data collection, spying, etc) aren't even in the ad tech divisions and aren't done for advertising purposes.

They collect data because it gives them bargaining power and a seat at the table with state-level actors.

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

#452
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Chip design/semiconductors/etc. have been a dead end in the US for 30+ years, but EE is a broad field and other specialties like RF/power systems/anything defense related are still in high demand. An EE with a PE will have an infinitely easier time getting a job working at a utility or engineering firm than any software developer these days to be honest.

Plenty of chip design done in the US

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

#453

- 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.

I have no specific info regarding this plant, but for anyone who never experienced this: flying in people from other plants at the starts (and all 3rd party vendors for a hypercare phase at launch) seems pretty normal.

If they have to keep staffing it that way, that's different.

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

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But not for the hardware that powers the white collar. China is taking those.

Exactly. Something is penalizing or inhibiting manufacturing in developed countries. That something is just regular progression on the ladder of classical infinitely extending three-sector model[1] and gradual obsolescence of its lower rungs, but that is problematic, and without healthy preceding sectors for each, it's just a measuring contest being held in a skydiving.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_sector

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

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fetishizing the "nation of immigrants" narrative at the expensive of the native-born Americans who actually built most of this country's prosperity is, at best, ahistorical. Most of those native-born Americans were the children or grandchildren of immigrants.

What do you think a nation is? Is it a sports team or economic zone that hands out name tags to whoever steps off the boat with the right attitude? Or is it a specific group of people in a specific place with a shared language, lineage, culture, history, faith, and common destiny? I submit to you that it's the latter, and no empire nor state organized as the former can endure.

> Or is it a specific group of people in a specific place with a shared language, lineage, culture, history, faith, and common destiny?

I'm American, so I've never lived in this kind of nation.

> no empire nor state organized as the former can endure.

Looking at many of the longer-lived nations and empires of the past—having a shared language, lineage, culture, history, faith, common destiny? They had none of those. They were a conglomeration of people speaking different languages, from different lineages, with different cultures, different histories, and practicing different faiths.

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

#456
post #329
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Limited to non existent jobs. Not much else to say, the jobs like so many others have been exported. Taiwan and China being the electronics and manufacturing centers means design has steadily moved as well. Ask any board house in the west how things are going, the ones that are left that is.

It would help if they didn't charge $50 for a single raw PCB in low quantity when I can have the same board not just made, but also assembled in China for a fraction of that, shipping included. Literally.

I've often wondered if that's some kind of industry inertia issue, or if there's some underlying additional cost to build in the US.

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

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah the broken window fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

No actually, that's about the opportunity cost of war. There's a left-wing argument I frequently see that the US finds wars to increase profitability but I'm talking about the propping up of firms to keep the industrial capacity ready. It is not the most productive use of capital, but it is productive.

Ready for what? War with China or Russia? Do you really think multibillion dollar aircraft carriers are what would win that war?

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

#458
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Limited to non existent jobs. Not much else to say, the jobs like so many others have been exported. Taiwan and China being the electronics and manufacturing centers means design has steadily moved as well. Ask any board house in the west how things are going, the ones that are left that is.

It would help if they didn't charge $50 for a single raw PCB in low quantity when I can have the same board not just made, but also assembled in China for a fraction of that, shipping included. Literally. I've often wondered if that's some kind of industry inertia issue, or if there's some underlying additional cost to build in the US.

People here cost a little more. No one here does quite the volume jlcpcb likely does. Perhaps there’s some artificial market factor as well like CCP tends to weigh some scales. There’s board assembly machines made in china as well likely further reducing the cost to build out assembly lines. Perhaps cheaper sources of basic materials like copper.

Likely multitudes of factors at play all of them in favor of China

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

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what's the alternative? Live in some poor country with a happy and contented existence? Fuck no, I want money: happiness is for suckers

You have the metaphor backwards. Where do you go if you're a talented American and your own country continually does not want to pay for your talent? It's the brain drain out of the US to worry about, not the influx of immigration.

> Where do you go if you're a talented American and your own country continually does not want to pay for your talent?

China is the only country that pays even remotely competitively. Yes, even including all the nice benefits of living in a european welfare state, yes including the other anglo colonies.

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

#460
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would help if they didn't charge $50 for a single raw PCB in low quantity when I can have the same board not just made, but also assembled in China for a fraction of that, shipping included. Literally. I've often wondered if that's some kind of industry inertia issue, or if there's some underlying additional cost to build in the US.

People here cost a little more. No one here does quite the volume jlcpcb likely does. Perhaps there’s some artificial market factor as well like CCP tends to weigh some scales. There’s board assembly machines made in china as well likely further reducing the cost to build out assembly lines. Perhaps cheaper sources of basic materials like copper. Likely multitudes of factors at play all of them in favor of China

I could buy that to some degree, but not to the current insane level of price disparity.

PCB production should be one of those things that is or can be mostly automated if it isn't already. Assembly is definitely already a mostly automated process. This is all existing tech. Thus the cost differential doesn't seem justifiable.

I have to think that this is very much "build it and they will come" territory if you can get within 1.5x to 3x the price, so it continues to boggle my mind that nobody has managed to make it happen.

The only blocker I can truly identify is the magnitude of the initial investment. That doesn't explain why the prices at domestic board houses seem to have remained pretty much exactly the same for the last couple of decades, though.

As far as I can tell, they just don't want the business.

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