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Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

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Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#51

Post by newaccount2021 »

oneplane wrote: post #37
kesselvon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hollowing out the industrial base leaves us even worse off.

It only leaves lower tiered hierarchies worse off and only in the short term. Extracting value that way is never a long-term plan since the needs will either be fulfilled or the extraction will be complete and no more value can be created. If people don't want to buy a product because it is inferior in some way, the solution isn't to ban superior products but to upgrade those inferior products to be superior again. A…

> It only leaves lower tiered hierarchies worse off and only in the short term.

not when your offshore solution is more educated, industrially advanced, yet still cheaper

you are thinking of pillow factories moving to Mexico

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#52

Post by phkahler »

kesselvon wrote: post #19
CoastalCoder wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If China were to invade Taiwan, I'm guessing that all product flow from China/Taiwan to (most) other countries would stop. If that happened, I'm curious what other manufacturing/product issues would impact other countries, and how long it would take them to adapt. E.g., what tool manufacturing, raw materials mining, etc. are currently happening only in China and/or Taiwan? And that's assuming that China didn't also s…

The U.S. supply chains would be completely wrecked. We're probably close to a point where in the event of a global war with China, we wouldn't be able to mobilize industry in the same way we did during WW2 simply because the industrial output fo yesteryear no longer exists in the U.S.

>> The U.S. supply chains would be completely wrecked.

China: Hey cool, we can destroy the US without engaging with them at all, we can just complete our takeover of Taiwan which we wanted to do anyway. We just need to make it disruptive enough to stop exports for a year or so - maybe a bit longer.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#53

Post by nvr219 »

elzbardico wrote: post #32
burnished wrote: post #13

Ok, this article quietly gets fucking wild halfway through. >> Samsung spent years evaluating where to build the new fab, courting multiple locations and pitting them against each other for better incentives. But the ultimate decision came down to Samsung Group's leader Jay Y. Lee, who was granted early parole in August expressly to speed up crucial business decisions like the Texas chip fab. Accounting for between 1…

When I was a kid I was bullied by the kids calling me crazy, because of my overly imaginative approach to reality. Fast forward a lot of years later i look at reality and find out that the bullies had no clue at all. The real world is far more bizarre than any of the imaginary worlds I created in my mind during childhood

You really think your imagination is the reason you got bullied?

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#54

Post by dv_dt »

bnt wrote: post #2

So everyone is on the "Let's build a Fab in the USA" train, will that eventually bring down the chip production costs? (not an expert in the field, so asking naively)

I don’t know if it will bring down production costs, but it may reduce logistical shortages and bring down chip prices.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#55

Post by jason-phillips »

lkbm wrote: post #8
bnt wrote: post #2

So everyone is on the "Let's build a Fab in the USA" train, will that eventually bring down the chip production costs? (not an expert in the field, so asking naively)

(Also not an expert.) In general I wouldn't expect US manufacturing to do a lot to lower production costs. More capacity in general obviously helps, and I could definitely see the US doing a lot to subsidize domestic production, if that counts as bringing down the costs. Maybe higher wages will lead to more automation.

> Maybe higher wages will lead to more automation.

Samsung Austin Semiconductor has been fully automated since 2008-ish. One number I was quoted was that you only need 19 technicians on the floor to run the fab, compared to 500+ pre-automation.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#56

Post by Robotbeat »

bnt wrote: post #2

So everyone is on the "Let's build a Fab in the USA" train, will that eventually bring down the chip production costs? (not an expert in the field, so asking naively)

Well in principle Texas has lower (almost half) industrial energy costs than Taiwan, which could help reduce wafer production costs especially at the lower resolution nodes. As Moore’s Law slows, things like energy and raw material costs may matter more. And having wafer plants close to fab plants can help.

Rough order of magnitude, but for a lower cost wafer (think like 90nm or above, not 7nm), electricity and energy could be about 10% of the overall cost. As a lot of the capital cost of the automation and industrial equipment is the same wherever in the world you are, that might be an important factor.

Taiwan is an island that imports almost all of its energy. Texas is an energy rich state with lots of wind, solar, and especially natural gas that is exported to the world.

We talk about higher natural gas prices in the US with Texas seeing slightly above $4/MMBTU, but LNG prices in Asia are above $35/MMBTU at the moment, nearly an order of magnitude higher. The government of Taiwan is basically eating half the entire cost of LNG right now to keep costs low for businesses and consumers, but that’s not a sustainable strategy. (At the moment, industrial electricity is about 13¢/kWh in Taiwan even with the government subsidizing most of the LNG cost and 7-8¢/kWh in Texas.)

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#57

Post by benque »

colinmhayes wrote: post #16
echelon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globalization led to an erosion of US wages and the hollowing out of our middle class. If we buy local, it creates domestic jobs. Wages go up too. We need to onshore more .

Protectionism makes everyone worse off.

False. Exhibit A: China from 1980-Present. QED.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#58

Post by gmadsen »

bnt wrote: post #2

So everyone is on the "Let's build a Fab in the USA" train, will that eventually bring down the chip production costs? (not an expert in the field, so asking naively)

is there a labor demand for electronic assembly? we can barely get workers for decently tipped restaurants, and we now going to have 1000s lining up to twist a screw for 8 hours straight?

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#59

Post by ecf »

JavaBatman wrote: post #11

I am still amazed by the shortsightedness of how these critical and strategic goods are off-shore. No wonder why the supply chains are fragile and not robust. It should be illegal for strategic goods and components such as chips and semiconductors to be produced offshore. Yes, it will raise prices in the short and medium-term, but it will make the domestic economy and manufacturing sector more robust, resilient to su…

The blame for this is purely on the shoulders of business leaders coming out of MBA programs across the US.

It seems the only thing those places are teaching is how to join a company, strip it to the bone, hype up the short-term 5% growth, and get millions of dollars in raises.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#60

Post by phkahler »

consumer451 wrote: post #5
justinzollars wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it increases the security and continuity of our civilization when China invades Taiwan.

Well, there's a huge benefit of COVID. The related chip shortage finally woke up the US gov on supply chains. My question is why did it take this long? I have been worried about this for nearly a decade. My next question is how many mask factories have we built in the US since we realized that was important?

>> My next question is how many mask factories have we built in the US since we realized that was important?

There's a guy with a small company that makes N95 masks in the US. He got pissed when they came looking for a production increase. He would be happy to increase production, but nobody was willing to buy from him long-term. They'll just go back to importing cheaper product (probably from China) after the crisis is over. He basically told them to go pound sand.

I just Googled this and it seems a bunch of companies tried to increase production: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/health/covid-masks-china-...

The original guy basically said nobody wants to pay for anything, and I think he's right.

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