61–70 of 499 posts
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The smallest process they've got up and running right now is 4nm, last I checked
So which device will these be for then? I thought Apple stuff are always on the cutting edge node.
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> STEM field gap STEM salary gap I suspect the Taiwan workers have on average much lower salaries.
Yes, roughly speaking 1:4 compared to California. Edit: This is not news. This (combined with their higher EE education) is why Taiwan won IBM PC-clone-related manufacturing in the 80s. And why they now have TSMC.
- 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 read the main problem with hiring chip factory workers in Arizona was the factory just didnt pay enough for the long hours demanded. I looked up the median salary and its only 50k so I'm assuming it's not crazy skilled labor (e.g. brain drain). Taiwanese workers just seem more willing to do it.
That's why manufacturing offshored in the first place, companies feel they're receiving better value for money on wages elsewhere for this kind of work (and these days not to mention more & larger facilities, proximity to component sources, and a strong ecosystem of supporting and complimentary facilities).
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Given that there may be a 25% chance that China invades Taiwan by 2030, having the ability to package SOTA chips in the US by 2027 seems "soon enough".
where did you get that number from
- 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.
The planet burned, but at least we made a few chips in America.
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Yes, roughly speaking 1:4 compared to California. Edit: This is not news. This (combined with their higher EE education) is why Taiwan won IBM PC-clone-related manufacturing in the 80s. And why they now have TSMC.
Such a great victory for American industry... the future is to bring workers from Taiwan with skills and willingness to receive a fraction of US salaries.
Say TSMC pays supper competitive US salaries to attract US-only labor, higher labor cost which is causing the end product to be more expensive, which makes that fab uncompetitive globally causing Apple to go buying from someone else and TSMC either choosing leaving the US or going bust eating the losses.
You can't compete with lower-wage countries in a globalized world with no trade barriers and no tariffs, when Apple wants higher profits and consumers want lower prices. Something has to give.
You can put tariffs on imported chips to equalize the field, but then iPhones would be more expensive for the average American and Apple's stock would tank.
So, pick your poison.
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Until 2027, yes. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/tsmc-is-repo... "TSMC does not have an advanced packaging facility in the U.S., and its partner Amkor will only start packaging chips in Arizona in 2027. As a result, Blackwell AI silicon produced in Arizona will need to be shipped back to Taiwan for final assembly, as all of TSMC's CoWoS packaging capacity remains in Taiwan."
Given that there may be a 25% chance that China invades Taiwan by 2030, having the ability to package SOTA chips in the US by 2027 seems "soon enough".
- 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.
> The chips still need to fly back to Taiwan The planet burned, but at least we made a few chips in America.
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They have adopted a n-2 type of rule for advanaced tech...but as of yesterday they seem to have relaxed this rule and approved transfer of 2nm from Taiwan fabs to the AZ fab at some point in the near future. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/tsmc-cleared-for-2nm-p...
Advanced lithography is like if a mystery cult were real: Secret knowledge only understood by the most learned initiates, tightly-guarded process, etching symbols that do things...
Even more depressing: it's like a very complicated baking recipe arrived at by tweaking parameters over and over a again. There is no deep understanding... just a giant list of baking parameters that seem to work, sometimes.
(Yes, a bit like an AI. Hmm....)