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Apple's Chipmaker TSMC Announces Plan to Build Arizona Factory

magicschoolbus said:
Important to have a chip factory in the USA.
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I think Samsung Austin Semiconductor is the largest chip fab in the USA currently, and has the capacity to make 60,000 wafers per month. Samsung has spend over $16B on that fab so far, and claim to have created 10,000 jobs.

Not to knock this TSMC fab, which I think will be great to have, but I think it's worth putting it on the right scale as it will be considerably smaller than the current biggest fab in the US.

There are also dozens of smaller fabs all over the country, including Vermont and New York. We make quite a lot of semiconductors in the US.
 
About time Taiwanese tech deserves more recognition like TSMC, Nvidia, etc. Also, Taiwanese quality have fared better than Chinese counterparts.
 
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jmgregory1 said:
This facility had better be able to produce more than 20k chips per month, otherwise I’d say the investment is not worth it. Even if they’re missing a zero in the number, making 200k units per month is such a paltry amount - what Apple product would that even support annually?
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Except it’s a wafer, so it’s a factor of probably 10,000, not a factor of 10.

This might mean 200,000,000 chips.
 
Curious as to where in Arizona? I'd suspect Chandler AZ given that Intel, Microchip and other smaller chip designer and manufactures are already here.
 
I've worked at their fab in Camas, Washington. It's called Wafertech. Crap pay and they don't treat their people well.
I still work in the industry(25 years now) but at another company. And we do make chips for apple, Samsung and many many others for many different applications.
 
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brilliant people often 'miss' where "common-sense" is a better option.
AZ is currently in a 900-year drought of near epic proportions.
exactly where and how is TSMC gonna-get the water to run a fab?
who are they stealing this resource from?
or: is this simply a one-off?
how many major civilizations, that we have 'found & studied', ultimately disappeared under the sand and sage brush?
hubris trumped.
grrrrr
 
According to a lot of posters here on previous posts, it is impossible to manufacture here and you have to do it overseas.
 
rjp1 said:
According to a lot of posters here on previous posts, it is impossible to manufacture here and you have to do it overseas.
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I would say that is absolute nonsense. Intel does it here. So does GlobalFoundry. One of the largest manufacturers of the equipment that makes semiconductors manufacturers in the US. As does many other industrial companies.
Micron technologies has manufacturing plants in the US and overseas. There is a Micron plant here in Virginia.

Given the security issues related to having supply chains in China - this is a good move for TSMC and Apple.
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mi7chy said:
About time Taiwanese tech deserves more recognition like TSMC, Nvidia, etc. Also, Taiwanese quality have fared better than Chinese counterparts.
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Nvidia is an American company.
 
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cgsnipinva said:
I would say that is absolute nonsense. Intel does it here. So does GlobalFoundry. One of the largest manufacturers of the equipment that makes semiconductors manufacturers in the US. As does many other industrial companies.
Micron technologies has manufacturing plants in the US and overseas. There is a Micron plant here in Virginia.

Given the security issues related to having supply chains in China - this is a good move for TSMC and Apple.
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They make chips here. But they send the chips overseas for assembly. Building fabs here is incredibly expensive. And new fabs will be heavily automated and no longer generate the number of jobs they once did. Not by a long shot.
Even Intel's newest fabs(they are located near me) use a very high level of automation so they don't need as many people as they once did.
TSMC also pays poorly(I used to work there). Micron has plants here but they've slowly been selling them off over the years. I'm willing to bet this new TSMC fab never sees the light of day.
Even global foundry is selling one of their 300mm fabs to us for what amounts to pennies as they pull back.
 
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rjp1 said:
According to a lot of posters here on previous posts, it is impossible to manufacture here and you have to do it overseas.
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Who are these "lot of posters" claiming semiconductor manufacturing could not be done in the United States? That's been happening here for many decades.
 
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metamorphoses said:
brilliant people often 'miss' where "common-sense" is a better option.
AZ is currently in a 900-year drought of near epic proportions.
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That's exactly the point. Like many industrial processes, humidity causes issues with semiconductor manufacturing. By putting it in a desert, they avoid the energy expense of drying air as well as avoiding contaminants transported by mist or sea spray.
 
konqerror said:
That's exactly the point. Like many industrial processes, humidity causes issues with semiconductor manufacturing. By putting it in a desert, they avoid the energy expense of drying air as well as avoiding contaminants transported by mist or sea spray.
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Humidity itself isn't an issue, it just has to be the correct percentage of humidity. Any deviation from that and you'll have problems. Especially in lithography. I don't recall the exact amount off the top of my head but I can find it.
No matter where you build the fab the internal temp and humidity levels have to be precisely controlled. Because it's so hot in Arizona they will use a significant amount of energy maintaining the proper temp in the fab(typically 70 degrees). The equipment also runs very hot and must be cooled as well. If you've ever been in a fab in a power outage and the air handlers die you'll see it gets hot VERY fast.
 
Relentless Power said:
The article indicates that they have other neighboring facilities In the U.S.(With the main source being in Taiwan) that manufacture chips also, this is just another addition to aid in manufacturing. I’m guessing the Arizona facility would probably alleviate some of the workload off the other facilities to make transitions to manufacture other iPhone SoCs/projects for the iPhone/iPad.
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(a) The number of wafers IS small. This is clearly a deal being done for politics; a minimum viable fab that's probably only going to actually happen as long as the promises from Arizona and the Federal Government go through. Will they go through? Well...
Pretty soon the Feds are going to have to write up the next budget, which is going to have a pretty large covid-shaped hole in it. Add to that some Dems complaining about money going to big corporations, and Repubs complaining about money going to foreigners, and I wouldn't regard it as 100% certain that this will happen.
(And don't forget that Intel will be working very hard behind the scenes to claim that they represent a perfectly good patriotic American company that should be getting those subsidies instead...)

There've been such rumors before; in 2012 the rumor was a TSMC plant to be started in New York. Of course this has moved beyond rumor to a press release; but it can still be stopped if AZ and the Feds don't offer up what they promised in a co-operative and timely manner.

(b) The existing TSMC facility in the US is REALLY out of date, like mid-90s state of the art. It's 8inch wafers, 160nm. Old fabs are still perfectly good for various purposes, but let's not blow it out of proportion. And it hasn't been upgraded much in all that time... Started at 350nm, now it's at 160 nm, so in the past 20 years TSMC hasn't seen a compelling *economic* reason to expand its US presence.

It's significant that this expansion is happening in AZ, not at the existing Washington State fab. Makes it look even more like this is primarily a political decision, one that will fall apart if the political/tax promises aren't delivered. Meanwhile, remember Foxconn and Wisconsin?
 
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archer75 said:
Humidity itself isn't an issue, it just has to be the correct percentage of humidity. Any deviation from that and you'll have problems. Especially in lithography. I don't recall the exact amount off the top of my head but I can find it.
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That's very expensive because of the high latent heat of water. We have one single 750 sq ft lab room that's maintained at 35% RH from an ordinary office building AC supply (73 F, 50% RH), and the dehumidifier eats around 15 kW 24/7. The issue is when you need to drop humidity below the point at which an AC condenser ices up, you have to deal with these hugely inefficient desiccant systems.
 
1. It is small by TSMC's standard, certainly not small by the industry standard. People need to understand that.

2. It is 5nm in 2024. That is nearly 4 years after 5nm launched.

3. I would argue the reason for being in 2024 and not earlier has more to do with equipment sourcing than anything. You may have heard of the term "EUV", TSMC 5nm will be using that. And there is only so many EUV machine made per year. Right now everyone is queueing for it.

4. Finally If you are only interested in the topic of "Apple", dont read too much into it.
 
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