TSMC says first advanced U.S. chip plant 'dang near back' on schedule. Here's an inside look at the Arizona fab

CNBC ^ | Published Fri, Dec 13 2024 Updated Wed, Dec 18 2024 | Katie Tarasov

[SunkenCiv]

Atop a newly completed, 3.5-million-square-foot building that stands on 1,100 acres in the Arizona desert north of Phoenix is a giant logo of a microchip wafer and the letters TSMC.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's first Arizona chip fabrication plant, or fab, is making history because it's the most advanced chip fab on U.S. soil, and Apple has committed to being the site's largest customer.

CNBC first visited the fab in 2021, not long after TSMC broke ground. The company initially announced the plant would cost $12 billion and pump out 5-nanometer chips by the end of 2024. Three years later, that price tag has soared to $20 billion and full production is delayed until 2025.

Instead, the fab is in pilot production, making sample wafers and sending them to customers for verification. TSMC has committed to building two more fabs on the site by the end of the decade, for a total investment of $65 billion...

TSMC Arizona Chairman Rick Cassidy shows CNBC's Katie Tarasov around the company's newly completed fabrication plant, where it will make advanced chips on U.S. soil for the first time, Nov. 7, 2024.

With the help of some 2,000 employees, the fab is set to make more-advanced chips than originally planned. It will produce 4-nanometer chips, at a rate of 20,000 wafers per month, TSMC said...

In the event of aggression between China and Taiwan, an earthquake or some other event that impacts Taiwan for a period of time, "the entire market, the entire world could suffer from lack of availability of leading edge nodes," Newman said.

A deadly 7.4 magnitude earthquake in April briefly halted production in Taiwan and led to a $92 million loss for TSMC. The Arizona buildings are "well prepared" for earthquakes, Cassidy said.

[SunkenCiv]

On 1,100 acres in the Arizona desert north of Phoenix, a newly completed 3.5-million-square foot building is making history as the most advanced chip fabrication plant on U.S. soil. It's Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's first of three Arizona fabs, which will total a $65 billion investment when they're complete at the end of the decade. Apple has committed to being the site's largest customer. Full production has been delayed until 2025, but pilot production has begun. CNBC got an exclusive first look at the fab, where TSMC chairman Rick Cassidy says the project is "dang near back on the original schedule."

TSMC's New Arizona Fab! Apple Will Finally Make Advanced Chips In The U.S. | 16:25
CNBC | 3.73M subscribers | 1,557,665 views | December 13, 2024

[SunkenCiv]

Years ago AMD was building fab capacity somewhere in the east, I'm thinkin' in the Carolinas? Anyway, they were billions into it and realized AMD wasn't going to survive the capex. Since this is an NBC branch, this is probably all about eulogizing Biden and the CHIPS Act.

[Tai_Chung]

I would have thought the US Military would be the largest customer.

I thought the whole point of building the plant is to not have to import our chips from Taiwan during a war with China.

[SunkenCiv]

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[DIRTYSECRET]

Shouda built it in Kansas for the same reason the Pentagon should be inland.

[Brian Griffin]

“$20 billion....20,000 wafers per month”

A million dollars to produce a wafer per month.

[Wayne07]

There are ~450 chips on a wafer, so $2222 per chip in the first month, $185 per chip after a year $15 per chip after two years...

[Nateman]

Hydrofluoric acid. You get that by having to destroy freon by heat. Freon is one of the many chemicals needed to make a Semiconductor. For the imaginary problem of fluorocarbon pollution you create a truly dangerous chemical which itself must be destroyed. A Fab is actually a pretty scary place to work inside considering the dangerous chemicals used.

[Nateman]

The width of a Silicon atom is about .2 nanometers (nm). A 4 nm chip means 20 atoms thick. Chip making is basically at the bottom by this point.

[bigbob]

Waal Hot Durn!

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Wow, it takes only 2,000 employees to run a $20,000,000,000 fab?

[The Duke]

This should be secondary to bringing back pharmaceutical production.

[linMcHlp]

BTTT

[TheBattman]

I would put them at the same priority level.

[RitchieAprile]

‘Dang near’ - is that project management terminology?

[SunkenCiv]

It’s his generation, young CEOs drop f-bombs.

[SunkenCiv]

They be tiny. ASML makes the highest-res ultraviolet lithography equipment in use, it was interesting to see that in the video.

[snip] A human hair is 100,000 nanometers wide. As you can imagine, then, the human eye can’t see anything that’s 1/100,000th of the size. It’s not even visible to most microscopes, instead requiring atomic force microscopes. A strand of human DNA is 2.5 nanometers, which makes it incredibly small, but still larger than some of the transistors currently in development. Atoms and quarks are both smaller than a nanometer. While they vary in size, atoms can be anywhere from .1 to .5 nanometers in diameter... Silicon has an atomic radius of .117 nanometers, which is smaller than Gallium’s .122. Even though the differences in atomic size can be small between two elements, these changes can be significant when discussing nanotechnology. [/snip]

https://www.waferworld.com/post/how-small-can-transistors-get

[Zathras]

The military doesn’t use 3nm and smaller process.
This is mostly Apple

[Zathras]

Fabs are mostly using robotic handlers.
The wafers are way too valuable to risk anyone dropping them plus having people inside the clean room causes contamination and thus yield issues.

[Zathras]

It took ASML over 20 years to make it work.
Back even in 2010, Intel figured they would never get it working.