Posted on 12/06/2022 7:39:56 PM PST by FarCenter
TSMC has confirmed it will build not one, but two advanced chip manufacturing plants in Arizona, more than tripling the Asian foundry giant's original investment to $40 billion, even though the company has complained about the US project becoming a major headache for multiple reasons.
The Taiwanese contract chipmaker said on Tuesday it plans to construct a second fab in Phoenix, Arizona, that will produce 3nm chips when it goes online in 2026. This is in addition to the previously announced fab set for 2024 operation that is now set to manufacture 4nm silicon wafers, not 5nm as originally intended, the company said in today's update.
This will cost roughly $40 billion for TSMC — which counts Apple, Nvidia, and AMD as major customers — far greater than the initial $12 billion investment it originally planned. The change-up happened after Apple, Nvidia, and AMD reportedly pushed TSMC to offer more advanced 4nm chips over 5nm in the US.
President Joe Biden is expected to hail TSMC's increased spending as a significant win for US efforts to make the country a leader in chip manufacturing again and reduce the world's reliance on chipmakers in Asia, where most semiconductor production happens now, according to The Financial Times.
TSMC announced the expanded US investment, despite recent comments from the company that it faces significant hurdles in making the advanced fabs fully operational.
In a letter to the US Commerce Department last month, the company said the hurdles include a shortage of skilled workers, high costs, and unexpected construction issues that have popped up for its first plant in Arizona, according to The Wall Street Journal.
"A range of construction costs and project uncertainty in Phoenix makes building the same advanced logic wafer fab in Taiwan considerably less capital intensive," the company was quoted as saying.
TSMC's Taiwanese output will dwarf US presence, despite new investments
While TSMC's move may seem like big news in the US, there are a few reasons to temper the excitement.
For one, the two fabs in Arizona combined are expected to produce over 600,000 wafers per year. That will be a tiny fraction of TSMC's total manufacturing output in Taiwan of more than 2 million wafers per month between the company's mature and advanced nodes, said Wang Mei-hua, Taiwan's minister of economic affairs, according to a recent Chinese-language news story.
Taiwanese research firm TrendForce said that TSMC's US expansion will only shift the company's American output from 1 percent in 2022 to 3 percent in 2025. Meanwhile, the percentage of wafers produced in Taiwan by TSMC will go from 93 percent to 88 percent over the same period.
Water?
That sounds good...and bad.
Maybe they think the future is coming?
That and heat probably. Altitude might be a factor.
Chip manufacturing requires LOTS of high quality water. Therefore the desert is the ideal place to build it. The Chinese would never suspect to look there for it.
Fabs use massive amounts of water......
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs will bask in the glow of this announcement.
$40 billion investment in Arizona? Can’t that be sent to Ukraine for democracy?
Intel has had Fabs out here in AZ for years. Worked construction cleanup at a couple of them.
Yeah, that's a problem.
At least it's a start and it is on US soil.
Water was my first thought as well.
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