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Why it matters: Ultra-high-purity quartz is an essential component to semiconductor chips, and the only places in the world that can meet this need are two mines in a small North Carolina town. The mines' owner, Sibelco, is investing $700 million to expand capacity, but is that enough to keep up with AI-fueled chip demand? Spruce Pine is a small town about two hours drive northwest of Charlotte, NC. You can get to the general area via a number of ways, depending on your point of origin, but for the last stretch of the trip, you need to travel down...

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is seeking up to $15 billion in tax credits and grants from the federal government to support its Arizona semiconductor plants amid concerns about subsidy criteria, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. TSMC expects to receive $7 billion to $8 billion in tax credits under the CHIPS Act, in addition to $6 billion to $7 billion in grants for its Arizona plants, according to the WSJ, citing people familiar with the matter. TSMC is investing more than $40 billion in building two fabs in north Phoenix, marking one of the largest foreign direct investments in the...

Gordon Moore, the tech pioneer and co-founder of Intel, has died at age 94, Intel and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation announced Friday. Moore died peacefully in his home, surrounded by family. Moore was best-known for his famous observation known as Moore's Law. In 1965, Moore made the observation that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every year. Moore's prediction proved to be correct, and the idea of faster, smaller, and cheaper chip technology is still the driving force behind Silicon Valley's mission to this day. “Gordon Moore defined the technology industry through his...

The semiconductor gold rush is all but over, and we've had our fill. Or so the past month of dismal earnings might have you believe. Electronics giant Samsung saw its profits contract 69 percent during the fourth quarter, while revenues slumped 8 percent overall. South Korean memory manufacturer SK Hynix, meanwhile, followed a few days later with an equally bleak report. Both companies told a story of macroeconomic forces that were suppressing consumer spending and driving DRAM and NAND flash inventories to unprecedented levels. Put simply, where there was once a chip shortage there is now a glut. Well, of...

Not seeing any 'real news' on this yet: Jordan Schneider @jordanschnyc Every American executive and engineer working in China’s semiconductor manufacturing industry resigned yesterday, paralyzing Chinese manufacturing overnight. One round of sanctions from Biden did more damage than all four years of performative sanctioning under Trump. Although American semiconductor exporters had to apply for licenses during the Trump years, licenses were approved within a month. With the new Biden sanctions, all American suppliers of IP blocks, components, and services departed overnight —— thus cutting off all service [to China]. Jordan Schneider @jordanschnyc · 13h THREAD: The US government's new export...

In January 2017, Chinese leader Xi Jinping promised "win-win outcomes" via a "dynamic, innovation-driven growth model." Yet only several months prior, Xi had struck a different tone in a speech to an audience that included Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, Alibaba CEO Jack Ma, high-profile People’s Liberation Army researchers, and most of China’s political elite.

Micron Technology Inc. executives warned about a semiconductor downturn in late June, but now say that a “sharp and sudden” drop in demand exceeded even those expectations, suggesting the current chip glut could get a lot worse. Micron MU, 0.74% reported a worse-than-expected fiscal fourth quarter Thursday, with revenue plunging 23% from last year, but that wasn’t the big miss. Executives guided for $4 billion to $4.5 billion in revenue in the current quarter, more than $1 billion lower than analysts’ expectations, and suggested they could post a loss in the quarter even on an adjusted basis. “As we look...

There are at least two big missing pieces in the CHIPS Act of 2022, the US$52 billion subsidy for US-based semiconductor manufacturers that has just been sent to President Joe Biden for his signature. The first missing piece is definitional. There is no statement in the Act of what constitutes an “advanced” semiconductor. Second, not only is there no priority on military capability, but there is also no requirement or guidance for protecting newly developed technology funded under the Act. To begin with the question of what constitutes an “advanced” semiconductor, Intel is investing $20 billion in a new manufacturing...

In what could be the biggest economic investment in Central Texas history, technology giant Samsung is considering building 11 new chipmaking facilities in the Austin area over the next two decades, a stunning move that could lead to nearly $200 billion in new investment and create more than 10,000 jobs, according to documents filed with the state. Fresh off announcing plans to build a $17 billion semiconductor factory in Taylor, Samsung could increase its investment in the region by more than 10 times that amount if the proposed facilities were to be built.

Nancy Pelosi's office responded to her husband's controversial computer chip stock trades ahead of Congress' vote on the semiconductor industry. FOX Business reached out to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office for comment about her husband’s recent stock trades, particularly inquiring about Paul Pelosi's million-dollar purchase of stock in a semiconductor company as Congress is slated to vote on a $52 billion subsidy to the industry as part of a bill to increase U.S. manufacturing of computer chips to make the country less reliant and more competitive with China. "The Speaker does not own any stocks. As you can see from...

The company which is Apple’s most important chip supplier, said it expects revenue to be between $19.8 billion and $20.6 billion in the third quarter, surging from $14.8 billion in the same period last year. However, TSMC CEO CC Wei said that some of the company’s capital expenditure would be “pushed out into 2023.” He cited “greater challenges in the supply chains” which is extending delivery times for some chipmaking equipment. The strong results and outlook but caution on spending highlights the careful path chipmakers are walking at a time of concern about rising prices and the impact on consumer...

Like some of you, I love to check out car models and drive salesmen crazy with the classic "just looking" line. I look at the sticker and check out all the options. It's an old habit and a wonderful way to kill time when my wife is at the mall. It beats drinking another cup of coffee at the mall café.Last week, I made another trip to the local dealership. Everything looked normal except for the prices. Check this out:With interest rates rising, it's also becoming harder to spread the pain of higher pricing with long-term financing. The average monthly...

To solve the semiconductor shortage, companies now have to deal with a labor shortage… We have extensively covered how major semiconductor companies have been responding to the global chip shortage over the last couple of years. One of the most notable companies to take action has been TSMC, who is in the process of building a $12 billion chip fab in Arizona, not far from where Intel is expanding their campus. TSMC’s project is racing to come online by 2024, but there remains a major obstacle for both companies: securing labor. “Simply finding enough workers to build the facilities has...

Engineers have long dreamed of creating a wonderful material that can revolutionize construction. In 2004, their dream came true. British scientists first created Graphene—one of the forms of nanocarbon that is only 0.3 nanometers thick—a million times thinner than a human hair, but it can withstand colossal loads! Many immediately predicted a great future for it, and a little later, scientists were given the Nobel Prize. However, mass adoption did not happen. And only now, after 15 years, the first real opportunities have appeared to use the material of the future in commercial projects. Super-substance is made from ordinary graphite,...

The biggest hurdle is an electron microscope for examining the features of his transistors. A good friend found a broken one and with $1000, a fair amount of know how and a lot of time they were able to repair it to working condition. As for the photolithography device? The light from a conference room projector is beamed through a microscope to trigger the light sensitive coating on his wafers Zeloof’s chip was his second. He made the first, much smaller one as a high school senior in 2018; he started making individual transistors a year before that. His chips...

Ohio has landed what could become the biggest semiconductor operation on Earth. Chip giant Intel plans to officially announce Friday that it will invest $20 billion to build two computer chip plants in Jersey Township in Licking County in what will be Ohio's largest economic development project to date. State and local officials are set to gather in Newark this afternoon to celebrate the news.

Have you heard the one about the dead cars? No, not the ones we find in junkyards, but the ones that haven’t had life yet, thanks to the chip shortage. These so-called “dead” cars are vehicles that have rolled off the assembly line, otherwise ready for sale, sitting in fields or on lots near the factories that produced them, just waiting for chips The New York Times even recently recounted an anecdote from a dealer principal who took a pilgrimage to a Ford factory to see all the “dead” cars for himself. We weren’t able to pin down a reliable...

A Chinese-owned company said on Monday that it had acquired the UK’s largest manufacturer of silicone and semiconductor. The deal has triggered warnings from MPs. Nexperia, a Dutch-based semiconductor manufacturer wholly owned by China’s Wingtech Technology, confirmed on Monday that it had obtained 100 percent ownership of Welsh semiconductor plant Newport Wafer Fab (NWF), and will rename it “Nexperia Newport.” British MP and chair of the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee Tom Tugendhat has previously warned the government about the deal. In a letter (pdf) to Secretary of State for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Kwasi Kwarteng last month,...

At the beginning of May, we noted that Taiwan Semiconductor was considering bolstering its production in the U.S., and that President Biden's Commerce Secretary was urging more domestic production. Now, it looks like TSMC could be within striking distance of a serious U.S. expansion. The chipmaking giant is "weighing plans to pump tens of billions of dollars more into cutting-edge chip factories in the U.S. state of Arizona than it had previously disclosed", a Reuters exclusive revealed Friday morning.The company had already said it was going to invest $10 billion to $12 billion in Arizona. Now, the company is mulling...

Some of the world's biggest chip buyers, including Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google, are joining top chip-makers such as Intel Corp (INTC.O) to create a new lobbying group to press for government chip manufacturing subsidies.