Free Republic

... The DoD may need a decade to build a reliable domestic supply chain, according to Mike Burns, managing partner of tech investment firm Murray Hill Group. The issue is how fast U.S.-based Intel can catch up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), which makes Altera and Xilinx field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and other chips that the DoD uses in weapons systems like the F-35 fighter jet, missiles and command-and-control gear, he said. “Maybe that’s a three-year effort,” he told EE Times. “I’m just saying that it’s many years.” To be sure, TSMC more than tripled its overall investment...

The Phoenix TSMC plant – the centerpiece of Biden’s $52.7bn US hi-tech manufacturing agenda – is struggling to get online. TSMC has pushed back plans to start manufacturing to 2025, blaming a lack of skilled labor. It is trying to fast-track visas for 500 Taiwanese workers. Construction of the plant has been hampered by accidents and misunderstandings. A former supervisor at the site blamed delays on disorganization from management and a lack of knowledge by bosses from Taiwan on adhering to safety codes and regulations in the US. When they started working at the site, all workers went through a...

On the Glassdoor profile of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC—the world’s biggest manufacturer of semiconductor chips—current and former U.S. employees swap messages about grueling working conditions. “People… slept in the office for a month straight,” an engineer wrote in August. “Twelve-hour days are standard, weekend shifts are common. I cannot stress… how brutal the work-life balance is here.” “TSMC is about obedience and is not ready for America,” another engineer wrote in January. TSMC says it has on-boarded nearly 2,000 staff for its Arizona plants so far, including 600 engineers. But interviews with recruiters indicate those were hard-fought hires...

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has defended the company's plan to become a chipmaker for hire after the company's profits plunged 134 percent year over year and it recorded a $2.8 billion loss during the first quarter of 2023. Intel has traditionally built fabrication plants to manufacture its own chips, but has seldom built silicon for third parties. Gelsinger reversed that policy, deciding that Intel must develop a substantial foundry business. "While everyone understands that we are establishing an internal foundry model, I'm not sure we have fully explained the importance and impact of this change," he said, insisting that hiring...

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...

World trade is truly global and interconnected. Perhaps the chip industry exemplifies this most. Apple sells phones around the world that rely on manufacturing by TSMC who is in turn supplied by a Dutch company few investors know anything about. And it’s that little-known Dutch company that quite possibly triggered Warren Buffett to make a huge purchase in its most recent quarter. You’re about to discovery why.Back Up a SecondLet’s back up a moment and examine what happened. In its latest 13F filing, Warren Buffett announced that his holding company Berkshire had initiated a new position in TSMC, the world’s...

... "Our ambition is to be the No. 2 foundry in the world by the end of the decade, and [we] expect to generate leading foundry margins," Randhir Thakur, the president of Intel Foundry Services, told Nikkei Asia. IFS was set up last year to turn Gelsinger's vision into a reality. For Intel, such a move is not only a new potential revenue source, but also a way to regain a technological edge in chip manufacturing lost to Asia over the past decades. Investors, however, do not seem entirely convinced: Intel's share price has more than halved since it embarked...

Samsung and TSMC are facing an investigation by the US International Trade Commission (USITC) over allegations of patent infringement involving chips and mobile devices containing those chips. The USITC said that it will begin an investigation based on a complaint filed by Daedalus Prime LLC of Bronxville, New York, in September. The complaint alleges violations of section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 in the import into the US of semiconductor devices, and mobile devices containing those chips, which allegedly infringe patents claimed by the company. According to the USITC's notice of investigation [PDF], the patent infringement claims cover...

IC Insights reduced its worldwide IC market growth forecast for 2022 from 11% to 7% in its August Quarterly Update to The McClean Report. The downgraded expectation for this year is almost entirely due to the collapse of the memory market in the second half of 2022. As discussed below, it was as though someone “flipped a switch” to the off position for the memory market beginning in June! The few memory companies that have made statements about the recent developments in the memory market have attributed the swift downturn to a massive inventory adjustment currently underway by their customers....

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...

HSINCHU, Taiwan -- Consumer electronics demand is showing signs of slowing amid geopolitical uncertainties and COVID-related lockdowns in China, the chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said on Wednesday. The slowdown is emerging in areas "such as smartphones, PCs, and TVs, especially in China, the biggest consumer market," TSMC Chairman Mark Liu said. A key Apple supplier, TSMC is the world's biggest contract chipmaker and a barometer of global electronics demand. Liu also warned that the cost of components and materials are rising sharply, pushing up production costs for tech and chip companies. "Such pressure could eventually be passed on...

Destroying the world’s major semiconductor market might be more of an invasion deterrent than actual open conflict, military paper suggests; Taiwan should adopt a ‘scorched earth policy’ and wipe out its own semiconductor foundries in the wake of any Chinese invasion as a deterrent, US military academics have suggested. First spotted by Nikkei, a paper in the US Army War College’s quarterly academic journal Parameters suggests the US and Taiwan can detour Chinese invasion of the island by creating a ‘deterrence by punishment approach via a legitimate and credible threat' to destroy the country’s own chip fabs if invaded. The...

A lot might change for the tech industry in the near future. Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president has left a lot of companies double minded. At one end, they’re pressured to move manufacturing facilities to the United States – at the other, the decision is simply economically unfeasible. Out of all the companies, it’s Apple which has faced the most pressure to move iPhone production back to the States. Today, we’ve got more details on the matter.TSMC Will Decide On Whether To Build Plant In The U.S. Or Not Next Year, According To Company Spokesperson Apple and TSMC have had...

Hot Chips Microsoft today revealed a first look at the inside of its Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) chip used in its virtual reality HoloLens specs. The secretive HPU is a custom-designed TSMC-fabricated 28nm coprocessor that has 24 Tensilica DSP cores arranged in 12 clusters. It has about 65 million logic gates, 8MB of SRAM, and a layer of 1GB of low-power DDR3 RAM on top, all in a 12mm-by-12mm BGA package. We understand it can perform a trillion calculations a second. It handles all the environment sensing and other input and output necessary for the virtual-reality goggles. It aggregates data...

TSMC wins Spy Case against a Former Employee who gave Secrets to Samsung that helped Win Apple's Chip Business (full title) In February we posted a detailed report titled "TSMC Sues Former Employee for Giving Samsung Trade Secrets". The report was about TSMC suing a former employee by the name of Liang Mong-song for giving away their crown jewels to Samsung. With TSMC and Samsung fighting it out for Apple's business every year, this story was an interesting one being that Samsung came out the winner with Apple, of all companies, rewarding Samsung unknowingly. Dick Thurston, former chief counsel for...

ARMv8 networking processor from HiSilicon TSMC and HiSilicon have announced the successful manufacture of the first fully functional 16nm FinFET chip.It is an ARM-based networking processor, which means it is substantially smaller than SoC or a GPU, but it is by no means a small and simple chip to produce. Twice the gate density, half the power TSMC said the new process has twice the gate density of the company’s old 28nm HPM process. It operates about 40 percent faster in the same power envelope and reduces total power consumption by 60 percent."Our FinFET R&D goes back over a...

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has cut down its orders to suppliers according to reports in the Taiwanese press. TSMC, which is facing an industry slowdown as its customers struggle with demand slowdown, cut down capital expenditures for 2022 earlier this year, and the firm cited a lack of demand forecasting as the primary reason behind the drawdown. Now, the firm is also rumored to have significantly reduced its 3-nanometer output estimates for this year, in the latest bit of speculation surrounding the advanced chip manufacturing technology scheduled to enter production in the current quarter. Today's report comes courtesy...

TSMC (2330.TW), the world's largest contract chipmaker and a major supplier to Apple Inc (AAPL.O), said on Wednesday it was constructing a building that could serve as its second chip factory in Arizona in the United States. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd said in an emailed statement to Reuters that it could use the building for future expansion but has not yet arrived on a final decision for a second chip manufacturing plant. "In light of the strong customer demand we are seeing in TSMC's advanced technology, we will consider adding more capacity in Arizona with a second fab based...

A baffled group of chip industry experts, in a symposium discussion published November 4 by the ChinaTalk newsletter, tried and failed to explain Washington’s new export curbs on chip tech to China. A close reading of the Commerce Department’s specifications shows ignorance about the technologies involved and confusion – if not duplicity – about the ban’s implications for China’s military. The experts’ group concluded that the new policy was rushed into effect in panic mode, without weighing its civilian or military implications. The new export controls “will restrict the People’s Republic of China’s ability to both purchase and manufacture certain...

Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing prowess might be one reason for China to invade the island and seize fabs belonging to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., United Microelectronics Corp., and Micron. One of the potential responses to such a plan could be evacuating personnel and destroying the fabs, suggested Parameters, a top U.S. army publication recently. But this might be unnecessary, according to Taiwan’s National Security Bureau. To build chips using leading-edge process technologies, TSMC needs leading-edge chip production equipment from companies like ASML, Applied Materials, and KLA. Even if China invades the island and seizes TSMC’s fabs without access to advanced equipment...