Archive: archive.is/…/TSMC-s-165bn-U.S.-expansion-push-Ine…
TAIPEI – When TSMC Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei stood next to U.S. President Donald Trump early this month and announced the world’s biggest chipmaker would be investing an additional $100 billion to build five more advanced chip facilities and an R&D center on American soil, many back home in Taiwan were worried about what it would mean economically and politically for the island.
Taiwan has long taken a measure of comfort in its “Silicon shield,” the idea that its chip economy – the second largest in the world – makes it too important for the U.S. not to defend it should China ever invade.
But the U.S. is now home to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s first cutting-edge plant overseas, which went into production in Arizona late last year, with some 3,000 employees on site. The chip titan is now busy installing clean room facilities at a second, more advanced plant in the state that will start pilot production by next year. And – Nikkei Asia can report for the first time – construction on a third Arizona plant is slated to begin this year.
Powderhorn@beehaw.org 4 weeks ago
Brilliant strategy … move water-intensive operations from an island to a desert. Yes, you can for the most part create a closed loop, but greater Phoenix is already curtailing development on account of water sourcing. That’s at the residential level.
This all smells of theatre. Sure, one fab is up and running and a second is ramping up, but we’ve seen these sorts of claims of investment fall through in the past (Foxconn) – an additional $100 billion? Yeah, I’ll believe that when all those shovels are in the ground.
Phoenix does make sense on the level of Intel’s operations in Chandler that should in theory mean a trained workforce given Intel keeps laying people off, but unless Gelsinger was a total idiot, they didn’t shed the best and the brightest, and, in fact, TSMC’s first Arizona fab had delays in ramping production for lack of a qualified workforce.
Overall, a very well-researched story and solid read. Thanks for the link!