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TSMC looks to double down on U.S. chip factories as talks in Europe falter

(www.reuters.com)
437 points adventured | 1 comments | 15 May 21 00:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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JohnJamesRambo ◴[15 May 21 01:09 UTC] No.27161334[source]▶
I have no knowledge of the situation, why did they choose Arizona?
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mediaman ◴[15 May 21 01:28 UTC] No.27161454[source]▶
Interestingly this came as a loss to Washington, where there is already a significant fab owned by TSMC called WaferTech. Their facility is on the WA side of the Portland suburbs.

Many felt WA was in the running because of the talent already there.

This caused concerns that the future of the WaferTech fab facility is dimmer than before, since it probably makes less sense to pump billions more into it in the future.

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irrational ◴[15 May 21 02:37 UTC] No.27161808[source]▶
I would think the western suburbs of Portland would be more attractive. Intel has 5 huge fabrication plants in the Aloha/Hillsboro area. That is a large talent base to hire for the plant.
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rsj_hn ◴[15 May 21 03:38 UTC] No.27162115[source]▶
From the article, Taiwan's estimation of the U.S. talent base is rather low:

'"TSMC chairman and founder Morris Chang warned last month of higher operating costs and a thin talent pool for the U.S. plans in a rare public speech attended by Wei and chairman Mark Liu.

"In the United States, the level of professional dedication is no match to that in Taiwan, at least for engineers," Chang said. He warned that "short-term subsidy can't make up for long-term operational disadvantage."'

The body of the article also casts doubt on the total amount of U.S. investment, unlike the headline.

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nwiswell ◴[15 May 21 04:10 UTC] No.27162287[source]▶
> In the United States, the level of professional dedication is no match to that in Taiwan, at least for engineers

What does this even mean? That US engineers expect benefits and work-life balance?

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1. indolering ◴[15 May 21 04:46 UTC] No.27162459[source]▶
There are just a lot more semi-conductor engineers in Taiwan than in the US. Quick Googling suggests the pay gap is immense. China is luring a lot of Taiwanese talent partly due to the over-supply of engineers.

A similar situation exists WRT to China and US mechanical engineers: in China you can very assemble a team to build physical stuff in ~2 weeks whereas finding the same talent in the US would take months and cost a lot more.