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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: 0s | 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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magicsmoke ◴[15 May 21 04:43 UTC] No.27162442[source]▶
Also surprising is that TSMC was recently hit by water shortages due to a drought in Taiwan. Arizona isn't exactly drought resistant, yet they built there instead of rainy Washington.
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1. ckozlowski ◴[15 May 21 05:13 UTC] No.27162602[source]▶
This made me scratch my head as well. The desert isn't exactly known for water supply, and given what I'd read elsewhere about how crucial water is for the process, I wondered if I was missing something somewhere. I did a quick search and found this: https://www.investors.com/news/technology/intel-stock-tsm-st...

The takeaways: - Fab companies have invested in a lot of water reclamation and recycling regardless of location, as there's a lot of metals and other chemicals that need to be filtered out. (Asianometry goes over this more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=785Uzi1mGAA ) - Intel claims Arizona's water usage has stayed level in the area as industrial use has replaced agricultural, which uses less.

I'm sure there's a cost-benefit play here, where the tax and other incentives outweigh the increased costs of water reclamation.