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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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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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whoknowswhat11 ◴[15 May 21 05:08 UTC] No.27162570[source]▶
It's a couple of things.

1) Students in Taiwan score highly on PISA and other ranking of math and science skills. Ie, 4th for Math (vs the USA at 38th or so). And engineering is extremely popular as a major. So you've got a strong supply of relatively competent folks.

2) A pretty strong tracking system - 9th grade testing for example means a lot more in Taiwan than in the US which has moved away from tracking efforts as discriminatory. Note also that starting at 16 (ie, high school) folks are already specializing a lot more vocationally etc.

3) Note that some of what is taken for granted in a public high school (fights / theft / violence / disruption) would be completely out of bounds in high school in Taiwan. A legacy of military rule was actually the presence of literal military in high schools - I hope that is long over but kind of a crazy situation - people forget how recent democracy is there and plenty of bad things about having military on campus. School uniforms everywhere (not sure if required but very common)

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1. refurb ◴[15 May 21 05:30 UTC] No.27162682{3}[source]▶
I’d be interested how important these are in the “real world”. I spent a few years working in Asia. I would agree that volume matters (reminds me of hard science PhDs from Russia and Eastern Europe). That said, I’ve heard from more than a few folks that the Western educated folks tend to be more flexible and independent. But I guess it depends on what you need? If it’s just entry level engineers who follow instructions then I could see Asia being a better source just due to shear numbers.

I have no idea how true it is, but I’ve heard that from a few folks.