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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 | 3 comments | 15 May 21 00:49 UTC | HN request time: 1.052s | source
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ChuckMcM ◴[15 May 21 04:15 UTC] No.27162309[source]▶
Geopolitically this makes a lot of sense. Will be interesting to see how China reacts as it moves forward.

If Intel is serious this time about letting third parties into their fabs then it could be quite the reversal of fortune. However, as I've said in the past Intel is most likely to do this with "alternate" process streams, in order to not expose their full capabilities to competitors.

High hopes but low expectations. Real estate in AZ could be a good investment though.

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mook ◴[15 May 21 07:15 UTC] No.27163144[source]▶
As a first pass, wouldn't this be good for China? TSMC was strategic for Taiwan, as a military takeover of Taiwan (where the plants will likely be damaged or scuttled) would be economically damaging for the US. That might be a bit different if the US has enough high-the fabs internally.

I'd love to hear better analysis; I'm not confident of my understanding here.

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Laforet ◴[15 May 21 08:06 UTC] No.27163370[source]▶
Politically it would be ideal to keep everything in Taiwan as this greatly increases the stakes for a potential war.

However there is a pressing shortage of electricity in Taiwan. Just yesterday there had been a major blackout as one of the coal fired power stations suddenly went off the grid. I'm sure TSMC has been given priority supply but they are cutting it extremely close. Taiwan is just not a good place to have more fabs right now.

The shortage is unlikely to get better in the long term, with existing nuclear power stations nearing the end of their service life and the replacement stuck in political limbo. And there are already plans to move all 28nm+ process to China so they could better utilize the resources in Taiwan for the more profitable products.

https://amp.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3131823/why-has-t...

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cm2187 ◴[15 May 21 11:08 UTC] No.27164183[source]▶
I read the main problem at the moment for fabs in Taiwan is water shortages.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/TSMC-ta...

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Laforet ◴[15 May 21 13:02 UTC] No.27164818[source]▶
TSMC reportedly uses over 50 million tonnes of water per year, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the annual 12 billion tonnes consumed by agriculture.

https://highscope.ch.ntu.edu.tw/wordpress/?p=42837

In any case, the current drought is likely to ease at some point but the electricity problem is only going to get worse.

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1. thu2111 ◴[15 May 21 15:43 UTC] No.27166217[source]▶
Are those numbers really comparable? Agriculture can use more or less any kind of water, can handle sporadic supply and is spread over a wide area. Fabs need very large quantities of highly purified water in very small high density locations and it's an industrial facility so can't handle interruptions well. It could easily be that there's a shortage of water affecting fabs whilst agriculture is fine.
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2. Laforet ◴[16 May 21 03:47 UTC] No.27171043[source]▶
You are right that fabs require a much higher grade of water but the overall quantity is much less. Yet with farmers suffering the worst effect of the drought it is very difficult for TSMC to expand production without looking like the bad guy who profit at other people's expense. Notwithstanding the fact that the actual amount of water they use is not significant.

NYT has a pretty good piece of reporting about the situation:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/tech...

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3. tekknik ◴[16 May 21 13:45 UTC] No.27173667[source]▶
The actual link instead of an AMP one (please stop using AMP)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/technology/taiwan-drought...