[HN Gopher] Washington pressures TSMC to make chips in US
___________________________________________________________________
Washington pressures TSMC to make chips in US
Author : baybal2
Score : 89 points
Date : 2020-01-16 20:30 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (asia.nikkei.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (asia.nikkei.com)
| awinter-py wrote:
| security risks aside, andy grove of intel publicly regretted
| offshoring semiconductor manufacturing because of his suspicions
| about generational shifts in innovation and expertise
|
| I've tried to read econ papers on colocation of innovation and
| manufacturing -- they're mostly long-winded and unconvincing but
| the concept is compelling
| bschne wrote:
| > I've tried to read econ papers on colocation of innovation
| and manufacturing -- they're mostly long-winded and
| unconvincing but the concept is compelling
|
| Sounds interesting, do you have some references?
| awinter-py wrote:
| I think Ketokivi is the paper I read (no idea what website
| this is hosted on):
|
| https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/63693/1/519737458.pd.
| ..
|
| aside from the basic claim that large factories are doing
| some amount of R&D on-site, this read like nonsense to me.
| Could be my lack of depth in industrial organization /
| economics.
|
| maybe also search 'industrial clustering' or 'innovation
| clusters'
| jmole wrote:
| intel is one of the few companies with leading-edge fabs in the
| US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si...
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Doesn't Samsung have some fabs in Texas?
| bradstewart wrote:
| Samsung does have a fab in Austin (maybe elsewhere), but
| it's mostly flash in the 50-180nm range, not a leading edge
| process AFAIK.
| lonelappde wrote:
| > regretted
|
| But not enough to lift a finger about it
|
| > > Andrew "Andy" Grove was a Hungarian-American businessman,
| engineer, and author who had a net worth of $500 million
| dollars.
| Cedricgc wrote:
| Dan Wang explores this idea in 'How Technology Grows' [0]. To
| summarize, he asserts that the main downside of offshoring is
| the loss of process knowledge (the tacit knowledge that is
| learned by doing and transmitted through culture).
|
| [0] https://danwang.co/how-technology-grows/
| wrkronmiller wrote:
| Couldn't this have the opposite effect from what is intended? If
| all the US military TSMC chips come from a separate facility from
| those for Huawei, etc... then there's only one, big, target with
| minimal collateral damage.
| Nokinside wrote:
| I think there is a geopolitical reason why most TSMC's 300mm
| GIGAFAB's and advanced backend fab are located in Taiwan (1 fab
| in China). https://www.tsmc.com/english/contact_us.htm#TSMC_fabs
|
| Concentrating geopolitical risk of TSMC operations makes Taiwan
| more important to the rest of the world. The US would naturally
| want to reduce this risk. In Taiwan-China conflict world chip
| production would take a huge hit or be in the danger of falling
| under Chinese rule.
|
| If TSMC's leadership is patriotic, they should refuse this
| pressure as much as they can and ask more weapons for Taiwan
| instead.
| justicezyx wrote:
| A chicken asking for sharper beak is not going to survive 2
| foxes...
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Arguably, the situation is something of an incentive for peace
| since it makes the cost of war huge for all concerned.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| The cost of war is always huge for all concerned, and is very
| rarely the outcome of any sort of cost-benefit analysis. Most
| wars between nations are fought for something like honour:
| https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2013/07/16/most-wars-
| are-...
| lonelappde wrote:
| Cost is huge for the lower classes and maybe half the upper
| classes. They are sold on honor, but they fought for the
| profit of the ruling class, via conquest or be diverting
| fund to the military industrial complex.
| corporate_shi11 wrote:
| What will probably happen is weapons for Taiwan in exchange for
| TSMC moving some production to the US.
| sct202 wrote:
| The Taiwanese government owns 6% of TSMC, and all the
| leadership is based in Taiwan so I would imagine they'd prefer
| to not endanger their family and friends.
| phkahler wrote:
| I'm curious about the politics here. I get making the chips in
| the US, but if security is the concern they should no be made by
| a company based in Taiwan regardless of where the fab is.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Why is Taiwan specifically a threat? They're a long-term ally
| and their voters recently gave a new mandate to anti-China
| leaders in an election. If the US is worried about threats from
| Chinese electronics companies like Huawei it doesn't make any
| sense to alienate Taiwan.
| nwallin wrote:
| Taiwan isn't the threat. China annexing (or otherwise
| disrupting) Taiwan is.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Chinese espionage in Taiwan, perhaps.
| amerine wrote:
| Why?
| Roboprog wrote:
| So that there is a "chain of custody " from plan to
| production completely within the US. Presumably the people
| working in such would be reachable by US law, if not closely
| aligned with their own country's interests.
| bgorman wrote:
| TSMC already makes chips in the US through Wafertech in
| Washington (state)
| Nokinside wrote:
| Wafertech has 0.16-micron and above processes.
|
| The US wants TSMC's latest GIGAFAB's.
| metaphor wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > _The U.S. accounts for 60% of TSMC 's sales, but the company
| operates only its subsidiary WaferTech there, producing chips
| for mature technologies._
|
| In this case[1], "mature technologies" appears to mean downto
| 160nm tech node...essentially irrelevant with respect to FPGAs.
|
| [1] https://www.wafertech.com/en/foundry/technology.html
| wyxuan wrote:
| the article mentioned that, but you aren't having stuff like n7
| or n10 nodes being done in US, which is what Washington
| presumably wants
| ausjke wrote:
| TSMC is beating Intel for making chips.
|
| Still Intel is the last hope for US to secure IC manufacturing
| should a war, or a huge earthquake brought down Taiwan someday.
|
| I suddenly think it's time to buy INTC stocks.
| zweep wrote:
| What Washington should be doing is investing in creating a US-
| based top-notch semiconductor foundry business. And that's
| something that takes 20+ years.
| andromeduck wrote:
| Or Intel can just spin off their foundary business.
| foota wrote:
| He said top notch though :-)
| agoodthrowaway wrote:
| Absolutely. NSA has its own fab to guarantee security and
| ensure secrecy. No reason why we can't have a corporation that
| pushes semiconductor tech forward.
| jagger27 wrote:
| So did NSA buy last gen tech from Intel/GlobalFoundries and
| set it up somewhere secret or did they develop it in-house?
| manicdee wrote:
| Are Apple and Tesla building their own foundries or
| outsourcing?
| shakna wrote:
| I believe Apple use TSMC, whilst Tesla use Samsung for their
| customs. So, outsourcing. I haven't heard of either going
| into the silicon business recently.
| wmf wrote:
| They use TSMC.
| creddit wrote:
| There's Intel today but, also, presumably this could be done
| with GloFo? They were in the midst of research into 7nm
| processes but stopped due to competition. Feels like investment
| there could work faster than 20+ yrs.
| ghaff wrote:
| And ON Semiconductor bought Global Foundries' Fab 10
| (formerly IBM) in East Fishkill.
|
| Sematech was the last US government effort to improve US
| competitiveness in semiconductors. It's still around but
| isn't a US government initiative any longer.
| agoodthrowaway wrote:
| Intel does not support a fabless semiconductor business
| model. Lots of other chips are necessary besides CPUs.
| davidf18 wrote:
| Perhaps Intel could spin off a separate company that has a
| fabless business model.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-01-16 23:00 UTC)