TSMC Arizona chip plant will be a paperweight

I&#x27;m not an industry analyst, but the packaging issue seems a bit overblown.<p>Yes, packaging for this kind of high density design as an iPhone is very specialized, but it does not contain the precious IP and the security concerns it carries.<p>Also, iPhones and any costumer electronics at this level of complexity and scale will be assembled in China for the foreseeable future, and this is more like a stop in the middle of a journey than a round-trip.<p>Maybe this website is too Apple-focused, or maybe I&#x27;m missing something, but &quot;older&quot; technology makes the bulk of the ICs manufactured and is much more strategic than the latest Instagram filter accelerator processor. Maybe by value bleeding-edge nodes are bigger, but by volume they are not even close.<p>By the way, I won&#x27;t miss if my car comes without infotainment with the latest GPU, but I surely hope the ABS processors are there. Or even the shitty microcontroller that every single button seems to hide nowadays.<p>And for most applications that do not require incredibly high density, there are plenty of packaging plants in the US (I google and got this [1] as a first result. Sorry, not an analyst). And even the advanced packaging seems to be getting attention that this article does not acknowledge [2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.globalspec.com&#x2F;local&#x2F;4218&#x2F;C_US" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.globalspec.com&#x2F;local&#x2F;4218&#x2F;C_US</a> [2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;semiengineering.com&#x2F;expanding-advanced-packaging-production-in-the-u-s&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;semiengineering.com&#x2F;expanding-advanced-packaging-pro...</a>

Facts known from the start seem to flow slowly into the public knowledge.<p>Arizona fab was always going to be a MegaFab, not a GIGAFAB® in TSMC terminology.<p>MegaFab&#x27;s (25K+ WSPM&#x2F;month) are for medium value, flexibility, cost, delivery precision, customers. US defense contractors for example. Not for some massive customers like NVIDIA or Apple.

Having worked in the semiconductor manufacturing industry for a decade, albeit a while ago now, this article seems a bit overblown. The packaging industry was moved to low-cost areas long before the semiconductor fabs were; the fab is generally considered the high-tech part. Not that packaging isn&#x27;t important or specialized or difficult in its own way, but it&#x27;s done in lots of countries, and it is not in the slightest unusual for it to be done in a different country than the wafer fab. Usually (though by no means always), a country with lower cost of labor.

I’ve heard that the problem isn’t the lack of skilled engineers in AZ, but the union trades. At Intel they have to prepare the location for an electrical pull three days ahead of time. The pull must be between 9am and 4pm, M-F. I expect the unions are making similar demands at TSMC, and the Taiwanese, just like every other American business owner are pissed. However the Taiwanese think that bringing over people to do the trade work themselves is going to improve the pace. That’s going to result in a plant which will be continuously sabotaged by the unions. What really needs to happen is the AZ Democratic Governor (or the two Democratic senators) need to step in and negotiate with the Unions. She probably doesn’t realize this is the most important issue in the state right now, and that she can make a difference.

Importing 500 skilled Taiwanese workers seems like a no-brainer. I don&#x27;t understand this mentality that those wouldn&#x27;t count as &quot;US jobs&quot;. They would massively lift the local economy.<p>The article also seems incredibly short-sighted, but since it&#x27;s coming from an Apple clickbait farm that&#x27;s not too surprising.

I don&#x27;t like the reflexive union bashing in the comments, but for some documentary perspective (which to some degree reinforces the objections of the people whose comments I&#x27;m complaining about), check out the film American Factory (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;American_Factory" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;American_Factory</a>).<p>I rarely like documentaries but I liked this one.

I still don&#x27;t know how they are supplying water to the thing, we don&#x27;t have much water out here as it is...

There&#x27;s plenty of silicon in the world that&#x27;s not designed by AMD, Nvidia, or Apple. Recall, if you will, the 2021 chip shortage.

Everyone knew that this was just a PR move. This was the intended result. Some policy wonk somewhere thought that this was all on the up-and-up, but everyone else involved, from Apple to TSMC, and all of the mid level politicians that showed up for the photo ops knew that this was virtue signaling for votes, kickbacks, and subsidies&#x2F;tax breaks.

This deglobalization thing doesnt seem to be going so well.

Used to be that the US would just import scientists and engineers then develop stuff themselves. It&#x27;ll be interesting in a few years to learn if this Arizona plant was just one head of the capitalist hydra and its success or failure didn&#x27;t really matter all that much. I suspect that the US doesn&#x27;t need to import technology in that manner to get good results; it never has in the past and I don&#x27;t think that much has changed.<p>All the excitement over high end chips seems overblown. We appear to be talking about a couple of years R&amp;D. Tactically interesting, it&#x27;ll decide a lot of things in practice about who specialises in what. Strategically not that big an issue. The trade war manoeuvring is doomed to look silly; the US can&#x27;t stop China and China couldn&#x27;t stop the US anyone thought there was a real problem to solve.