There might be a bit more when people realize that without TSMC they can kiss all the electronics they want to buy goodbye. That’s the reason for the new semiconductor initiative, but it is going to take a while to start up.
All the better.
I’m sick of planned obsolescence.
Like our armaments? So just let China take out our main supplier of chips that are used in our weapons system? Going back to transistor radios isn’t in the interest to our national security. Keeping up with and leading technology is our biggest advantage.
Weren’t these mostly offshore US company’s?
If so, they still have the schematics and the know-how to quickly replicate anything China is producing.
I’ve never worked in Defense acquisition, but I hope they were smart enough to recognize that there could be future trade issues and score domestically produced weapons higher.
The problem is that we won’t have access to the chip fabrication plants that Taiwan currently has. The US government is trying to expand our domestic chip fab capacity, but as @Voyager mentioned that will take considerable time to complete.
Maybe it means it will take considerable time to equal production?
No, TSMC is not an offshore US company. I worked in this industry. I’ve been in many conference calls with TSMC who fabbed our processors, and I had software that logged into their computers to download manufacturing data on our chips.
We used to have lots of fabs in the US, Intel still does and Global Foundries (which bought IBM’s fabs) has some. But new fabs are very, very, expensive and hard to make work with advanced process nodes. Companies like TI basically gave up. TSMC is good at what they do. They even got ahead of Intel.
China is way behind, and Biden’s initiatives are trying to keep them that way.
Yes. TSMC has announced that they will build a fab in the US, which is great. The best thing to do would be to airlift all the TSMC process engineers out of there and blow the fabs up. That won’t get us going faster but would slow China down. I hope there are plans for this very thing.
Well, it will take considerable time to do just about anything. Intel claims it takes around 3 years to build one, and I defer to their experience. We might be able to match their output in about three years if we started building enough of them today, but we aren’t doing that.
Yeah, in the event that it looks like China may take control of them, that would be in our interests.
3 Years?
In the mean time, one would hope that Apple, Google and Microsoft would spend more time supporting existing devices and stop pushing the next shiny object…
Yes, and I haven’t found anyone who contradicts them.
Ehhh, be angry at the sun for setting.
I’m not angry.
I realize that it makes money and it benefits those in the industry.
Full disclosure: Between phones and computers I worked in the IT field for almost 30 years.
I’ve witnessed a lot of changes with dubious benefit that can set a company back 6 months or more while staff catches up.
Unfortunately, getting weapons or supplies into Taiwan, once the shooting actually began, would be well nigh impossible. It would require the breaking of a Chinese blockade, which you can’t do in any “neutral” way. The time for Taiwan to be more proactive to arm up is now, not when war starts.
It’s 3 years from breaking ground to starting one fab up. It might be another 3 years to get good yields and volumes comparable to what TSMC knocks out every day from just one of their many facilities. The process learning curve is … formidable. Then we have to build and equip many of them, not just one.
Blowing up TSMC any time between now and WAG 2035 would be about like detonating the Doomsday weapon on Dr. Strangelove. Everything high tech on the Chinese or Western side would be screwed for a decade or more. Regardless of who did the blowing up. That company really is a fairly comprehensive single point of failure for the entire world economy.
Of course the US attaining functional independence from TSMC by that 2035 date I mentioned depends crucially on the USA staying focused on building and subsidizing our own production systems. Across what’s sure to be 3 presidential elections and 6 congressional elections. Good luck with that.
Dateline 2019:
The Times of Israel
Multinational giants like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Intel and Nvidia are all setting up or expanding their chip design operations in Israel – cementing the country’s position as silicon workhorse alongside its status as Startup Nation.
I don’t know if this is a fluff piece or not, but I do know that Israel makes some serious chips.
Chip design is not chip fabrication. Chip design goes on all over the world, and the major companies supporting it are in the US with support centers in India. There is absolutely no issue with anyone choking off design. It sure doesn’t take a billion bucks to build a design center.
A company like ARM, for instance, which designs the processors inside a lot of mobile equipment, since they bet on low power unlike Intel, has no fab. And never will.
As for your dislike of new things, would you want to be programming or administering the computers of 30 years ago? I’ve been programming for almost 55 years, and I sure wouldn’t.
I assume Israel has a small fab somewhere, but nothing that is going to build modern processors. When I was at Intel I used some CAD software that was designed at our Israeli facility, and I know the CEO of a fab data analysis company headquartered in Israel. But you’re reading the press release wrong.
Well in seriousness, a trade war is the more likely war that the US is walking into.
While Trump famously and explicitly kicked off a trade war, things have been getting worse since then, not better, and a number of governments, including Western democracies, are increasingly grumbling about following US sanctions on China.
Either of the two scenarios of China being shut out completely, or the world splitting up into two big markets would be disastrous for the world economy. So what is the end game here?
You’re much closer to the industry than I’ve ever been so I’ll defer to your expertise here.
FTR, “sick of” wasn’t a good choice of words on my part.
I’m not against forward progress, but the point I was trying to make is that we could probably live with keeping our devices a bit longer until chip production catches up. OEMs would need to focus on supporting/maintaining existing products to accommodate a longer replacement cycle.
The stability and cost savings might create a windfall for business and it would cut down on e-waste.
I personally don’t buy the latest, and my phones are always bought used on Amazon, so personally I’m with you, but there are a lot of people whose jobs depend on shipping out the newest and best stuff.
Our multi-country multi-ocean supply chain has made me nervous for 30 years. In the short run it makes economic sense, but it is risky.
Taiwan could not possibly arm itself enough to deal with a determined Chinese attack. There is an absolutely enormous size discrepancy. There is no chance of Taiwan defending itself without direct US engagement. Every nation in the region will have to make a choice then, as well. Thats very close to WW3, even with out the current European conflict bleeding together with it, which it undoubtedly would.
It depends on the situation. If it’s a blockade, yes, Taiwan has basically no chance of outlasting it. If it’s an invasion, though, the terrain and geography of Taiwan is favorable to the defense. With an adequate amount of artillery, close air support, munitions and good C4ISRT, the defender can make an amphibious invasion very hard for the invader. Unlike D-Day, for instance, this would be a case where the defender has a sizable arsenal of anti-ship and anti-aircraft weaponry, and more artillery (especially rocket artillery) that could be brought to bear against the beachhead.
The “size discrepancy” doesn’t mean as much as the ability to transport that discrepancy. Even if China had 10 million soldiers, it wouldn’t be useful unless it had the means to ferry them across effectively in the face of anti-ship, anti-air fire.