*With extreme automation and minimal employees. Modern Fabs have very few assembly line employee's. They use positive pressure rooms, overhead rail car system, robotic arms, and machines drop down from the fab floor to a maintenance floor when a human is actually needed.
Edit: and this isn't actually a cutting edge fab. By the time it opens in 2024 the cutting edge process will be 3nm or beyond.
Of course, the angstrom being the size that it is (.1nm), makes it unlikely there ever will be another scale. Whatever is next, it won't be silicon.
I am big fanboy of Robert Lighthizer, and with Phase 1 effectively ripped we are going to see a lot of moving things. May not happen immediately, first it will be slow then sudden.
Good call-out re: GF.
[1] https://wccftech.com/intel-abandoning-10nm-after-dg1-plannin...
Most of the deep tech in a fab is the equipment. The rest of the stuff is a giant box that's super clean and maintains that clealiness.
All of these Fabs[2] buy their equipment from the aforementioned companies.
Here is what an example supply chain looks like:
NVidia(US) has the IP and "soft" tech, they use software tooling(US) to make layouts, then contracts out the manufacturing to TSMC(Taiwan) who then buys their equipment from KLA/AMAT/LAM/TEL/ASML. TSMC(Taiwan) processes the wafers which are packaged at OSATS(OSATS are a collection of many companies[3]). The final product such as a graphics card is then further made accessible by writing insanely deep software driver stack (CUDA drivers for example) that are all developed by NVIDIA(US). For CPUs, there would be ISA and other "soft" tech involved which is Intel(US), AMD (US), ARM(UK, owned by Softbank(Japan)), Qualcomm, Broadcom, Microchip and Apple (all US, its a long list). I didn't even touch storage/memory. In addition to US, a lot of software and hardware talent and manufacturing comes from the EU, Germany in particular. I used to get on the call with a German company in the late morning and the Germans would be working their ass off at 9pm in Germany. We had an amazing team. It is not uncommon to pay $20k for a motor made in germany.
Somewhere in the middle to low end of the supply chain (motors, wires, connectors, may be even steel, copper, precious metals, chemicals) probably has Chinese involvement. You can imagine how a graphics card's supply chain gets very complex and deep.
Back to the central point - Semiconductor is a massive industry with complex supply chain. Depends on the level we are talking about. Also Global Foundries is not considered as among top dogs when it comes to semicon tech, although that's also debatable.
Edit: added tooling
[1] Source of the data (2011, old but still relevant): https://www.vlsiresearch.com/public/cms_pdf_upload/706001v1....
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_device_manufacturer
The other side of the equation is EDA tooling, which is primarily US-based (Cadence, Synopsys, and Mentor Graphics).
They've operated in the US for a while now.
From the press release: "In the United States, TSMC currently operates a fab in Camas, Washington and design centers in both Austin, Texas and San Jose, California. The Arizona facility would be TSMC’s second manufacturing site in the United States."
> You have earned a friend for life.
What a bizarre comment. If they leave, are they your enemy for life then?
I'm not sure that's fair. There's a lot of room between friend and enemy, here. When breaking up in a relationship under typical circumstances, the other person doesn't normally become an enemy, unless a person is not well adjusted mentally.
As far as bizarre goes -- bizarre is better than boring!
(New) Relationship with strangers can be in one of the 3 categories:
- Neutral - Friend - Enemy
OP is moving the company into Friend category (from Neutral). I don't know what he'd do if they decide to move back, but if they declare the company as an "enemy" then that creates a perverse incentive where people in Neutral category would refrain from becoming friend because that risks them becoming enemy.
So to be prudent OP must move the company into 'Neutral' category again otherwise they won't get future 'Friends'
So yeah, educate yourself and then behave reasonably.
I know. Where in my comment did I say otherwise?
> So yeah, educate yourself and then behave reasonably.
Okay, thanks?
Did you by any chance respond to the wrong comment? Such bizarre comments in this thread.
Remember when Trump floated withdrawing from NATO?
Remember when Trump stopped funding the WHO in the middle of the worst pandemic of the past 100 years?
America First has no room for friends for life. Only friends for the moment.
I remember when Trump took no actions at all toward pulling the US out of NATO, and did nothing other than use it as a rather dumb prop to try to coax NATO allies into meeting their spending obligations.
> Remember when Trump stopped funding the WHO in the middle of the worst pandemic of the past 100 years?
I remember when the WHO cooperated with China to knowingly lie about the pandemic, including trying to forestall borders from being closed, trying to forestall the isolation of China, lying about the nature of the virus including the risk that it posed, and committed global genocide in the process.
And the previous president had already got the Europeans to commit to meeting their obligations over a period of a certain number of years which they were moving towards. Trumps nonsense achieved nothing other than making the Europeans and the rest of the world recognize that the US has become deeply unreliable and move further towards China.
A stopped clock is right twice a day, and sometimes an idiot gets an answer right. There is zero reason for any US troops to be in Europe or the US to remain in NATO. We’ve been burning our wealth for 70 years subsidizing European defense, and their economies.
> I remember when Trump took no actions at all toward pulling the US out of NATO
In times of peace, alliances exist only in rhetoric. NATO has strength only insofar as people believe that member states will come to each other's aid. Trump called his commitment to the treaty into question, and in so doing made the alliance less strong. Surely you see this.
>> Remember when Trump stopped funding the WHO in the middle of the worst pandemic of the past 100 years?
> I remember when the WHO cooperated with China to knowingly lie about the pandemic, including trying to forestall borders from being closed, trying to forestall the isolation of China, lying about the nature of the virus including the risk that it posed, and committed global genocide in the process.
I mean, if lying abut the nature of the virus or the risks it imposed was grounds for dissolving an organization, then surely the federal government and many state governments should be dissolved by now.
But for the sake of argument, let's stipulate that what you wrote was 100% correct.
The WHO does lots of things. Apparently one of them is facilitating "global genocide" (kind of harsh?). Another one is helping countries, rich and poor alike, survive this very disease we're stipulating it brought into being.
Is America or the world safer today because the WHO lost its biggest funder? What replaces it?
If we don't want the WHO being unduly influenced by China, how does defunding it advance that cause?
> You have earned a friend for life.
The Trump administration has shown that "friend for life" means "for as long as I'm getting exactly what I want, or think I am, and otherwise you can see yourself out."
> For the doubters, this is just the beginning of Re-industrilization of America.
What benefit is there really? This fab will have about 5 jobs, and a bunch of robots who could be anywhere on earth.
I'm not sure this provides any more national security than a stockpile would.
AMD does make chips in the US via their spun off Global Foundries, and so does Intel. AMD switched some production to TSMC because they had much better defect rates at 7nm. You can buy US made AMD today if you want it just won't be the latest GPU's.
GloFo outright canceled their 7nm and smaller processes, back in 2018. All of AMD's leading-edge processors are now using TSMC 7nm, though the server and most desktop processors also incorporate a 12nm IO die. The days of AMD using GloFo are numbered.
Really, though, at this point it's easier to list what leading-edge chips aren't using TSMC: Intel's CPUs and FPGAs. All the other latest-and-greatest CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs and smartphone SoCs are made at TSMC. There's more diversity for memory manufacturing, and logic that doesn't need to be on a leading-edge process (eg. low-end smartphone SoCs, motherboard chipsets, SSD controllers).
"Manufactured by TSMC-USA in Arizona". Super exciting to be quite honest.
Basically all of them, to some extent.
> But I can promise you if there is an option to buy an USA made AMD, I’d pay a premium for that.
AMD spun off their own foundry years ago (GlobalFoundaries) and still uses the for some things.
FWIW though TSMC already has a US fab, but all their high-end processes are going to remain in Taiwan.
For the doubters, this is just the beginning of Re-industrilization of America.