TSMC is having more luck building in Japan than in America

Re:TSMC is having more luck building in Japan than in America by FirmwareBurner on Sunday February 25, 2024 @12:05PM (#39502471)

Which is more expensive for an employer? US healthcare or EU workers' rights that include 25+ paid vacation days, unlimited paid sick leave, difficult to fire, etc while American workers don't, but get bigger wages instead?

I don't know the exact answer, but what I'm trying to say is that there's no free lunch for employers in either location, but I'm pretty sure they do their homework on this and they know the exact answer when they decided to open up shop somewhere.

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Re:TSMC is having more luck building in Japan than in America by silverquiet on Sunday February 25, 2024 @12:13PM (#39502545)

If I had to guess, I’d keep my finger down on US healthcare because it’s just so expensive. When you don’t pay your employees that much, sick time isn’t as expensive either, and US workers in the actual industries we’re talking about tend to get at least decent treatment (for the time being at least); it’s the wage-slave, burger-flippers and laborers we’ve deemed as truly disposable.

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Re:TSMC is having more luck building in Japan than in America by FirmwareBurner on Sunday February 25, 2024 @12:24PM (#39502656)

Sure, but we're not talking about burger flippers at McDs here.

Those definitely cost more and have better working conditions in the UE than the US, but that's OK for McD, because the burgers flipped in the EU by the costlier workforce don't get exported worldwide, but get consumed locally and therefore all this is reflected in local prices for local consumers which have no competition from imports from abroad.

But when we talk about skilled workforce for the semi industry and the products being fungible and exported worldwide, the equation can start to flip.

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Re:TSMC is having more luck building in Japan than in America by silverquiet on Sunday February 25, 2024 @12:33PM (#39502756)

Another fair point, but I would think the semi industry (at least the segment that TSMC plays in) would be about the most advanced, least fungible good in the history of the world; they can literally only be made by that company. It’s somewhat akin to commercial airliners - despite Boeing occasionally forgetting to fasten the doors to the fuselage, they have no shortage of orders because there are only two companies that can build these planes, with I think much of the assembly done in the US or EU. Essentially these things sit at the very apex of the world’s current manufacturing capability.

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Re:TSMC is having more luck building in Japan than in America by FirmwareBurner on Sunday February 25, 2024 @02:22PM (#39503870)

>at least the segment that TSMC plays in) would be about the most advanced, least fungible good in the history of the world; they can literally only be made by that company

Not really. The margins Nvidia earns designing their chips are far higher than what TSMC earn fibbing them. TSMC actually has coemption. Samsung are only one node behind which is just enough to drive price competition down. Meanwhile Nvidia has no competition. You wanna be where Nvidia is, not where TSMC is.

OF course, this might change in the future either way.

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