Chip, all interests of Biden and Cook (Apple) in the factories of Taiwanese Tsmc
TSMC has tripled its investment in Arizona to $40 billion with the opening of a second factory for more advanced chips. Here are reasons, objectives and numbers
US President Joe Biden traveled to Arizona on Tuesday, December 6 to attend a ceremony at the microchip factory TSMC is building in the state, in Phoenix.
TSMC (stands for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) is a Taiwanese company and is the world's largest producer of semiconductors, crucial components for the manufacture of automobiles, smartphones, household appliances and weapon systems.
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BECAUSE IT'S IMPORTANT
The event attended by Biden was, specifically, a tool-in ceremony , dedicated to the installation of the first batch of systems in the plant. Quartz wrote of it as an important appointment for TSMC, which has invested $12 billion in the construction of the factory, but above all for Biden, who has dedicated a large part of his political agenda to reinvigorating US manufacturing of technologies critical to transitions ecological and digital.
TSMC TRIPLES ITS INVESTMENT AND ANNOUNCES SECOND FACTORY
The one in Phoenix will be TSMC's first advanced microchip factory on American territory, but not the only one. In fact, on Tuesday the company announced its intention to build a second plant, still in Arizona but even more advanced from a technological point of view, bringing the total investment to 40 billion dollars.
BIDEN'S PUBLIC AID TO MICROCHIPS
TSMC's investment was boosted by the CHIPS Act , Biden's plan for scientific research, technological innovation and semiconductor manufacturing: it became law in August and is worth $280 billion in total, $52.7 billion of which intended for chip manufacturing in the United States. The law also provides a 25 percent investment tax credit for equipment expenditures.
On semiconductors, the United States has global leadership in the design phase, but then has to rely on Asia – especially Taiwan and South Korea – for their manufacturing and packaging. In 2021, America's share of chip manufacturing in the global total was 12 percent.
ALL NUMBERS OF TSMC FACTORIES IN ARIZONA
TSMC's first factory in Phoenix, Arizona required a $12 billion investment: construction began in 2021, and the company expects to begin full-scale production in 2024. The plant is expected to reach produce 20,000 4-nanometer chips each month, a figure equal to approximately 1.6 percent of TSMC's total capacity (1.3 million), concentrated in Taiwan and destined – it seems – to remain mostly based there.
The second factory in Arizona should instead be operational from 2026 and will be dedicated to the manufacture of more advanced chips, from 3 nanometers in size, the most commercially advanced ones and of which there is currently no production in the United States. Once full capacity is reached, this facility will produce 40,000 silicon wafers per month.
As its plans expand, TSMC said it will increase its Arizona employee base from 1,600 to 4,500.
WHY COOK (APPLE) COMES TO ARIZONA
In addition to Biden, the ceremony was also attended by Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, of which TSMC is an important semiconductor supplier (its US customers also include AMD and NVIDIA).
Apple has lobbied hard for the first Phoenix factory to get subsidies, and once production gets into full swing, it would have to buy up to a third of its output.
NOT ONLY TSMC
Not only TSMC, but also Samsung (South Korea) and Intel (American) have invested large sums in the construction of advanced semiconductor factories, up to 3 nanometers, in America: Samsung is building a 17 billion dollar plant in Texas, while Intel spent about 40 billion on facilities in Arizona and Ohio.
All three companies say they plan to move to manufacturing 2-nanometer chips by 2025.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/tsmc-fabbriche-microchip-arizona/ on Wed, 07 Dec 2022 10:31:02 +0000.