[HN Gopher] Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from...
___________________________________________________________________
Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona
fab
Author : rbanffy
Score : 389 points
Date : 2025-01-14 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tomshardware.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tomshardware.com)
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| These chips are still sent to Taiwan for packing, so it's a good
| step but not a complete step.
| m348e912 wrote:
| How does this make any financial sense?
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| This is how most modern supply chains look like.
|
| Plus, chips are small in size and cost a lot so you can fit a
| lot in a container. Per unit shipping costs probably come out
| to be pretty low. Especially when compared to the political
| costs and risks associated with _not_ onshoring.
| CPLX wrote:
| > you can fit a lot in a container
|
| Guys these are microchips on wafers. You can put a million
| dollars worth in your jacket pocket. They aren't being
| shipped in containers.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Marine shipping is just about the most fuel efficient way of
| moving things between any two places, by a lot. A 100,000 dwt
| ship can get 1050 miles per gallon per ton of cargo. It takes
| about a teaspoon full of fuel to move an iPhone sized device
| across the pacific when I ran the numbers last.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| Interesting. Could you give a brief description of how you
| got that number? Eg. what factors were considered.
| eric-hu wrote:
| Those numbers match what comes up with a quick search:
|
| https://www.extension.iastate.edu/grain/topics/Estimateso
| fTo...
|
| That study uses 1,043.4 mpg for the fuel economy of a
| 100,000 dwt ship.
|
| Videos of transportation ship engines are cool. Each
| cylinder is wide enough for a person to lay down inside
| it.
|
| https://youtu.be/G0eMyA388bE
| umanwizard wrote:
| To ship things to/from these fabs by sea you have to add
| the cost of shipping by truck between Phoenix and
| (presumably) LA. Not sure how big of a difference that
| makes.
| nine_k wrote:
| Chips are small, so one truck once a few days may
| suffice.
| CPLX wrote:
| Airplanes. They use airplanes. We are talking about
| microchips here, possibly the highest dollar per gram
| substance that exists on the planet.
|
| The interest you'd pay just losing a couple days in
| transit time would exceed the cost of purchasing a
| dedicated private jet and the crew to fly it.
| jocaal wrote:
| Imagine the insurance...
| kstrauser wrote:
| A semi truck carries +- 15 tons of cargo and gets an
| average of about 6 MPG, so about 90 MPG/ton.
| ponty_rick wrote:
| Trains are pretty efficient as well.
| fblp wrote:
| I'm suprised they can't ship (flat) packaging that could be
| used in Arizona with a simple assembly line.
|
| If they had that packaging design then for this to make
| financial sense the two way shipping (and loading, unloading,
| custom clearance etc) would have to be less than shipping the
| packaging, the setup cost per unit cost of putting the chip
| in a box
| krisoft wrote:
| Wait, wait. In the context of semiconductor manufacturing
| packaging does not mean what you think it means. It is not
| putting the product in a paper box.
|
| It is about cutting the wafer into individual chips, wire
| bonding the silicone to pins, and covering the whole thing
| with epoxy.
|
| Here is a video which explains it better:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gg2eVVayA4
|
| It would be indeed crazy if they would ship the ready chips
| to Taiwan just to be put in a paper box.
|
| basically the input of the process is a wafer which looks
| like this: https://waferpro.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2016/08/Patterned-Lo...
|
| And the output of the process is something which looks like
| this: https://res.cloudinary.com/rsc/image/upload/b_rgb:FFF
| FFF,c_p...
| zeusk wrote:
| The packaging in this context is not wire bonding but
| CoWoS - chip-wafer and wafer-wafer bonding.
| krisoft wrote:
| You are correct. I was just illustrating what kind of
| processes belong to the umbrella term "packaging" in the
| context of semiconductor manufacturing. Was not talking
| about what particular process are missing from the
| Arizona facility.
|
| But you are right on that it is CoWoS which is the
| missing ingredient.
| j_walter wrote:
| You seem to be confusing the term packaging...it is not the
| box, it is how the chips are assembled together to make the
| final product.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-egYoxajTz0
| alt227 wrote:
| Dont downvote the guy for not knowing this very specific
| definition of 'packaging'
| snakeyjake wrote:
| The machines and processes needed to package the individual
| integrated circuits are fantastically expensive but the
| margins are so low in that step that it's only profitable at
| massive scales.
|
| So you put the fantastically expensive machines near where
| most of the customers are and most of the customers are in
| Asia.
|
| Works the same way with fiber optic cables. Making the long
| skinny bits is hard and high-margin. Actually turning them
| into cables is easy and low-margin.
|
| So Corning makes huge spools of fiber optic cable in Arizona,
| North Carolina, and New York (I think) and ships it off to
| Taiwan and China where it is made into the cables that you
| plug into stuff.
| CPLX wrote:
| These are literally microchips. Tens of thousands of dollars
| of value in each gram.
|
| Shipping cost is fundamentally irrelevant, you can put $100MM
| worth on a direct flight and have room left over for your
| family and friends.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Your overall point is probably right, but "tens of
| thousands of dollars of value in each gram" seems like an
| exaggeration. How much does one CPU weigh?
| CPLX wrote:
| Order of magnitude it's within range. A single wafer for
| something higher end is worth tens of thousands of
| dollars. So whatever that weighs. It's not much.
| umanwizard wrote:
| But surely a wafer weighs more than a gram, no?
| hollow-moe wrote:
| what is involved in the packaging process ? I believe they
| don't ship fully assembled chips to Taiwan only to be put in a
| pretty box ?
| jsheard wrote:
| I believe packaging in this context means taking the raw
| silicon dies and assembling them into a package which can be
| soldered onto a PCB (or put in a socket, but Apple doesn't
| socket anything).
| SSilver2k2 wrote:
| I'm making an educated guess but probably the cutting of
| chips from the wafers, placing them into the appropriate
| ceramic socket types (DIP, BFGA, SMD etc), soldering the line
| wires from chip to pin, encasing the chip, etc.
| a1o wrote:
| > DIP
|
| I am happily imagining opening a recent Apple device and
| seeing 74 gates with through holes in green PCBs, with an
| Apple logo made in soldering lead marking in the corner of
| the board.
| virexene wrote:
| I think "packaging" here refers to the process of putting the
| silicon die in its plastic casing and connecting the die's
| pad to the case's pins, see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit_packaging
| mechagodzilla wrote:
| "Packaging" in this context means taking the wafer of compute
| die (made in Arizona), dicing it up into individual die,
| mounting it onto a silicon interposer (an even bigger die, no
| idea where that's made, but probably taiwan) along with a
| bunch of HBM die, then mounting that Si interposer on a
| somewhat larger, very fine-pitched circuit board
| ('substrate') that is essentially a breakout for power and
| high-speed I/O from the compute die. That thing is the
| packaged 'CoWoS' system, where CoWoS==Chip-on-wafer-on-
| substrate, that eventually gets attached to a 'normal' PCB.
| eric-hu wrote:
| This sounds like a complex procedure. Are there currently
| alternative packaging facilities that could do this work,
| if Taiwan were locked into kinetic war?
| ipdashc wrote:
| What I've always wondered was, how is it possible to do
| this process (or well, the less advanced version of it, for
| smaller/older chips) cheaply/at massive scale, for those
| ICs that cost a few cents in bulk?
|
| Like, scaling wafer (die?) production to insanely low costs
| makes intuitive sense. The input is sand, the process
| itself is just easily-parallellizable chemistry and optics,
| and the output is a tiny little piece of material.
|
| But packaging sounds as though it requires intricate
| mechanical work to be done to every single output chip, and
| I just can't wrap my head around how you scale that to the
| point where they cost a few cents...
| j_walter wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-egYoxajTz0
| Detrytus wrote:
| Believe it or not, sending them overseas just to be put in a
| box actually can be cost-effective. Like with those pears:
| "grown in Argentina, packaged in Thailand, sold in UK"
| https://www.birminghamfoodcouncil.org/2022/01/16/part-i-
| pear...
| dgfitz wrote:
| Until 2027, yes.
|
| https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/tsmc-is-repo...
|
| "TSMC does not have an advanced packaging facility in the U.S.,
| and its partner Amkor will only start packaging chips in
| Arizona in 2027. As a result, Blackwell AI silicon produced in
| Arizona will need to be shipped back to Taiwan for final
| assembly, as all of TSMC's CoWoS packaging capacity remains in
| Taiwan."
| ttul wrote:
| Given that there may be a 25% chance that China invades
| Taiwan by 2030, having the ability to package SOTA chips in
| the US by 2027 seems "soon enough".
| risho wrote:
| where did you get that number from
| xeromal wrote:
| There's a window where China will have it max capability
| to invade for the next few years. After that their
| population is going to start shrinking and every year
| will be harder than the next to invade.
| bluGill wrote:
| The population of 18-30 year old males is generally what
| matters for an invasion and China has been shrinking that
| for a long time. The rest of the population can plan the
| invasion, but they rarely actually do it. (a few
| countries also invite young females to an invasion, but
| that is not normal)
| audunw wrote:
| But they don't have energy independence or food security
| yet, which is kind of a hard requirement for an invasion.
|
| There's not enough rail lines and gas pipelines from
| Russia to feed them with significant quantities of fossil
| fuels.
|
| Imagine how bad Russias invasion of Ukraine would've been
| without energy independence and food security. The
| invasion of Taiwan is an order of magnitude more
| difficult, and Taiwan now has the recipe for how to knock
| out the entire naval fleet of a more powerful nation (see
| how Ukraine has essentially incapacitated Russia in the
| Black Sea).
| adamc wrote:
| I would expect an invasion to prompt the US navy to put
| up a blockade, disrupting China's oil supplies and
| generally making it very hard to keep their economy
| going. Admittedly, Trump is a wild card; he's random
| enough that it is hard to be sure what would happen.
|
| I do not think China could survive a blockade.
| maxglute wrote:
| Except TW TFR even worse than PRC TFR, and ultimately
| scale effect takes over - PRC with crippled TFR still
| generates about as much male new borns per year than TW
| has men 18-40 total. PRC still on trend to generate 3-4x
| more MEN than US projected to add population per year,
| incidentally around the same as active duty military...
| having enough bodies is not going to be an issue for
| decades. Having enough nukes is.
| xeromal wrote:
| I'm not arguing against that at all. Just that if the PRC
| wants it's best chance, the clock is ticking. It becomes
| more costly the longer they wait.
| maxglute wrote:
| I disagree, bodies is not limitting factor for PRC, it
| also becomes cheaper to wait for TW specifically because
| TW male 18-40 is set to decline = less kill bots /
| occupation force needed. Attacker:defender ratio (i.e.
| commonly 3:1) = every defender TW loses due to
| demographics, PRC with same TFR will come out
| significantly ahead, will need less enforcement:civilian
| ratio for occupation.
|
| But ultimately, it's about hardware+industry - current
| trend = regional force balance shifting in PRC favour vs
| US+co every year with no end in sight. PRC better off
| accumulating capabilities at scale, not just regional,
| but global (i.e. prompt global strike) and increase
| autarky (less net population + more electrifcation = more
| calorie + energy security). All trend incentivizes
| waiting and building.
|
| TLDR waiting and building becomes less costly (or rather
| less risky) to pursue PRC's ultimate strategic goals
| associated with TW scenario... displacing US posture out
| of east Asia and perhaps hitting CONUS infra at scale as
| response to US intervention. The latter part is key,
| there are important stretch goals to TW scenario that
| secures PRC geopolitical interests for 50-100+ years.
| It's much more important to be able to tackle those
| "costly" scenarios "cheaper", where cheaper is also
| relative to making intervention much more expensive for
| adversaries, i.e. PRC "winning" hand in TW scenario is to
| show US posture in east asia not sustainable, and CONUS
| (including TSMC Arizona) not defendable.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| You know where
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| I'm not sure where GP's 25% comes from. But there have
| been various assessments that China intends to "reunify"
| with Taiwan by 2030. [1] Xi Xinping has also instructed
| the PLA to be prepared to invade by 2027. [2]
|
| If you then ask yourself whether China would rather
| invade during the Trump administration (with its
| tendencies towards isolationism and "deal making") or
| roll the dice on a subsequent U.S. administration, you
| might find yourself thinking that the odds actually seem
| considerably higher than 25% that this could happen in
| the next four years.
|
| To the extent that this narrative comes via the U.S.
| intelligence/defense community, one has to assume that it
| may biased towards exaggerating the threat. I for one
| hope that is the case, since I do not want to see a
| U.S.-China conflict any time soon. At the same time, I
| unfortunately don't think it's likely to be completely
| baseless.
|
| [1] https://media.defense.gov/2023/Apr/24/2003205865/-1/-
| 1/1/07-...
|
| [2] See, e.g., https://cimsec.org/the-maritime-convoys-
| of-2027-supporting-t...
| https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4547637-china-
| potential-t...
| ponty_rick wrote:
| Would be interesting if China uses drones with technology
| from Taiwan to invade Taiwan.
| bitsage wrote:
| Funny enough, Fab 21 was announced in May 2020 and completed
| construction in July 2022, a month before the Chips Act was
| signed.
| j_walter wrote:
| What makes you think construction was completed in July 2022?
| The shell of Phase 1 may have been completed, but even now the
| construction continues in Phase 1B and Phase 2.
| bitsage wrote:
| I'm going off the purely structural construction of the first
| fab. There's a timeline on TSMC's site.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The announcement of this plant coincided with the announcement
| of the Endless Frontier Act and CHIPS for America act, which is
| what eventually became the bill we call CHIPS and Science Act.
|
| This plant was the foundation that the CHIPS act was built
| upon. The Secretary of State had to secure an agreement with
| TSMC to build this fab before the bills could be drafted, as a
| lot of the recipients of the funding are suppliers for this
| plant.
|
| It is completely truthful to assert that this is the result of
| the CHIPS act. Congress agreed to introduce the bills as a
| result of TSMC's agreement to build the fab in Arizona. If you
| have to avoid giving Biden credit, then you can point out that
| it was Trump's SoS who negotiated this original agreement.
| lysace wrote:
| Made using which process? The article doesn't mention this.
|
| https://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/log...
| choilive wrote:
| 4nm
| lysace wrote:
| I thought Taiwan prohibited export of this kind of know-how?
| What did I miss?
| j_walter wrote:
| They have adopted a n-2 type of rule for advanaced
| tech...but as of yesterday they seem to have relaxed this
| rule and approved transfer of 2nm from Taiwan fabs to the
| AZ fab at some point in the near future.
|
| https://www.extremetech.com/computing/tsmc-cleared-
| for-2nm-p...
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Wow I did not know this and it is fantastic news,
| surprised Taiwan allowed this as they see chips as being
| the most important reason America would intervene if they
| were invaded.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I'm a China dove and I'd favor full-throated defense of
| Taiwan in any invasion (much more so than Ukraine)
| regardless of chips.
| d3ckard wrote:
| I don't disagree with the core premise, but why much more
| than Ukraine?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Taiwan is a long-standing well-functioning democracy and
| a core ally. On the other side, I also view Russia's
| grievances as somewhat more legitimate than China's.
| DennisP wrote:
| Addressing those "grievances" hasn't worked out too well
| for Russia. They complained about Ukraine moving in the
| general direction of NATO membership, and got Sweden and
| Finland as actual new members of NATO. Finland has a
| longer Russian border than Ukraine, and Sweden has a
| regional navy that pretty much controls the Baltic Sea.
| Both countries were pretty firmly neutral before the war.
| bllguo wrote:
| and that has what, exactly, to do with the legitimacy of
| said grievances?
| DennisP wrote:
| Because for all of Russia's apocalyptic rhetoric about
| the dire consequences of NATO membership on their
| borders, they've done nothing significant about Finland
| and Sweden actually becoming NATO members while stepping
| up their military spending. By comparison, a little
| political noise about Ukraine maybe joining NATO someday
| is much less of a provocation, which makes it seem
| unlikely to have been Russia's actual reason for
| invasion. And from any reasonable ethical perspective
| it's certainly not a legitimate one.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| The NATO stuff is such propaganda, the idea has always
| been imperialism and to take the people and turn them
| into Russians.
| bllguo wrote:
| in what sense could you _possibly_ argue this
|
| from both legal and realpolitik lenses the Taiwan issue
| is fully legitimate. your country has done far worse to
| Cuba for far less. Even setting aside the historical
| context and the Chinese civil war, what is illegitimate
| about not wanting an antagonistic and belligerent foreign
| power installing weapons in an island mere miles off the
| mainland coast?
| kombine wrote:
| No grievances that Russia might have had can justify this
| devastating war, and total annihilation, and mass murder.
| DennisP wrote:
| In case of invasion, it's not that unlikely that the fabs
| in Taiwan get destroyed, or at least lose the ability to
| keep making and selling chips while the conflict is hot.
| In that case TSMC and Taiwan might prefer having a
| backup. As long as the US doesn't confiscate the Arizona
| fab, effectively siding with China, Taiwan would arguably
| have more leverage by still having something of immense
| strategic value to trade.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The US is not going to hold on to some working fab for
| some Taiwan-government-in-exile. As soon as you are out
| of power, even your allies generally take the time to
| plunder what they can.
| DennisP wrote:
| Just like the US plundered any Ukrainian assets they
| could get their hands on, instead of supporting the
| Ukrainian government and freezing Russian assets instead?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The Ukrainian government is very much still extant
| DennisP wrote:
| Just as the Taiwan government could continue to be,
| despite invasion from China.
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| In the case of invasion, the equipment within the TSMC
| factories will be affirmatively destroyed / sabotaged to
| the extent that it can't be used or studied.
| zanderwohl wrote:
| Advanced lithography is like if a mystery cult were real:
| Secret knowledge only understood by the most learned
| initiates, tightly-guarded process, etching symbols that
| do things...
| lysace wrote:
| Sadly true.
|
| Even more depressing: it's like a very complicated baking
| recipe arrived at by tweaking parameters over and over a
| again. There is no deep understanding... just a giant
| list of baking parameters that seem to work, sometimes.
|
| (Yes, a bit like an AI. Hmm....)
| lysace wrote:
| I'd be extremely surprised if Apple is now able to source
| CPUs for current-gen high-end iPhones from a US fab.
|
| 2 gens ago, sure.
| mdavidn wrote:
| ASML, a Dutch firm, sells photolithography equipment to
| TSMC.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| The smallest process they've got up and running right now is
| 4nm, last I checked
| dietr1ch wrote:
| As an outsider that means somewhere in 2nm-10nm as everyone
| measures different things or have awfully off-standard
| rulers.
| ant6n wrote:
| I'd say it means TSMC 4nm.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| So which device will these be for then? I thought Apple stuff
| are always on the cutting edge node.
| kcb wrote:
| Apple still produces older generation devices long after
| the latest ones are released. That's their whole strategy
| to address the lower end market.
| alt227 wrote:
| iPhone SE
| hinkley wrote:
| Their new stuff is. The iPad mini just moved from the A15
| to the A17, The first MacBook with Intel processors had
| access to a bin that was not generally available yet. The
| yield was too low for it to work for an IBM, a Sony, or a
| Fujitsu. But Apple was low volume and high margin.
|
| If I was nervous about a new fab, there's the iPhone SE,
| the Apple TV, lots of choices for a less aggressive
| manufacturing node and less aggressive sales figures. If
| yield is shit you can still offer a product that isn't
| killed by its own success.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I wonder if Apple Intelligence is forcing them to create
| new chips for things like the SE and TV instead of using
| old chips which I think they'd usually do.
| hinkley wrote:
| And for the record the A17 Pro chip is 3nm. Used in the
| iPhone 15 pro and the iPad mini.
|
| But they could make iPhone 14's and the smaller 15's.
| digdigdag wrote:
| - Over 50% of the workers flew in from Taiwan to work on this
| plant and make these chips.
|
| - The chips still need to fly back to Taiwan to be packaged as
| there are no facilities here with such a capability.
|
| Made in america is a hard sell. But at least showing the glaring
| STEM field gap in the U.S. is a start to finally addressing the
| brain drain.
| caycep wrote:
| isn't packaging tech mostly from american companies like
| applied mat/lam research? or am I missing something?
| ge96 wrote:
| brain drain from where? thought a problem is influx of workers
| into us although more for software not sure of chip tech
| epicureanideal wrote:
| > STEM field gap
|
| STEM salary gap
|
| I suspect the Taiwan workers have on average much lower
| salaries.
| lysace wrote:
| Yes, roughly speaking 1:4 compared to California.
|
| Edit: This is not news. This (combined with their higher EE
| education) is why Taiwan won IBM PC-clone-related
| manufacturing in the 80s. And why they now have TSMC.
| coliveira wrote:
| Such a great victory for American industry... the future is
| to bring workers from Taiwan with skills and willingness to
| receive a fraction of US salaries.
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| What are your realistic options?
|
| Say TSMC pays supper competitive US salaries to attract
| US-only labor, higher labor cost which is causing the end
| product to be more expensive, which makes that fab
| uncompetitive globally causing Apple to go buying from
| someone else and TSMC either choosing leaving the US or
| going bust eating the losses.
|
| You can't compete with lower-wage countries in a
| globalized world with no trade barriers and no tariffs,
| when Apple wants higher profits and consumers want lower
| prices. Something has to give.
|
| You can put tariffs on imported chips to equalize the
| field, but then iPhones would be more expensive for the
| average American and Apple's stock would tank.
|
| So, pick your poison.
| alt227 wrote:
| > when Apple wants higher profits and consumers lower
| prices
|
| Trump wants chips that say "Made in 'Merica". I dont
| think cost comes into it that much.
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| That's the catch, he said "Made in America", not "Made by
| American workers" :)
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The DoD is the driver. They're freaked out about the
| supply chain vulnerabilities.
| bluGill wrote:
| More automation. Given the chemicals involved in fab work
| in general I expect this fab is very automated just for
| safety reasons and so very few employees are needed. Thus
| the cost of labor isn't a significant factor.
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| _> Thus the cost of labor isn't a significant factor._
|
| It is. Semi fabs aren't fire-and-forget. You need highly
| skilled people to constantly check and tweak all the
| operations in a feedback loop 24/7 and every hour of
| downtime due to any issue means millions lost. You hire
| the right people to minimize that downtime while also
| keeping the costs in check. It's a delicate balance.
| tester756 wrote:
| What % of the all fab costs over two decades are the
| people? Including the cost of building it and
| modernization
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Touche
| hnfong wrote:
| All money ultimately goes to labor. Rocks don't accept
| cash as payment.
| bluGill wrote:
| True, but compared to the amount of production I would
| guess these are only a few people.
| coliveira wrote:
| The problem was never the cost of labor. US tech is
| already highly profitable and they can pay the full
| salary if they wish to. But their desire is basically to
| get a free card to pay lower salaries by any means, so
| they can send more of those profits to shareholders. The
| US is essentially a fighting arena between shareholders
| and workers. The profit is there, it is just a matter of
| how business want to keep always more of the spoils to
| themselves.
| hollerith wrote:
| Do you also think that if a business loses money, the
| employees should give some of their pay back to the
| business? Or does this just go one way?
| coliveira wrote:
| Workers ALWAYS give back some of their salaries when a
| company fails. They either get lower compensation or lose
| their jobs altogether.
| coliveira wrote:
| What about the US providing actually good education that
| can produce workers able to compete with Chinese and
| other Asian countries?
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| Why would well educated US grads go work in a semi fab
| for 50k when they can make 5-10x in an office or at home,
| getting people to click on ads in the bay area, or move
| money around between tax heavens in new york?
| coliveira wrote:
| Your answer explains why the US is creating a failed
| society. It either implodes or needs to control other
| countries to maintain its profit and consumption levels.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| > You can't compete with lower-wage countries in a
| globalized world with no trade barriers
|
| I think you've correctly identified the solutions.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Rather, sounds like paying the real costs rather than
| playing games to avoid that.
| smileysteve wrote:
| This solves for the US national security issue; in the
| event of war between China and Taiwan (and a possible
| proxy war with US), Taiwan immigration would qualify for
| asylum.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Would that be the thing that Trump says he wants to stop
| on day one? Those asylum-seekers? The Trump who is
| inviting Xi to his inauguration?
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| You can't really be this obtuse. Asylum of high-skilled
| silicon workers from an ally under invasion isn't nearly
| the same thing as the asylum being granted over the last
| 4 years to anyone who could download the CBP One app.
|
| Trump is inviting Xi as a troll / show of power.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Why don't you have Elon Musk explain that to Trump's base
| who don't give a shit about Taiwan or H1-Bs
| rafram wrote:
| > the asylum being granted over the last 4 years to
| anyone who could download the CBP One app
|
| This is entirely unmoored from reality. CBP One only
| allows people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela
| to make appointments, and once they have one, they have
| to actually show up and argue their case (why they need
| to come to the US for their own safety). You can't just
| show a border patrol officer that you have CBP One and
| walk on through.
| lysace wrote:
| > This solves for the US national security issue
|
| I mean, maybe it's okay that some other country is better
| than you at something important. Excuse me but: the
| arrogance.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| OK. Cards on the table.
|
| This is not arrogance. This is not even about China and
| Taiwan fighting a war. _(Heck, that 's probably never
| gonna happen anyway.)_
|
| This is about the US manufacturing important things on
| our own. And it's not just the US either by the way. The
| Europeans want to be able to manufacture their own chips.
| The Russians. The Chinese. The Japanese. The Koreans. And
| on and on and on.
|
| Why? Because the current system is dumb for everyone who
| is not Taiwan. For a whole lot of reasons. _(Most of them
| economic.)_ No one wants to say that out loud, but it 's
| the truth. We can't have everyone dependent on chips but
| only one nation capable of making them. Again, we're not
| the only ones who have come to this conclusion. Are the
| Chinese also "arrogant"? Are the Japanese "arrogant"? The
| Europeans? The Russians? Are the Koreans "arrogant"?
|
| So everyone else can make common sense moves, but it's
| "arrogant" if the US does the same common sense thing? So
| we should just keep paying out an increasing share of our
| GDP as chips become more and more important and expensive
| while everyone else makes moves to cut their costs right?
| Is that what we have to do to be considered not
| "arrogant"?
|
| People need to be a bit more reasonable.
| hintymad wrote:
| How much does salary contribute to the overall cost of
| operating TSMC? Perplexity said that the average salary of
| a TSMC employee is $76K a year, and TSMC had about 80K
| people. So it cost them around $6B a year on salary. In the
| meantime, their operational cost was about $46B a year, so
| that's 13%. TSMC shipped about 16 million 12-in wafers.
| Each 12-inch wafer can make about 300 to 400 chips. Let's
| say 200 to stay on the conservative side. That will be 3.2B
| chips a year. That means the cost per chip on salary will
| be less than $2 a year. It looks HC cost is not that
| dominant?
| Xeronate wrote:
| I read the main problem with hiring chip factory workers in
| Arizona was the factory just didnt pay enough for the long
| hours demanded. I looked up the median salary and its only 50k
| so I'm assuming it's not crazy skilled labor (e.g. brain
| drain). Taiwanese workers just seem more willing to do it.
| rkagerer wrote:
| _...just seem more willing to do it_
|
| That's why manufacturing offshored in the first place,
| companies feel they're receiving better value for money on
| wages elsewhere for this kind of work (and these days not to
| mention more & larger facilities, proximity to component
| sources, and a strong ecosystem of supporting and
| complimentary facilities).
| Teever wrote:
| I think that's obviously a major part of it but it ignores
| other stuff like lax environmental and safety standards.
|
| It would be interesting to see how much of the economic
| advantage of off-shoring is due to lower wages due
| intrinsic to lower cost of living vs stuff like
| ignoring/bribing foreign officials or non-existent
| environmenta/safety standards that objectively should
| exist.
| hintymad wrote:
| Personally I won't mind paying more to buy manufactured
| goods. My mom told me that a pair of sneakers before the
| offshoring back in the late 80s usually cost more than $300
| in today's dollars. Yes, it was expensive, but I would just
| buy fewer and use the one for longer time. The reason is
| that in the long run the manufacturing cost would get lower
| due to increased efficiency, and loss of supply chain is
| detrimental to the entire country - and our living expenses
| will increase overall. Case in point, how much tax do we
| have to pay and how much inflation do we have to suffer in
| order to build those super expensive weapons? Part of the
| reasons that we had $20K toilet and $100 screws is that we
| simply don't have large enough supply chain to offset the
| cost of customized manufacturing.
|
| Besides, the US loses know-how on manufacturing,
| eliminating potentially hundreds of thousands of high-
| paying engineering jobs - it will also be a pipe dream that
| we can keep the so-called high-end jobs by sitting in an
| office drawing boxes all day. Sooner or later, those who
| work with the actual manufacturing processes on the factor
| floor will out compete us and grab our the cushy "design"
| jobs.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| it's mostly just baumol cost disease.
|
| you can feel free to buy american, i don't care so i
| would prefer if it were not mandated and you get your
| individual choice to pay more for your goods if you want
| bluGill wrote:
| 50k is just a step above McDonalds these days in a lot of
| areas. Sure minimum wage might be $15k, but realistically
| nobody pays that little except in very rural areas (if you
| need a small number of low skilled employees a small rural
| town is a perfect spot to build - but if you need more than a
| small number they can't provide more at any price - you will
| pay more in the city but there are a lot more people around
| if you need more)
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Perhaps - in California.
|
| Median US Salary is $59,384. Half of workers make less.
| thecosas wrote:
| Keep in mind the plant they are talking about is in AZ,
| where median wages and cost of living are generally lower
| than California.
| hx8 wrote:
| Medium individual income in AZ is ~37k. I'm not sure how
| many Americans would give up a 40hour/week job for a 996
| that pays 13k more.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| AZ minimum wage is 14.70. If it was 996 and you somehow
| only got straight time for working 72h a week, it would
| pay 55000. Assuming there's no overtime exemption it
| would be $67000. I'm pretty sure it's not a 996 in AZ.
| TypingOutBugs wrote:
| Why does it have to be 996 at TSMC in the US?
| bluGill wrote:
| By how much? Where I live in IA McDonalds is starting at
| $17/hour, which is not that much behind California. (and
| both states are large enough to expect some variation
| depending on where you live)
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| You need to factor in that only ~30% of workers work
| full-time.
|
| Men with a bachelor's degree who work full-time have a
| median income is ~$89k - (basically the entire
| demographic of these TSMC workers).
|
| https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf
| somanyphotons wrote:
| McDonalds in Sunnyvale CA starts at 20/h, so 41k/year for
| the lowest role
| IshKebab wrote:
| I spoke to a Taiwanese person and apparently the salaries
| there are actually quite good, even by western standards
| (normal ones; not SF). The downside is they have very very
| long hours (996, barely any holiday, etc.).
| 867-5309 wrote:
| 996..? doesn't fit into weeks, months or years
| melvyn2 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system
| rlp wrote:
| 9am to 9pm 6 days a week
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| 9am-9pm 6 days a week.
| codazoda wrote:
| Why would they require these hours? In the U.S. I think
| they would need to pay time and a half for anything north
| of 40-hours. Seems like it would be cheaper to hire more
| workers and not force the overtime. Then they might be
| able to increase the salary some. Everyone wins except
| the people who are willing to sacrifice the time for time
| and a half pay.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| AIUI almost all salaried employees are exempt from
| overtime pay in the US.
| duskwuff wrote:
| This is only accurate inasmuch as most salaried employees
| are overtime exempt for other reasons (e.g. because they
| are executive or administrative professionals). Paying
| employees a salary, on its own, _does not_ make them
| overtime exempt.
|
| https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17a-overtime
| kube-system wrote:
| Is there ever a situation where it makes sense to pay
| fixed salaries to non-exempt employees?
| duskwuff wrote:
| One that comes to mind is an on-site caretaker position
| (e.g. on a remote property), where the employee is
| effectively being paid to be available, not to do a
| certain number of hours of work.
| jonas21 wrote:
| It's also highly-skilled, yet very boring work. The way it
| was described to me is that every major piece of equipment
| has a PhD assigned to it and their job is basically to
| babysit the machine and troubleshoot when things go wrong.
|
| US PhDs typically have other options and would consider
| this sort of work a waste of their time.
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| There are loads of highly qualified US engineers who
| would love to babysit enormously complicated industrial
| equipment for a living.
|
| But not for 50k, lol.
| reginald78 wrote:
| 996 at 50K is less than Arizona's minimum wage.
| somanyphotons wrote:
| The 996 should be regulated against, it's simply
| unreasonable
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _every major piece of equipment has a PhD assigned to
| it and their job is basically to babysit the machine and
| troubleshoot when things go wrong_
|
| This works in Taiwan. It doesn't in America. The
| Taiwanese workers will help transfer knowledge to
| American workers; it will be the joint responsibility of
| them both to come up with how those processes are adapted
| for American preferences. (Probably more automation,
| rotation between machines or possibly even not being
| under TSMC.)
| neltnerb wrote:
| I mean, that was exactly the way the job was described
| when I interviewed at Intel for a process engineer, and
| everyone doing the same job was at the time a PhD
| according to the interviewer. Did it change?
|
| Being on call 24/7 to troubleshoot million dollar pieces
| of equipment sounded like a poor life choice, so I didn't
| take it. But Intel also hasn't exactly done great since
| then...
| bear141 wrote:
| I know several people working as customer engineers in a
| fab based in America. They are very much not PhD's or
| even mechanical engineers.
|
| They are each assigned one tool to maintain as you said.
| They each make around 100K and 3 12hr days per week.
|
| They were working in the automotive industry before these
| jobs. Sounds pretty damn good to me, but I suppose that's
| one reason American companies cannot compete with TSMC.
| rcpt wrote:
| I have a math PhD and a number of my colleagues went on
| to finance jobs which they described as "babysit an
| algorithm"
| chasd00 wrote:
| > The way it was described to me is that every major
| piece of equipment has a PhD assigned to it...
|
| did they mean that literally or just that an expert was
| assigned to it? What kind of PhD would even be relevant
| to maintaining machinery on an assembly line? Perhaps a
| PhD on the operations of that specific machine but even
| then, the person's knowledge would be so focused on
| whatever physics/chemistry/science is being used that i
| find it hard to believe a PhD would know what to do when
| something broke without tons of specific training on the
| hardware.
| kkylin wrote:
| Not just long hours right? Speaking to Taiwanese friends
| involved in semiconductor work (not TSMC employees though)
| it's the shift work that's really hard to manage in the US.
| hangonhn wrote:
| Even China has ruled 996 illegal in 2021: https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system#Legal_...
|
| No one should be forced to work those kinds of hours. It's
| unreasonable to call Westerners/Americans lazy if they
| refuse to work 996.
| byw wrote:
| Cost of living can be a lot lower in Taiwan, if your property
| is already paid off.
|
| Unfortunately housing is super overpriced, due to the Asian
| mentality resulting in high property ownership.
|
| Real estate is always the monkey wrench in the gears of
| capitalism because of high necessity yet limited supply.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| > Unfortunately housing is super overpriced, due to the
| Asian mentality resulting in high property ownership.
|
| I have no clue what this means and in countries like Japan,
| housing is a depreciating asset vs. an investment, so...?
| byw wrote:
| More so in the Chinese-speaking world and South Korea
| because the industrialization/urbanization is more
| recent, so there's rising demand in the urban areas with
| high population growth, resulting in high prices.
|
| Japan's urbanization stopped long ago, and it's not
| taking in immigrants fast enough, so the urban areas have
| stopped growing.
|
| The mentality refers to East Asia's deep agrarian root
| that places high value on owning land that can be passed
| down the generations (the alternative was often quasi-
| servile farm labour that locks families in poverty).
| Property purchases are usually multi-generational
| efforts, so families can generally take the brunt of
| overinflated prices.
| numpad0 wrote:
| 1. Japan's urbanization stopped long ago, 2. and
| it's not taking in immigrants fast enough, 3. so
| the urban areas have stopped growing.
|
| it's just my gut feeling but feels like each of these
| three statement can be individually debunked...
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's just an obvious nonsense. Housing cost is dependent
| variable of local economic activities. People gather and
| property prices soar. Taiwan is jam packed so land prices
| would be higher relative to GDP per capita.
|
| I think GP is finding concept of land scarcity non-
| intuitive for some reason.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Real estate is always the monkey wrench in the gears of
| capitalism because of high necessity yet limited supply.
|
| This only happens when the government becomes captured by
| land owners to constrain the supply, since otherwise you
| can build up. But governments getting captured by land
| owners happens _a lot_.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Also a lot of US STEM grads have their skills wasted in
| unproductive fields, like the ad business.
| kobalsky wrote:
| the internet ad industry is raking billions from all over the
| world into the USA, how can you call that unproductive.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Because is fucking undproductive, useless and detrimental
| to society. Advertising is a cancer, an immoral activity.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| If you owned a small business you'd be singing a very
| different tune.
| ambicapter wrote:
| That's a problem that advertising both created and feeds
| off of.
| adamtaylor_13 wrote:
| Hi. I own a business. I still find ads to be cancer.
| wuliwong wrote:
| You think all businesses should just spread awareness by
| word of mouth? Can you put a sign on your store or is
| that an ad? What if you don't have a store? Yes,
| advertising can be really awful but that doesn't meaning
| all advertising is "cancer." If you have a good business
| that creates actual value for people, advertising it can
| actually be seen as a good thing.
| tivert wrote:
| > If you owned a small business you'd be singing a very
| different tune.
|
| The problem with advertising is that _a little bit done
| honestly_ is actually good and fine. What we actually
| have way, _way_ too much, and it 's often dishonest and
| manipulative.
|
| It's a similar thing with finance. It's necessary, but
| way too many talented people are spending their energies
| on it.
|
| Black and white thinking doesn't really capture the
| situation, and ends up creating a lot of noise (BAN IT
| ALL vs. IT'S ALL GOOD AND YOU LOVE IT, FIGHT!).
|
| Honestly, I think it might be a good thing to put caps on
| the number of people that can work in sectors like that
| (and further limit the number of very smart people
| working in them), to direct talented people to more
| productive and socially beneficial parts of the economy.
| tantalor wrote:
| Those "US STEM grads have their skills wasted" are
| solving those problems (optimal ad load, bad ads, etc.)
| but its a very hard problem. Don't be so dismissive.
| tivert wrote:
| There are "very hard problems" that don't need to be
| solved, or are far lower priority than other problems.
| Hard doesn't imply being "productive, useful and
| beneficial to society."
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Own a small business, still cancer. Will never use and lo
| and behold, all runs fine.
| threeseed wrote:
| Most small businesses do not have the luxury of ready
| made distribution channels.
|
| Especially if it's an ecommerce business.
| adamtaylor_13 wrote:
| A business's viability outside of advertising doesn't
| change the morality of advertising.
|
| Regardless of which side of the camp you fall on, you
| can't argue that ads are "good" just because some
| businesses need them to survive. In fact, I'd wager if a
| business NEEDS ads to survive, it's probably a net
| negative on society as a whole.
|
| I won't die on that hill, but that's my hunch.
| threeseed wrote:
| Your entire premise is ridiculous.
|
| Advertising is nothing more than bringing attention to
| your product to your target customer.
|
| And without this so called immoral behaviour I fail to
| see how _any_ business works.
| tester756 wrote:
| I disagree
|
| There is good and bad advertising.
|
| I'd want to receive ads for things that I'm really
| interested in.
| pythonguython wrote:
| I can't relate to that. When I see a banner ad I find it
| obtrusive whether it's from Bank of America or my
| favorite HAM radio company. If I'm in the market for a
| product I value hearing the testimonials of people in my
| life rather than an advertisement.
| tester756 wrote:
| I'm mostly thinking about finding things that you werent
| even aware that they do exist
| layer8 wrote:
| I'm trying to think of anything I find useful that I
| stumbled upon thanks to ads over the past twenty years or
| so, and I'm pretty much drawing a blank. It certainly
| seems negligible.
|
| The problem with prohibiting ads is how to prevent (or
| even define) payed hidden promotions. But tracking and
| targeted ads could be prohibited, which would already
| make things much more civil and less relevant as a tech
| profit center.
| frickinLasers wrote:
| The one case where I find ads useful, when word of mouth
| isn't an option, is in a static image on a site (review
| site, blog, whatever) where I'm researching a thing. The
| ad would be related to that thing, doesn't need to know a
| thing about me other than I'm browsing that page, and is
| related to the content on that page. I click on those ads
| sometimes.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| It's like saying there is good and bad diseases because
| some solve other problems like space in nursing home.
| tester756 wrote:
| No, it isn't.
|
| People want to buy things, especially the ones that make
| their life easier, but you got to get to know them
| somehow, right?
| pcbro141 wrote:
| Depends on the product being advertised. I don't see how
| you can compare a product that enhances someone's life to
| a disease.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Setting aside the moral aspect which is highly subjective
| and seems to have a price tag (for example tech CEOs quit
| any sort of morals for a good paycheck), the productivity
| question is a measurable one.
|
| Aka does advertising as a whole increase total
| consumption or is it a zero sum game (aka send bigger
| slice of the same pie to a competitor)
|
| From what I know advertising does increase total demand
| aka more things/services need to be produced and sold on
| aggregate.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Some of the demand induced by ads is useful; people
| becoming aware of stuff they didn't know exists, and
| finding that it provides a useful service for them.
|
| But most ads are trying to convince you to buy their
| brand's version of a product that you already know of, or
| (even worse!) a new version of an old product. Any demand
| induced there is just wastefulness.
|
| If Amazon can figure out that I'm interested in
| headphones, I already know more actual information about
| headphones than their ads will give me.
| layer8 wrote:
| > for example tech CEOs quit any sort of morals for a
| good paycheck
|
| An alternative explanation is that prospective tech CEOs
| who are willing to overlook morals are scarcer and thus
| mandate higher salaries. ;)
| addcommitpush wrote:
| Is increasing total consumption something positive?
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| By that definition, war is extremely productive
| bluGill wrote:
| At least a few evil people attack once in a while thus
| proving some defense is needed so they they are not
| completely unproductive/useless. Much as I wish they were
| not needed.
| tehjoker wrote:
| what evil ppl? what attack?
| bluGill wrote:
| Putin is attacking Ukraine right now. There have been
| various coups and attempted coups around the world.
| Nigeria and South Korea both come to mind.
| nateglims wrote:
| It is though, more value is generated by the MIC than is
| put in and war has yet to ruin the productive capacity of
| the United States. The societal ills of this are why it's
| popular to call America an evil empire
| wuliwong wrote:
| Ah the broken window fallacy.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_windo
| w
| nateglims wrote:
| No actually, that's about the opportunity cost of war.
| There's a left-wing argument I frequently see that the US
| finds wars to increase profitability but I'm talking
| about the propping up of firms to keep the industrial
| capacity ready. It is not the most productive use of
| capital, but it is productive.
| hashishen wrote:
| a profitable market can still be unproductive if the
| overall result is a nuisance to society on almost every
| level
| mportela wrote:
| like the healthcare industry in the US
| bee_rider wrote:
| It doesn't produce any things.
| kibwen wrote:
| Even worse, because advertising is a Red Queen's Race
| where the only limit on expense is what your competitors
| are spending, it's actually worse than unproductive
| because it increases company expenses without increasing
| product quality, leading to higher costs on everything
| for everyone.
| concordDance wrote:
| You cannot be serious it. All of the ad tech companies
| produce a service people want otherwise no one would use
| them!
|
| There may be other services that might be better if not
| for network effects, but it is trivially true that a
| search engine is better for most people than no search
| engine at all. And _that_ is what is produced.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| It's parasitic, not productive.
|
| A tick can contain a lot of blood, doesn't mean it produced
| that blood.
| concordDance wrote:
| Ticks do not require the consent of the host to drink
| blood.
|
| Things like Google and Facebook _cannot_ be parasitic,
| every dollar gained is a voluntary exchange with no
| threats. People _choose_ to use Google and gain something
| from doing so.
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| Yep if the host agreed to die, then the market is a
| success. We've discovered the most efficient outcome -
| sucking the customer dry until they die! Thank you to the
| free market for delivering us this efficient result.
|
| Remember kids - thousands dying from lack of healthcare
| isn't a bug of the system, it's a feature. This has been
| determined as necessary, nay even beneficial, by market
| forces that can never be wrong.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Stealing is raking billions every year as well, yet I
| wouldn't call it productive.
| avgDev wrote:
| How do you feel about online gambling?
|
| Imo, profits != productive or to a benefit of society.
| pjc50 wrote:
| If it's so unproductive why does it pay so well?
| LittleTimothy wrote:
| I think about this quite often. What I'd really like to
| study at some point is: How much more does the receptionist
| at JP Morgan's head quarters make than the receptionist at
| Walmart's headquarters?
|
| Because fundamentally I think there is an effect where the
| people in proximity to _lots of money_ earn more. Obviously
| the Walmart receptionist and the JP Morgan receptionist are
| doing basically the same job. But the JP Morgan
| receptionist is surrounded by people who wouldn 't think
| twice about doubling the receptionists pay and I would
| imagine that has a significant effect.
| cbozeman wrote:
| It's not the proximity to money, it's the real estate
| tied to doing that job.
|
| If you want to be the receptionist at Goldman Sachs at
| their headquarters at 200 West Street, New York, NY
| 10282, then you're looking at paying $616,250 for a 556
| sq. ft. studio apartment. And that's just the housing. If
| you want to live within 30 minutes of work, you can get
| that number down to $400,000, but that's also a studio
| apartment.
|
| Then you have to consider some place to eat - or you
| bring your own meals.
|
| What about clothing? You need clothing that looks the
| part.
|
| It's the proximity to real estate, which I guess you
| could argue is a proximity to "lots of money" as you put
| it, but... not reeeaaaally...
| Tade0 wrote:
| Sure, but real estate is expensive in those places for a
| reason - it being typically because a sufficient number
| of people with lots of money want to buy it.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| There is only a weak correlation between local income and
| housing costs, and most of that is that it's hard to get
| extreme housing prices in areas with low income, rather
| than that housing in high income areas is inherently
| required to be expensive.
|
| For example, Boston has a higher per-capita income than
| NYC but somewhat lower housing costs, and Austin has
| around the same per-capita income as Los Angeles but
| significantly lower housing costs. Because it's a lot
| easier to build housing in Texas than in California.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Experienced this(or actually, a similar phenomenon)
| myself during the brief, beautiful moment in my life when
| I was working in Switzerland and was making as much as
| the locals, while hailing from a country with
| approximately 20% the GDP per capita, if not less.
|
| Crazy how the same box of pasta is suddenly three times
| the price once you cross the border.
| briandear wrote:
| JP Morgan is also in NYC and Wal Mart is in Arkansas.
| dml2135 wrote:
| What makes you think pay is necessarily correlated to
| productivity?
|
| Taken to the extreme, literal theft can pay well, and
| produces absolutely nothing.
|
| Pay indicates the transfer of wealth -- it can be a
| heuristic for productivity, sure, but productivity is
| clearly not its only source.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Options traders are paid well. It's still unproductive.
|
| You're just shifting around a bunch of numbers temporarily
| to make a bunch of money for someone and lose a bunch for
| someone else.
|
| Lots of shit we do is well-paid and unproductive.
|
| If, as a species, we eliminated all bullshit jobs, there's
| a good chance only 20-30% of the species would be working.
| Here in America, only around 50% of people are actually
| working. Everyone else is in school, or retired.
| concordDance wrote:
| Options traders help with the efficient allocation of
| capital, which is actually very valuable to society.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| They are mercenaries hired to maximize the share of the
| loot that goes to their employers.
| layer8 wrote:
| Because there are costs that are externalized.
| caspper69 wrote:
| These companies hire all of these exemplary graduates and
| pay them so well because (1) they are flush with cash
| because businesses are essentially held hostage to adtech;
| and (2) so that they won't go out into the world and build
| systems that make them irrelevant, as smart people are wont
| to do from time to time. Someone on your payroll doesn't
| have the time nor the inclination to knock you from your
| pedestal.
|
| Why else would Google need 182,000 employees? Or how about
| Facebook with 67,000? Microsoft clocks in at a whopping
| 228,000, and Apple at 161,000.
|
| These are staggering numbers of employees. So many, in
| fact, that it would be an exercise in futility to try and
| manage so many for the number of products they offer,
| especially Google and Meta.
|
| It's cheaper to make busywork than risk the cash cow.
| quesera wrote:
| Re: Apple's 164K employees.
|
| Keep in mind that approximately 50% work in the retail
| stores.
| caspper69 wrote:
| Right, and at least Microsoft has a large sales
| organization.
|
| But Google and Meta?
| isodev wrote:
| > The chips still need to fly back to Taiwan
|
| The planet burned, but at least we made a few chips in America.
| fooblaster wrote:
| you can fly a few hundred million dollars worth of chips in a
| single flight. You need not be concerned. The impact from
| temu shipments is several orders of magnitude higher.
| fooblaster wrote:
| e.g. you can get 572 a15 dies per 300mm wafer at 90% yield.
| These likely weigh a few hundred grams.
|
| By my rough calculations a million iPhones of a15s is about
| 200kg of silicon. excluding packaging, which would dwarf
| this mass entirely.
| alt227 wrote:
| can you really say the chip was made in America when it is only
| the die wafer which was made there and the rest was made and
| assembled in Taiwan?
| bloomingkales wrote:
| Off topic but currently relevant:
|
| _Over 50% of the workers flew in from Taiwan to work on this
| plant and make these chips._
|
| Those are the 50% we're willing to bring in no questions asked
| via any visa program.
|
| Not the elusive Java developer.
| Salgat wrote:
| For a new factory with a new entry into the local market it
| makes perfect sense to bring in experienced workers for
| knowledge transfer. This is more an issue if a decade later
| this is still how things are done.
| sct202 wrote:
| Back when American companies were offshoring, the initial
| start up teams were comprised of a lot of Americans who would
| do commissioning and initial ramp ups while training up the
| foreign workers. It's a lot easier to train people on a
| production line that is proven to work.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Problem is, those jobs in emerging markets were desirable
| compared to other jobs (for pay and opportunities), which
| helped with talent growth. These factory jobs, in comparison
| to other jobs, aren't that desirable.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Maybe that's how US is going to have enough STEM talents --
| just like WWI and WWII, take as many talents as possible when
| the other parts of the world are in shit.
| whatwhaaaaat wrote:
| The scenario that we're going to be able to fight a war with
| another first world power, where we will attack their
| infrastructure but ours will be left untouched, seems
| unlikely.
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| China invading Taiwan seems a ton more likely than China
| lobbing missiles into Arizona.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It seems likely enough if the situation escalates. The
| conflict could be anything from a naval skirmish where
| neither side attacks the other's mainland to a total war
| scenario. It will likely start as naval-only and become
| gradually more involved if no side backs down.
|
| However, it's safe to assume cyber attacks will hit
| Arizona. It's not unreasonable to assume crazy people
| will attack critical infrastructure, and we'll have to
| deal with the social fallout from that.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| We just need to make sure that we never fight directly with
| another regional power, e.g. China or Russia. IMO, neither
| of them wants a fight with the US too, because you don't
| want to push a super power to the corner, EVEN if you think
| you are good enough to win.
|
| In the mean time, the situation in EU and Asia is going to
| deteriorate and North America can absorb more talents as it
| sees fit. The last two times it was mostly EU but this time
| Asia might be the new talent pool we can draw from.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I think people are missing something, training.
|
| It's a new fab, and people need to be trained on current
| processes and work roles. If you have a skilled work force, you
| use them to train.
| nimish wrote:
| > glaring STEM field gap in the U.S.
|
| There is no such gap. The jobs do not pay Americans enough to
| tolerate the conditions.
| copperx wrote:
| And the few people who tolerate such conditions are already
| employed by game development companies.
| MR4D wrote:
| You have to walk before you can run.
|
| You have to crawl before you can walk. Apparently this is where
| we are at.
| hammock wrote:
| It's a start
| kureikain wrote:
| it's first step. you gotta do something to bootstrap, solve
| chicken-egg problem. From what I can see around me, the "made
| in america" is a no joke branding. a lot of pppl going
| tobuyjust because of that. and may even consider it as social
| status and their policial support.
| someperson wrote:
| The Purism Librem 5 phone is very expensive and unfortunately
| not that popular. Haven't met anyone who uses one yet
| MBCook wrote:
| That's very niche. Very few people in the general
| population will have heard of them.
|
| Apple is well known. If they say the new iPhone SE 7 has a
| Made In America chip, people will know about it to buy if
| they care about that.
| cbozeman wrote:
| And it's also a pile of shit compared to an iPhone or a
| Galaxy S device.
|
| There's your real issue right there. People are already
| paying $1199 for new phones. According to this article:
| https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/9/13/17851052/apple-
| ipho...
|
| Another $100. That's a little over six years old now
| though, so bump it up to $200.
|
| Would I pay $1399 for an American made iPhone with American
| made internals, as the article suggests it would cost
| ($100, but I doubled it for inflation, because, why not?)?
| You bet your sweet ass I would.
| nimbius wrote:
| made in america is also a federally defined standard that these
| chips categorically _fail_ to meet. assembled in the united
| states is more appropriate, and even then if you didnt hire
| americans to do it, what was the point?
|
| this is starting to feel like the best of intentions that has
| spiraled into a political theatricality where close-enough will
| be good-enough.
|
| given the current state of declining US college enrollment, the
| affordability crisis of college, the growing wage gap, the
| failure of the minimum wage to keep up with the cost of living,
| and the failure to reform predatory US student lending
| practices I do not see how the US will in the next 25 years
| _ever_ manage to curate the type of braintrust for which it was
| once renowned across the globe.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| This is so disconnected from reality. They've gone from
| breaking ground to replicating one of the most advanced
| fabrication processes in the history of the world _at scale_
| in about 4 years, but they'll be sending the dies off for
| packaging while their packaging partner comes online so its
| just political theatre?
|
| Also, over half of the employees are local hires and the
| ratio will increase as more of the fab spins up. IMO it would
| be much worse political theatre to delay and balloon the cost
| of the project by forcing TSMC to exclusively use a workforce
| that has no experience with the companies tools and
| processes.
| tobiasdorge wrote:
| Does anyone know the general path to get involved in this?
| Perhaps its romantic, but this seems important, it seems hard,
| and it seems like something I can be proud of working on (as
| opposed to maximizing ad clicks). I'm just a SWE w/ a Comp sci
| degree, so what's the entry-point here?
| someperson wrote:
| EDA software?
| stevenwoo wrote:
| It might be possible but domain knowledge _might_ give some
| candidates a leg up on the competition, going in blind just
| seems suboptimal, though most of the relevant EE
| undergraduate classes were in sophomore and junior level
| for me in the late 1980 's and I only got to use EDA
| software when working a couple of semesters for AMD as a
| junior.
| Gomer1800 wrote:
| Your entry point is a masters and probably Phd in Electrical
| Engineering, specializing in some aspect of semiconductor
| manufacturing. It's definitely not CS.
| tobiasdorge wrote:
| Surely there is a lot of software involved in the design /
| operation of these fabs, it's not just designing the chip
| directly. Another commenter mentioned EDA so maybe I'll
| look into that.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| I'm not too sure but I would assume there's going to be
| faster turn prototype chips in the USA now? Is packaging
| needed to prove a prototype? Can we start buying IP blocks
| and make our own ICs? I'd love a MCU with built in IMU and
| wide range LDO, not sure if that's possible all on the same
| node.
|
| There's going to be some niches opening as a result of this
| IMO.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| The chips still need to fly back to Taiwan to be packaged as
| _packaging partner Amkor 's facility in Arizona won't be ready
| until 2027*._ I'm not sure the cause of the delta but it could
| be in part because Fab 21 got back on schedule rather
| impressively following earlier delays.
|
| * updated to reflect newer article that Amkor's facility is
| delayed beyond late-2025
| MisterTea wrote:
| I was about to say, surly at some point in the near future
| the USA will introduce this capability. Shame they did not
| match each other in completion time.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Yeah definitely unfortunate. That said, I'm guessing the
| overall cost of overseas packaging is really tiny,
| otherwise Intel would've made a great customer since they
| are already packaging TSMC N6, N5, and N3 in New Mexico for
| their Arrow Lake CPUs.
| thehappypm wrote:
| It basically rounds down to $0 if you're willing for it
| to be slow. A single shipping container can fit millions
| of chips
| ggm wrote:
| This is not adversarial thinking. Ukraine would be
| delighted to hit one container with all Russia's advanced
| chips going to e.g. Vietnam or China to be packaged and
| sent back.
|
| This is a massive supply chain weakness and presumably
| will be addressed as soon as possible.
| colechristensen wrote:
| > Shame they did not match each other in completion time.
|
| Why?
|
| If the packaging facility was ready early it would have sat
| idle losing money.
|
| If it's ready late, products from the fab can obviously
| easily be shipped off to be packaged.
|
| Tight coordination of timelines adds needless cost when
| there is an easy alternative.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| The hardest part is making the chips, no?
|
| Packaging facilities cost ~20% of a fab, right?
|
| Naively, I'm assuming packaging is also not as complicate and
| difficult as fabrication.
|
| Surely if they can build a fab in the US, they can build
| packaging facilities, too.
|
| Rome wasn't built in a day.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Packaging facilities are delayed but in progress.
| programmertote wrote:
| The 'brain drain' (as you refer to it) stems from
| intelligent/motivated grads in the US for the last two decades
| (at least) pursuing more lucrative fields like finance and
| adtech (re: Google, Facebook). Or some pursue management route
| (attending big MBA schools and switching to management roles
| where they climb corporate ladder). In other words, there are
| not a lot of college/grad students who want to pursue
| traditional engineering routes in the US.
|
| I myself was an electrical engineering (EE) major until I
| switched to computer science in my third (junior) year of
| college because like a friend of mine at the time told me, "<my
| name>, if you don't major in computer science, you will not be
| able to find a job easily after graduation". He was right. All
| of my former college friends in EE ended up pursuing
| programming jobs (a few of them now works for FAANG; I used to
| work for one but left a year ago due to RTO). That is why the
| US has no sufficient personnel to do traditional engineering
| jobs and we have shipped off a lot of those to foreign
| countries.
| binarymax wrote:
| Definitely true, as there weren't EE jobs here. Now that
| we're moving chip manufacturing back, and with programming
| job market being saturated, perhaps it will shift and EE will
| pay more due to being more in demand
| jopsen wrote:
| I suspect the kinds of salaries that's possible in Silicon
| Valley only happens because:
|
| (A) Skills are fairly transferable. (B) There is a lot of
| employers competing for workers. (C) An awful lot of value
| is created along the way.
|
| If you specialize in some tiny part of chip manufacturing,
| there aren't many places you can transfer your skills.
|
| Even if, in the future, you have multiple chip vendors.
| They won't all use the same processes, and you might only
| fit into one role at each of these businesses.
|
| Maybe it's not that simple. But few chip companies have to
| compete against startups for workers. And that probably
| won't change.
|
| Not saying the jobs can't be well paid, just that it's not
| unlikely that it won't be absurd SV level salaries.
| adamc wrote:
| The same analysis makes me doubt those wages are likely
| to prevail for software engineers. They are the result of
| a particular time and place.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Maybe it's not that simple. But few chip companies have
| to compete against startups for workers. And that
| probably won't change.
|
| It seems like what EE needs is something similar to open
| source, so that _does_ happen.
|
| The way things like Google or AWS got started is they
| started with Linux and built something on top of it, so
| it could _be_ a startup because they don 't first have to
| build the world in order to make a contribution, and
| they're not building on top of someone else's land.
|
| There isn't any reason that couldn't inherently work in
| EE. Get some universities or government grants to publish
| a fully-open spec for some processors that could be
| fabbed by TSMC or Intel. Not as good as the state of the
| art, but half as good anyway.
|
| Now people have a basis for EE startups. You take the
| base design and tweak it some for the application, so
| that it's a startup-sized job instead of a multinational-
| sized job, and now you've got EE startups making all
| kinds of phone SoCs and NVMe drives and Raspberry Pi
| competitors and whatever else they think can justify a
| big enough production run to send it to a fab and sell it
| to the public.
|
| An interesting license for this could be something along
| the lines of: You can make derivative works, but you have
| to release them under the same license _within five
| years_. In other words, you get five years to make money
| from this before it goes into the commons, which gives
| you the incentive to do it while keeping the commons rich
| so the next you can do it again tomorrow.
| verisimilidude wrote:
| I believe you've just described the RISC-V project,
| though I could be mistaken.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| RISC-V is the ISA, which is a solid first step. What you
| need is a production-ready fully open source whole
| device, so that someone who wants to fork it only has to
| change the parts they need to be different instead of
| having to also re-engineer the missing components.
| wbl wrote:
| There were a ton of chip making startups in the
| 1970-1980's. Now the processes are much harder to access
| so you have fabless.
|
| It's just maturity. You can't invent the op amp twice.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| The jobs needed for chip manufacturing aren't primarily EE.
| It's largely chemical engineering with specializations
| related to semiconductor tech. EEs use the tools developed
| by fabs to make their products, but those are typically
| separate companies (or, in the case of in-house fabs like
| Intel, basically run as separate companies).
| in-pursuit wrote:
| What you said seems contradictory. You open with the premise
| that intelligent youth go the finance / CS / MBA path instead
| of engineering and then say that those who do go into
| traditional engineering can't find jobs. Couldn't it be that
| people don't go into engineering because there aren't any
| jobs? Wouldn't the lack of jobs explain the low salaries and
| thus the preference for more high paying alternatives?
| ecshafer wrote:
| Everyone I know that was in EE falls into two camps
| basically:
|
| 1. Became web developers
|
| 2. Work in Defense or some other regulated industry that has
| protections from being outsourced to China
| bnetd wrote:
| Is there a somber write-up anywhere as to the future of EE
| in the West?
| ecshafer wrote:
| I don't know if there is a somber write up. But from what
| I have heard from a lot of people, is that jobs designing
| and making say PCB boards and electronic circuits just
| don't exist. They are all in Shenzhen. Those American
| firms that have American engineers still, seem to all
| involve flying to those factories to help fix problems,
| and are dead end jobs. At least thats my impression.
| brickfaced wrote:
| Having known several great EEs in FAANG who did exactly
| that job, sometimes paying Chinese income tax due to the
| length of their stays at the factory, that is my
| impression as well.
| bfrog wrote:
| Limited to non existent jobs. Not much else to say, the
| jobs like so many others have been exported. Taiwan and
| China being the electronics and manufacturing centers
| means design has steadily moved as well. Ask any board
| house in the west how things are going, the ones that are
| left that is.
| RhysabOweyn wrote:
| Chip design/semiconductors/etc. have been a dead end in
| the US for 30+ years, but EE is a broad field and other
| specialties like RF/power systems/anything defense
| related are still in high demand. An EE with a PE will
| have an infinitely easier time getting a job working at a
| utility or engineering firm than any software developer
| these days to be honest.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Software jobs are more plentiful, sure, but you're
| discounting the extremely high quantity of EE/CE jobs
| available at semiconductor companies (Intel, AMD, and many
| smaller ones) and companies like Apple. They don't pay as
| well, but they can pay quite good over time and tend to be
| more stable than software jobs.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I'm a EE and had no problem finding a job and neither did
| any of my classmates in my EE program (early 2010s). I also
| didn't exactly go to anything approaching MIT, but it was
| an engineering school and I had a decent GPA. Particularly,
| there are a lot of well paying jobs in power systems with
| good work life balance. We have an energy transition going
| on, so that helps. Having an internship probably helped me
| too. I acknowledge that things might have broadly changed.
| rhubarbtree wrote:
| Alternate explanation: electrical engineering is actually
| really hard and some parts of computer science look
| comparatively easier. Plus coding is startups is cool, EE is
| still nerd as in Nerd.
| herval wrote:
| why would someone pursue a route that's harder AND pays
| less AND has far fewer jobs available?
| rjbwork wrote:
| And has less cultural cachet.
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| I disagree. From what I've seen, the lower level you go,
| the more advanced it is seen by other developers. As the
| copypasta goes:
|
| At the beginning, there was Purusha. From his face, born
| was the Brahmin, the priestly caste, the tooling creator,
| one who develops programming languages, compilers and
| standard libraries.
|
| From the arms of the Purusha, Kshatriya, the warrior
| caste, was born. Kshatriya is the developer of systems
| software; operating systems, database engines, graphics
| drivers and high performance networked servers.
|
| Then comes the Vaishya, the merchant caste, the
| Application developer, who was born from the knees of
| Purusha. From the feet of Purusha, the fourth varna,
| Shudra, the system administrator, was born. Shudra serves
| the above three Varnas, his works range from
| administrating computers in bureaucratic organizations to
| replying to support requests.
| nemomarx wrote:
| that's by other developers, but I think in the mainstream
| know nothing culture people have an image of "coding"
| that's more prestigious and hackery than EE?
| Spivak wrote:
| Hard and well paid gets a flood of people pursing it so
| difficulty can't be the only explanation. Finance,
| actuarial science, medicine, and law get plenty of
| applicants. I think it's that CS is an office job that pays
| well and is in-demand.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Nah I did EE and then CompE (which was just replacing some
| later EE classes with hardware design stuff) and EE is not
| "actually really hard" - although people like to put it on
| a pedastel.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Compared to CompE or Comp Sci?
|
| I never studied the hard sciences very seriously,
| although I feel like in retrospect I could have done so
| at much lesser proficiency than someone with much more
| encouragement, discipline, and interest, so my path of
| starting with web/software and then diving into
| electronics and EE would feel quite different
| upcoming-sesame wrote:
| I studied both, can't say for sure EE was harder. Some
| courses in computer science were extremely hard for me
| (complexity, discrete math) and some courses in EE
| engineering were equally hard (most of the physics courses,
| analog circuits and more)
|
| Both degrees can be made super hard, as hard as the school
| desires them to be...
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| It's not even brain drain, America's dominance came from the
| fact that for nearly a century the brightest people in the
| world were willing to give up everything to come here. That
| is no longer the case. Today's Einstein probably isn't going
| to immigrate here.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| For nearly a century Europe incinerated itself twice over.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > That is no longer the case.
|
| For all I shit relentlessly on this country and its
| culture, it's still an extremely attractive place to live
| if you're well-situated to make money. (Most people are not
| --hence my contempt for how the society functions. This
| presumably DOES apply to an "Einstein", if indeed this
| Einstein wants money.) China still has a way to go in
| catering to and granting citizenship (or some amenable
| equivalent) to foreigners.
| cyberax wrote:
| Going through the _legal_ immigration in the US is hell.
| Even if you're immigrating through a "talent" visa. Never
| mind regular work visa/GC.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| Well, what's the alternative? Live in some poor country
| with a happy and contented existence? Fuck no, I want
| money: happiness is for suckers
| adamc wrote:
| Einstein didn't emigrate to get rich, he emigrated because
| the Nazi's took over Germany. Germany had the best
| universities in the world before they took the path of
| self-destruction. So that was a second, separate event that
| helped America.
|
| America stills gets a lot of immigrants.
| junon wrote:
| Pretty sure the use of "Einstein" here is symbolic, not
| literal.
| spacemadness wrote:
| So use a different example? Einstein isn't
| interchangeable, lol.
| brickfaced wrote:
| The US didn't win World War 2, break the sound barrier, or
| put a man on the Moon only or primarily due to immigrant
| workers. We scoured the country's public school system for
| the sharpest young minds, sent them to institutions of
| higher learning with rigorous curricula, and found them
| positions in industry, government, or the military which
| made good use of their talent. Fetishizing the "nation of
| immigrants" narrative at the expensive of the native-born
| Americans who actually built most of this country's
| prosperity is, at best, ahistorical.
| wbl wrote:
| Our German scientists were better than their German
| scientists. We had no real science PhD programs until the
| 1920's. We had no scouting for young minds until the
| 1950's.
| krapp wrote:
| Unless your ancestors crossed the Bering Strait ten
| thousand years ago, calling yourself "native born"
| doesn't mean a thing.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| If you only came across ten thousand years ago, you are
| just a colonist that killed and displaced the people who
| came across sixteen thousand years ago. But that said,
| native born has a definition, and it is where you were
| born, not where your parents, grandparents or grand^14
| parents was born.
| TheGamerUncle wrote:
| It is kind of disingenuous and dishonest to say that
| there is no value or meaning on those Americans born in
| American soil, a nation should prioritize the people that
| live on it or well at least care for them and make them
| useful for nation building in the future.
|
| Canada has proven that importing punjabis for almost two
| decades and ignoring the local people is not effective.
| So yeah there is a meaningful difference and saying
| native born in this context allows us to steer the
| conversation towards taking care towards those in the
| country already, which is something that neolib
| governments have not done in the last decades.
|
| I say this as a person that was not born in the country
| he resides in now, but saying "calling yourself "native
| born" doesn't mean a thing " is a dishonest way to try to
| dissuade and delete necessary words that work towards
| more fruitful conversatons about how to improve th
| esytems in North America.
| krapp wrote:
| >Canada has proven that importing punjabis for almost two
| decades and ignoring the local people is not effective.
|
| Curious, that's what Americans once said about the Irish
| and the Italians and the Germans and the French and the
| Poles and the Chinese and Jews and Catholics and Muslims
| and so on and on ad nauseum.
|
| It's just a generational crab mentality born from
| xenophobia. Every new wave of immigrants decides they're
| "native" as soon as the next wave shows up. None of them
| are any more native than the others.
| scelerat wrote:
| What's magic about the Bering strait?
| krapp wrote:
| It's always a treat knowing every comment you get is
| going to either be triggered or purposely obtuse.
| officeplant wrote:
| >Fetishizing the "nation of immigrants" narrative at the
| expensive of the native-born Americans who actually built
| most of this country's prosperity is, at best,
| ahistorical.
|
| Except many of us can trace our family lines to
| immigration. On one side I have to go back to the early
| 1800's to see when they immigrated, but this is literally
| a country of immigrants. (other half of the family is
| late 1800s/early 1900s immigration)
|
| Even today I would assume the average American doesn't
| have to trace back more than 100-150 years to see when
| part of their family moved here.
|
| >We scoured the country's public school system for the
| sharpest young minds, sent them to institutions of higher
| learning with rigorous curricula, and found them
| positions in industry, government, or the military which
| made good use of their talent.
|
| Don't even get us started on ahistorical nonsense when
| you just want to make things up. Not when talented
| folks[0] had to work through system that didn't want them
| so they could eventually make all the difference.
|
| [0]https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/hidden-
| no-more-...
| tcmart14 wrote:
| We literally put a man on the moon because we acquired
| Werner Von Braun and used his plans... I mean, we
| probably would have eventually done it, but the timeline
| likely would have been different and the soviets might
| have beaten us to the moon, but the time line we are in,
| we had a space program as successful as it was because we
| acquired German scientists who were already thinking
| about these problems a even a decade or so before we
| started to invest into it.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| That team was one of three that was developing rockets.
| The others were air force and navy.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Today's Einstein ARE immigrating to US for such positions
| as finance, adtech and management, ones that explicitly
| produce no physical artifact.
| niceice wrote:
| That is still the case and no where else is even close.
|
| https://www.statista.com/chart/30815/top-destination-
| countri...
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/468218/nearly-900-million-
| world...
| baxtr wrote:
| Re the first point: Why do you think it is so difficult to
| transfer chip production off Taiwan?
|
| I don't think this is about salaries. Nor is this about
| facilities.
|
| This is about process know-how. And it's currently not
| available outside of Taiwan. I'm glad we're finally starting to
| transfer knowledge. It will take a couple more years.
| amelius wrote:
| How do we know there is knowledge transfer?
|
| If I were Taiwan/TSMC, I would protect my trade secrets as if
| my life depended on it (which may actually be true).
| baxtr wrote:
| We don't. We expect some, but you're right it won't be
| transferred easily.
| blobbers wrote:
| That's really a training issue.
|
| Making chips isn't something you learn the details of at
| University. You can take all the classes you want in advanced
| semiconductor techniques but the simple fact is University
| level manufacturing is nowhere close to SOTA.
|
| Basically, you need fab workers to spend time in Taiwan/China,
| and then return to USA. It's the same model that most foreign
| students use at schools in USA/Canada. Get USA/Canadian name
| brand school on resume, learn english, and go back to home
| country = profit.
| Nickersf wrote:
| I have two kids in grade school and middle school and I see why
| we have a STEM gap. I have to constantly correct the learning
| at home in math. Also, I think it's fair to assume that in
| Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China the school kids are actually
| put on an academic grindset unlike here where there is such
| little academic rigor or discipline being enforced by the
| school it makes sense why the k-12 education numbers are as bad
| as they are in the USA.
|
| It might be worth getting up in front of the kids in middle
| school + and saying "Hey you're in competition at a global
| scale here. You're going to have to work your butts off to stay
| relevant."
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > - The chips still need to fly back to Taiwan to be packaged
| as there are no facilities here with such a capability.
|
| This seems to be a much more achievable barrier to work around
| than not having a fab.
| matwood wrote:
| Sure, but this is how a supply chain gets bootstrapped. All
| those factories in China didn't magically appear one day. Just
| like they didn't appear when Apple started moving operations to
| Vietnam. You start piecemeal and build out.
| maxglute wrote:
| >50% of the workers flew in from Taiwan to work on this plant
|
| I wonder what % of work they did.
| comte7092 wrote:
| Having a STEM degree isn't a substitute for real world
| experience in a production facility.
|
| Clustering is a feedback loop where production creates people
| with experience in production, something needs to kickstart
| that process.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Taiwan exodus in 3..2..1
| duxup wrote:
| Seems like this is actually happening.
|
| I saw so many predictions of how this couldn't happen and "yeah
| but" ... but it seems to be happening for the most part.
| CPLX wrote:
| Indeed. It's just bullshit, propaganda.
|
| There's simply no real reason we can't have a deep and robust
| manufacturing base in America. Well except for the fact that
| some specific people made a whole lot of money while letting it
| fall apart, and have paid for decades of media relations trying
| to convince everyone otherwise.
|
| If you're reading this statement I just made and want to
| instinctively disagree with me, start by interrogating your own
| opinion. Why do you think America can't compete with China, for
| example, over the long term? What "well everyone knows" facts
| are you using to create that opinion that you don't have any
| first hand relationship to.
| tombert wrote:
| > Why do you think America can't compete with China, for
| example, over the long term?
|
| Not saying I necessarily disagree with you, but just to give
| an example, the US has considerably better labor practices
| and labor laws than China. It's not perfect but there are
| protections about making sure people are paid what they're
| owed, how much you are allowed to work someone, safety
| protocols, etc. All of those things could, in theory, cost
| more money and make labor more expensive.
|
| Compare this to nations that don't have the same work
| protections, where they can pay people peanuts and have them
| work much longer shifts with effectively no protection (e.g.
| Foxconn in China [1]).
|
| This might translate to decreased cost, and Americans have
| made it excruciatingly clear that we're apparently fine with
| slave labor as long as it doesn't happen _within_ the US.
|
| [1] https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/chinese-workers-
| foxc...
| bun_at_work wrote:
| Just calling out that worker protections and increased
| labor costs seem to be the result of workers making more
| money. As the work force becomes wealthier, they _need_
| less money, and their standards rise. This means their
| labor becomes more expensive and they demand safer
| workplaces. They demand more time off. This happened in the
| USA and is currently happening in China and other low-
| labor-cost nations.
|
| I think the person you responded to is right. The USA can
| and should restore its manufacturing base, for many
| reasons. The whole country would greatly benefit from the
| return of blue-collar jobs.
|
| I don't have sources for this, but the info is out there.
|
| Also, there are a lot of nuances around this topic that I'm
| not getting into here. Just want to acknowledge that...
| tombert wrote:
| Sure, but it's worth inquiring _why_ the jobs left in the
| first place.
|
| There's probably a few hundred reasons, but I think the
| core one was "manufacturing in China is cheaper because
| labor is cheaper."
|
| Even if China starts demanding better worker protection
| (and they should! I am actually fine with my products
| costing more if I have a guarantee that the workers were
| treated well), I think that there's still a reasonably
| high chance that manufacturing would still move to
| another developing country that doesn't.
| CPLX wrote:
| The core reasons the jobs left are industrial and
| monetary policies.
|
| Or, said another way, because the Chinese prioritized and
| subsidized manufacturing growth and we did the opposite.
|
| Why? Because it made some specific Americans very rich.
| It also ruined the lives of many other Americans. While
| making the country much less resilient to shocks or
| conflicts.
|
| Which is, of course, the problem.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Foxconn is a Taiwanese company. China's revolution is about
| delivering for workers. I don't get where ppl are coming up
| with "slave labor" when it is American allies possibly
| operating in China's SEZ that are doing the bad stuff.
|
| It's also simultaneously sanctimonious sounding when
| development is very difficult and America sacrificed three
| generations to industrial capitalism, stole half a
| continent of land, and used slaves to do our own
| development depending on how you count inputs to the
| process.
| tombert wrote:
| Slavery was wrong even in the 1700s and and 1800s. I wish
| it hadn't happened, but until we have a time machine
| there's not a lot we can do about it.
|
| Just because the US has committed major sins in the past
| doesn't mean we should be slap-happy about other
| countries repeating those sins.
|
| It might be "sanctimonious", but I don't think "I'm
| against slave labor everywhere" is an especially brave
| take.
| creddit wrote:
| > Well except for the fact that some specific people made a
| whole lot of money while letting it fall apart, and have paid
| for decades of media relations trying to convince everyone
| otherwise.
|
| Who are some of these people?
| xattt wrote:
| Is this the first "Made in USA" chip in Apple devices since the
| Fishkill PPC 970?
| triactual wrote:
| Weren't the Intel CPUs made in the US?
| xattt wrote:
| Oops, forgot about Arizona.
| hettygreen wrote:
| with required NSA backdoor of course.
| sylware wrote:
| This is only the first (significant) step for the american
| continent to be able to build cutting edge chips (again).
| seethishat wrote:
| Off topic... Taiwan also machines and heat treats some of the
| best cutlery steels in the world. Taichung City is famous for
| this. This is not as delicate a process as producing CPU chips,
| but it is hard to get right consistently.
|
| Most all major cutlery companies have product lines that are
| produced solely in Taiwan (Spyderco, Cold Steel, Demko, etc.)
|
| It would be nice to see Taiwanese steel industy move some
| production to the US as well.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Buck Knives at least, mostly manufacture in the U.S., and their
| 110 model at least still arrives shaving sharp and keeps a
| decent edge.
| gonational wrote:
| High-quality knives come from proper metallurgy, especially as
| it relates to proper hardening steps. If you don't get these
| things exactly right, the best machining on earth is not going
| to produce even mediocre knives.
| nottorp wrote:
| As an european, all I wonder is if this will make Apple devices
| even more expensive.
| yello_downunder wrote:
| My guess is no, it won't. This is US taxpayer money being used
| to increase the manufacturing capacity available to the market
| so that the US has domestic manufacturing when stuff goes
| sideways. A similar thing regularly occurs with auto
| manufacturing and manufacturing in country A usually frees up
| capacity for other countries, resulting in slightly lower
| prices.
|
| What _could_ happen is that once the US has manufacturing
| capacity it decides to tariff imported chips, causing your
| country to retroactively do the same. This is decades away, and
| the US has a problem sourcing chips it can trust right now, so
| it 's not currently on the radar. It's not something I'm going
| to worry about.
|
| Viewed through a pessimistic eye, the US finally is realizing
| that its arms production critically relies on chip production
| and it can't says its chips are US made when selling arms on
| the market. A change in mindset like this typically takes a
| generation and so even though this change in weapons really
| happened around the turn of the century, the people in power
| have mostly retired and the new generation now understands this
| reality.
| __loops__ wrote:
| 3nm? 5nm? What chips are being made? A chip isn't a chip
| foxandmouse wrote:
| If memory serves me right, it's the Apple S8 chip used in their
| watches, built on a 7nm process.
| hintymad wrote:
| Do we know why the US government did not promise to buy chips but
| to give tax breaks (or investment thereof)? Wouldn't promise to
| buy create a better incentive to the manufacturers?
| zombiwoof wrote:
| Make America good at slave labor again basically
| hintymad wrote:
| Maybe this is the discussion worth having. Taiwanese engineers
| competed to get into TSMC. Their management practically lived
| in the factory to solve production issues when needed. The
| local workers in the Arizona factory said the pay was pretty
| good per another comment. Yet somehow we thought that we were
| slaving the labors? What is the fundamental difference here?
| Personally, if I were a worker who could find just a service
| job that pays $30K a year or less, I'd kill to work for TSMC
| for $50K+/year and learn everything I can about chip
| manufacturing in my capacity. It would be proud to do it, and I
| wouldn't mind some overtime.
| hintymad wrote:
| And I'm not sure why this got downvoted. Not that it matters,
| but I'm very curious about why people were not happy with the
| questions. My fundamental belief is that if someone chose to
| accept an offer and then work hard, it's not slavery but free
| will. But well, I guess American culture is interesting in
| the regard. If I study STEM hard in school, I'll be a
| "teacher's pet" or a nerd who knows only "how to cram". On
| the other hand, if I free throw under a hoop 4000 times a
| day, I'm DA man and it's worth the highest praise on the
| level of "have you seen the LA of 4:00am". Or if I'm a banker
| or a startup employee who worked 100hr+, I'm building the
| future of the US, yet if I worked in a fab 996 on my own
| will, I'll be a slave?
| bfrog wrote:
| Imagine TSMC not getting US funds to bring over a Taiwanese
| workforce large enough to result in "Little Taiwan" being
| constructed in the desert.
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| They'll be flown from the US to Taiwan for packaging, at least
| until packaging services exist here. Then they'll be flown to
| China, Southeast Asia, India, or possibly Brazil for final
| assembly into an iPhone or computer, at least until lower cost
| assembly plants are built here or someplace cheaper like Mexico.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| How hard will this be to scale to up 50% of Taiwan production
| into the US?
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I like the idea of made in America and bringing manufacturing
| self sufficiency to the US. But I don't like the idea of reducing
| dependency on Taiwan, which makes it so that the world may ignore
| their plight in face of increasing aggression from China. The CCP
| is an authoritarian dictatorial government that seeks
| illegitimate control over Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and
| other areas. They need to be stopped and the solution isn't to
| remove incentives to defend those areas.
| genidoi wrote:
| There's a need to be pragmatic here; In the event of any
| kinetic Chinese aggression, TSMC (and other co's) fabs are
| going to be rendered inoperable, regardless of how well
| executed a US response is.
| kombine wrote:
| The world will will not be able to help with their plight, just
| as it was not with Ukraine and more recently Palestine. Might
| as well secure the supply chain.
| adamc wrote:
| We can do lots of things to help. But we need to get our
| military operational in that case.
| rglover wrote:
| This is really exciting. It'd be awesome if the rebirth of
| American industrialism was tech hardware driven. It sounds like
| this being mass production ready is still a few years off, but
| kudos to Apple and TSMC for working to make this happen.
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