TSMC Reportedly Looks To Raise a Second Arizona Chip Fab (theregister.com) 34
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Taiwan's chipmaking giant TSMC is said to be preparing to build another semiconductor fabrication plant in Arizona, alongside the facility it completed this summer, in a move that may be seen as a vindication of the US government's CHIPS Act funding. According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, TSMC is planning to announce in the near future that it will build a further factory for making cutting edge chips at a site just north of Phoenix, adjacent to the $12 billion Fab 21 plant the company decided to construct in 2020.
The new facility will be used to manufacture 3nm chips, according to the paper, which cites anonymous sources "familiar with the expansion plans." The scale of this project is expected to be comparable to the existing plant. Reports last year suggested that TSMC was already considering constructing up to five additional semiconductor factories in Arizona, on top of the one just completed, which is not scheduled to start up production of chips until 2024. The move to build another plant comes despite the Taiwanese chip behemoth announcing recently that it was cutting back on its capital investment budget in the face of a market slowdown which led to TSMC predicting that Q4 revenue growth will likely be flat. However, the fact that TSMC is still considering further facilities in Arizona could be seen as vindication that the US CHIPS Act, which includes subsidies and other incentives for semiconductor companies like TSMC to build on American soil, is having the desired effect.
The new facility will be used to manufacture 3nm chips, according to the paper, which cites anonymous sources "familiar with the expansion plans." The scale of this project is expected to be comparable to the existing plant. Reports last year suggested that TSMC was already considering constructing up to five additional semiconductor factories in Arizona, on top of the one just completed, which is not scheduled to start up production of chips until 2024. The move to build another plant comes despite the Taiwanese chip behemoth announcing recently that it was cutting back on its capital investment budget in the face of a market slowdown which led to TSMC predicting that Q4 revenue growth will likely be flat. However, the fact that TSMC is still considering further facilities in Arizona could be seen as vindication that the US CHIPS Act, which includes subsidies and other incentives for semiconductor companies like TSMC to build on American soil, is having the desired effect.
Water ? (Score:3)
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That was my thought, too. But the state probably offered the best tax deal, and made promises regarding water they probably can't keep (but may believe anyway).
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Fabs recycle water now. Whatever they can accumulate, they keep. And they don't (necessarily) lose it all through evap like a nuke reactor.
Re:Water ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, you need a lot of water to get going, but generally speaking ground water is not good for foundries because you need really clean, really pure water, purified to the point that it's almost unhealthy to drink. So by their nature foundries need to purify water anyways, so they might as well recycle and purify the water they're already using.
Which makes them good neighbors, because Intel has funded 15 water reclamation projects already in Arizona, and will continue to do so because their goal is to be a net water positive to the state, not taking water out of it.
Intel also has goals to be 100% on sustainable energy [intel.com]. You know what Arizona has a lot of? Sun and wind. They also have a stable climate with few natural disasters like earthquakes or hurricanes, and a reasonably experienced electronics sector.
So once you solve the water issue like they did, suddenly Arizona looks pretty good.
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Re:Water ? (Score:5, Informative)
Fabs do use a lot of water but "lot" is very relative. Most water is still used by agriculture, and presence of a fab isn't doing to be a singular drain on the water table. In addition, there are a lot of choices fabs can do to save water. Often these take the form of using more energy to save water. Reclaiming water takes a lot of energy, but if saving water is important, you can spend the energy to save water. Also, historically cooling towers were used, especially in the desert, to save a LOT of energy on cooling. However, cooling towers take water out of the watershed, so they are starting to fall out of favor, it means using less cooling towers and more megawatts of electricity on cooling. There's no magic bullet but a lot can be done to cut down water use by fabs, usually involving a bigger electric bill.
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Arizona also has a lot of Republicans that do not believe in sun and wind and think water is free.
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>purified to the point that it's almost unhealthy to drink
This is an urban legend. It's perfectly safe to drink ultra pure H2O.
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I thought fabs needed a lot of water.
That is mostly a myth.
Alarmists point out that fabs use millions of gallons of water, which is true.
What they don't say is that a million gallons of water is three acre-feet, and even a very small farm or golf course uses many times that amount.
Re: Water ? (Score:1)
The golf courses in Phoenix are easily the biggest consumers of water. Besides, Arizona isn't just a big desert biome, only somewhere between a quarter and a third of it is, and the reputation for being hot only comes from the Phoenix area. Just 80 miles from Phoenix is a major slow ski resort town (Flagstaff) that often snows all the way into May each year.
And Phoenix is probably the only city in the southwest that has increased its water table in recent years. The neighboring states don't, especially Cali
Re: Water ? (Score:2)
a million gallons of water is three acre-feet
What in the fuck? Is that in Standard English? Is this a unit of volume? Why can't you people just accept and adapt to the many advantages of the metric system?
1000 litres (of water at atmospheric pressure and temperature) = 1000 kilograms = 1 cubic metre.
It takes one joule to raise the temperature of one millilitre of water by 1 degree Celsius.
Easier maths, clearer notation, and used by much of the outside world.
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Is that in Standard English? Is this a unit of volume?
Yes, "acre-foot" is a standard unit of volume.
Water is sold to residential customers in gallons or cubic feet, but sold to agricultural customers in acre-feet, since that makes more sense for how they use the water for irrigation. An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons or 1233 cubic meters.
An acre-foot of water in Arizona costs a farmer about $70, including generous taxpayer subsidies to encourage waste.
It takes one joule to raise the temperature of one millilitre of water by 1 degree Celsius.
No. That is wrong. A joule is the energy needed to apply a force of one newton through a displacement of one me
Re: Water ? (Score:2)
Units, units everywhere and not a drop to think. (Score:2)
An acre-foot is a unit of volume that is one acre (or 43560 square feet) by one foot. That is, it's a volume 43,560 cubic feet, which works out to be 325,852.4 gallons.
It is, in the United States, a standard unit of volume for water used by the agricultural community, because it maps neatly onto water consumption on farms. You have 120 acres of land that needs an inch of water? That's 120/12 = 10 acre feet of water.
Less commonly used ar
Re: Units, units everywhere and not a drop to thin (Score:2)
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Also, Europeans forget that Americans DO use metric, and the Europeans also use non-metric when they feel like it. The UK (which desperately try to pretend they're not in Europe) use imperial measurements all the time. I mean a pint isn't a pint if it's in metric. Now some EU countries are more metric than others but most of them have kept around a few non standard measurements for nostalgia's sake.
Now anyone who can't use the internet to look and the numbers and then do basic arithmetic afterwards needs
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Elsewhere I read that TSMC's water usage in Arizona is about 6 acre-feet per day, which (AFAIK) sells for about $100 per acre-foot. I suspect the vast majority of the cost to TSMC is purifying that water, since at that volume they're being delivered basically dirty water from a stream or canal.
6 acre-feet per day, assuming that's 365 days per year, is about the same amount of water required to grow around 900 acres of cotton. (Cotton requires 2.5 acre-feet of water per year to grow during a season; 365 * 6
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It doesn't need a "stable" supply of water. A chip foundry uses and retains the water. Purifying the water is expensive enough that you don't discard it but instead recycle and reuse. The golf courses nearby will most likely use much more water in comparison.
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Tax break! (Score:2)
And another billion USD in subsidies to get this high tech facility there.
Re:Tax break! (Score:4, Insightful)
increased control and capability of chip production? that's a critical strategic interest.
actually that's $52 billion. but unlike the economic war that the us is waging mainly against china to avoid being left too much behind, securing that interest on its own soil is actually a very good idea, money well invested.
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It would be if TSMC were domestic. Short of declaring war and seizing the factory this offers an economic benefit but not much of a strategic one.
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"removes our dependency on foreign manufactured chips"
These are still foreign manufactured chips. Assuming they actually build it, they might physically be produced in the US but the operation is fully owned and controlled by a foreign entity.
This is being touted as a win but it's actually exploitation of the gaping hole in the bill that failed to limit the bill to domestic entities. This funding should be going to Intel, TI, new startups from US tech companies looking to crack into the game because of the
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Even if the only thing it accomplished was to reduce the transit between chip manufacture and chip utilization it would be well worth it. Look at how many products we rely on that are back ordered because of limitations on chip supply.
The difference between "Your order is sitting in a container on a ship off the coast of the port of San Diego -it will be another month before it is offloaded" and "your order went out on a truck from Arizona today, it will be at your location in a few days" is massive to a m
Doesn't chip fab use a lot of water? (Score:2)
In the middle of a megadrought that seems iffy.
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It's a lot to you or me, for sure.
But it's a tiny fraction of that used on exported cash crops in the state.
The US needs more silicon, not more cotton.
And, if China subsumes Taiwan (Score:1)
Nice, but no cigar (Score:2)
A fab is nice, but what the US needs is the KNOW-HOW, and until TSMC moves whole blocks of design engineers to the US to work side by side with US engineers, this will just be Taiwan imperialism.