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Comment by lanevorockz | Hacker News Reader

Why we can't build chip factories in the west ? It seems we are bound to have our capacity limited by a few factories that can build all electronics we need. Nobody see the lack of availability of chips around ? I guess Asia is indeed the new axis of world power.

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We have lots and lots of chip factories in the West. A very important one just lost thousands and thousands of wafers because the Texas power grid went tits up, and it set the companies using it back by months. There's foundries being built all over the world. TSMC just happens to be the first to have an extremely expensive, extremely difficult process down to a reliable production setup, so all the orders that absolutely have to be on that process are going to them. They also happen to employ most of the world's expertise in leading-edge lithography tech. But if you look beyond the absolute pinnacle of production processes, and into the >100nm range, there are literally hundreds of foundries around the world, many of them in the US and Germany for example, churning out what was top-of-the-line a decade ago.

US and Germany specifically even have what was leading edge just a few years ago. AMD's Zen 1 was made at a GloFo fab in New York.

Asia has been the primary axis for semiconductors since the mid-1990s when Silicon Valley ceased to be about any silicon. That's when the entire industrial ebbed out of the USA.

Were you not paying attention as all the jobs were lost?? Did you not notice the changes?

It used to be that 90% of all semiconductor companies were based in Silicon Valley, hence the same. Driving around the Valley was a near-religious experience as you saw EVERY company name you ever heard of and there was their building.

That no longer exists. And even social media companies are remotely as plentiful today. There's no comparison.

The only hope now is:

* TSMC is building a fab in Phoenix * Samsung is building a fab in one of three areas: Phoenix, Austin or Malta - they haven't decided yet * GF is building another fab in Malta

NONE of this will EVER be in California ever again let alone Silicon Valley, however. It's no longer economically viable there.

Yep. When I was growing up I lived across the street from a superfund site in San Jose. And there's still an active superfund site in the middle of Palo Alto.

Samsung already said Austin, not far from their other fab in Austin: https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/3/22311825/samsung-texas-aus...

> Why we can't build chip factories in the west ?

We have tons of them. TSMC is just extremely prominent right now because Intel stumbled on their 10nm upgrade and is stuck a generation behind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si...

Intel foundries are also less prominent because they don't sell capacity to others... AMD, Apple, Samsung, etc., would never have their processors created at an Intel fab. TSMC is neutral.

GlobalFoundries (formerly AMD) balked at the expense of getting 7nm fabrication going only to have to compete (on price) with TSMC and decided to stay at 12 nm (and larger) for a couple years. But sooner or later they will have to move forward, and perhaps find themselves ahead of TSMC for a while.

Semiconductor manufacturing is pretty dirty. Lots of toxic chemicals.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-06-15/american-...

We can and do make chip fabs in the US. Intel choose a different process for its 10nm than TSMC 7nm. It hasn’t worked and instead of switching to a similar process the other foundries use they doubled down repeatedly. It’s the perfect example of sunk cost fallacy.

>We can and do make chip fabs in the US.

But just barely, and not state of the art...

There is one planned to be built in US https://www.anandtech.com/show/15803/tsmc-build-5nm-fab-in-a...

Also GloFo has fabs "in the west" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobalFoundries#Fabrication_fa...

GloFo has more or less given up on cutting edge node design, if I recall.

Fortunately EU is finally putting money on the table :

"EU Signs €145B Declaration to Develop Next Gen Processors and 2nm Technology " https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25602950

This is tax payer money that people had to forcibly part with to use to fund private businesses that will not share their profits with those people. Is that correct? Why people cannot directly buy shares in European semiconductor companies and then profit like other shareholders do, but it has to go through bureaucratic channels (and bureaucrats also take their cut for facilitating this bureaucracy)?

> Why people cannot directly buy shares in European semiconductor companies

Because this way the companies can be directed towards a specific desired outcome that benefits society instead of the shareholders.

Sounds like it will benefit shareholders just fine?

In the end they always win.

Even if they need to be dragged there kicking and screaming.

Pretty sure Enron shareholders were left holding the bag?

Historically, Silicon Valley was created from government contracts and subsidies.

Because the European innovation ecosystem is terribly broken and our politicians think regulation is the solution to all problems.

The problem are high taxes (for employees) which means it is expensive to retain talent plus mountains of bureaucracy and more taxes.

You’re saying that China doesn’t have bureaucracy or taxes? Their income tax seems to go up to 45% so it seems unlikely that nobody else in the world can match it. South Korea is 42%, so how does Samsung manage?

In China at least, you make sure you have the right party members on your board and all that pesky paperwork and taxes mostly disappears. Not sure about Korea.

Workers in China can't just pack their bags and leave to a country that values them, so for them it is what it is.

How many Americans give up their citizenship to avoid paying taxes? It happens but it’s extremely rare and I’m highly skeptical that tax rates are the explanation here.

West was or even is sleeping on Asia

Ask average IT person about big IT companies and nobody says anything about Asia, which is scary as fuck.

Missing the word "leading Edge" in the first sentence.

And it wasn't long ago US had GF and Intel.

We can, TSMC opening a fab in arizona and Samsung opening a fab in Austin.

75% of Intel's production in US based, no?

Some. Not that much as in the 1980s. Notice that most of the floorspace is Arizona, Oregon or overseas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si...

Back in the day I worked at Fab 2 but that's ancient history.

Interesting that their current 3DXPoint/3DNand fab is in China and a 10nm fab is in Israel.

The US just gives away secrets now?

Intel is a private, global company, not a US secret.

And SMIC is just another competitor. Right?

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