I'm 100% against tax payer funded chip fabs. It's just a handout to huge corporations.
Already happening: https://semianalysis.substack.com/p/intel-cuts-fab-buildout-...
Also, look for huge executive bonuses in the near future.
The gov't is specifically paying for new fabs that are already being built.
Not to mention this is a national security issue given the possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Intel CEO Pat most certainly finessed the government into giving Intel a huge payout by exaggerating this threat.
If we don’t gain that capability now, it will take us too long to recover when push actually comes to shove.
Regardless, I’d go further and argue that we should be building up the capability to manufacture our own EUV lithography machines.
As far as I am aware, it’s the exact opposite: over the years, ASML licensed some of their patents to US companies.
[1] https://asiatimes.com/2022/07/how-china-could-leapfrog-us-ch...
If you think about it, ASML wouldn’t be this critical to semiconductor fabrication if it didn’t control the patents for its core tech.
I'm not sure that's entirely true. If we define "most advanced nodes" as 5nm-class fabrication, certainly Intel is doing that well now, just not in volume production. Intel 4 based Meteor Lake powered on and runs Windows as of earlier this year.
No capability to build and not ready for volume manufacturing aren't really the same class of problem.
Anyways, I think the CHIPS Act was the right move at the right time. SMIC is quickly catching up thanks to near unlimited funding from the Chinese government. We need to play the same game if we ever want to catch up to TSMC.
Not as bad as if Taiwan's exports to the USA are stopped.
We can build motherboards / pick-and-place machines in the USA. We literally cannot make the chips that are coming out of Taiwan right now. Samsung is the #2 IIRC, so maybe South Korea can pick up the slack in a hypothetical Taiwan-conflict.
> Intel CEO Pat most certainly finessed the government into giving Intel a huge payout by exaggerating this threat.
US Government is also got TSMC (Taiwan's semiconductor fabs) to build an Arizona fab-lab. Look, even Taiwan is scared of possible conflict and is hedging on the physical safety of the USA.
Hopefully conflict doesn't happen, but the powers that be are making smart moves here. Hopefully it will be enough.
I don't think that's the case, as I understand it this comes from the US wanting to onshore some of TSMC's capabilities and Taiwan screwing up electricity production on the island.
It does Taiwan the government and ruling class no good whatsoever to place assets beyond the PRC's military reach, rather the incentives are entirely opposite of that. The more valuable TSMC's fab lines there are, the more incentive the US has to help with the ROC's defense, or war if it comes to that. Which in the case of torpedoes from attack subs can even be done with some plausible deniability.
The TSMC factory in Arizona is full speed ahead. Its literally in Arizona right now, undergoing construction / hiring / spinning up.
5nm Fab is being built right now in Arizona though by TSMC. They're beginning to offshore fabs.
Look up any information on "TSMC Fab21".
So they re-balanced for a volume play.
If some (read: national security volume) fabs in EU / US are enough to assuage governments, but most (read: global economically important volume) are still in Taiwan, then that's the next best thing.
Where life will get interesting is in South Korea, at the Samsung fab. They will have the only 3-nm process in the world if TSMC goes away.
TSMC isn't giving up their cutting edge technology, just what will be considered an old node size by 2024.
You can offset internal Rd investment with gov money and use that elsewhere, sure, but when the magnitudes are large and immediate, that doesn't play. You get one check, and it better be spent on the intended cause in X fiscal years or you pay it back.
The tech community has suffered under the Cost Plus and other workaround bullshit for long enough that the cynicism is inbred. But there's plenty of gov funded RD money that does precisely what it was invested to do.
To put it another way, it’s similar to the futility of those well-meaning people who give some homeless person $5 on the express condition that they spend those $5 on food, not on alcohol or drugs. Which said homeless person is all too happy to do, he/she will gladly spend those gifted $5 on food, which leaves the other hipotethical $5 which he/she had in their pocket all available for buying drugs or alcohol, money which otherwise would have been spent probably half and half (2.50 on food, 2.50 on drugs).
At least in the counter-example I gave the result of largesse is a homeless person better fed, which is good (and also more intoxicated, which is not so good), but in this example with Intel you have taxpayers filling the pockets of one of the biggest tech companies in the world.
I cannot claim authority over all instances of gov funding, but I have managed funds from the government for Rd use and they absolutely do audit, and they absolutely do require an accounting down to the last penny, and they absolutely do review plans vs actions. And they absolutely do get refunds for money not spent. And, critically, they absolutely do shutdown follow on funding if they do not like what they see.