The blog paints this as some secret lair of nefarious experiments. It actually refers to the facility as a "Secret Silicon Fab" which is quite the logical leap. I would suspect they're etching PCBs, perhaps? One thing is for sure, it's not a silicon fab.
I'm sorry, but if you're going to come with grandiose claims, your foundation should be solid and not hypothetical.
Why do you say that? Yes, the EPA report seems to be redacted to obscure what they're actually doing there. But there are multiple reports, some from Apple employees, that refer to it as a being some sort of small scale, "skunkworks" silicon fab.
Mainly because Apple's custom silicon could not even be prototyped in a small scale facility. It'd likely be in Taiwan.
> But there are multiple reports, some from Apple employees, that refer to it as a being some sort of small scale, "skunkworks" silicon fab.
I apologize if I missed them. Please highlight. Curious of the credentials of the folks reporting such a thing, as well.
For sampling new nodes and producing the bulk of their chips, sure. But anything that's not tied to ASML doesn't inherently need to take place in Taiwan. TSMC is in a hugely advantaged position with IP and scalability, but I think it's feasible that Apple could test new lithography techniques or large-scale dies in any sort of environment they choose. Nobody is necessarily implying that they're prototyping low-yield iPhone hardware there.
This is clearly not a factory.
And Bloomberg reported in 2018 that's where they've been prototyping their microLED display screens.
https://www.siliconvalley.com/2018/03/19/apple-secretly-deve... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-19/apple-is-...