TSMC's Arizona Trials Put Plant Productivity on Par with Taiwan | Hacker News Reader

TSMC's Arizona Trials Put Plant Productivity on Par with Taiwan

bloomberg.com

88 pointsgmays66 comments

Exciting times! As a resident of Arizona, it is great to see these plants being built here. The intel plant is absolutely massive and the plant I see most often. The TSMC plant is very north of my location and I've only seen it once.

I can only hope this brings more high tech jobs to the state and associated wages. A rising tide lifts all boats, que no?

https://archive.vn/Obe0D

Something of note is that this is a 4nm fab, whereas 3nm is cutting edge. TSMC wants to keep the crown jewels at home.

How hard would it be to move to 3nm or 2nm in Arizona if something happened in Taiwan? Genuine question because I don't know much about these plants.

There’s a lot of supply chain involved. For example in the pellicle (a special plastic coating that helps smooth variations in the photoresist layer).

https://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=...

It’s one of the reasons intel never got the yields tsmc were getting with the same asml machines. They didn’t have the same supply chain (in fact their insistence on liquid pellicles or no pellicle hurt them a lot).

Here’s a thought though. Is the Arizona fab just importing the supply chain from Taiwan? If so it’s not really helping high end silicon independence as much as you’d hope.

If enough usage picks up in this fab, the supply chain will build around it. The hard part (and TSMC has said this is an issue internally as well) is replicating the business in the US. The work ethic, job expectations, cultural taboos, etc are all different.

If it turns out that TSMC can only do what they do where they do it because of a bunch of external factors, then no one is going to be putting their billion dollar business here. Especially if they can save a few million by doing it in Taiwan.

Considering ASML makes the machines, probably not that difficult. The knowledge of how to do it exists outside of Taiwan.

The bigger problem might be that a whole lot of the rest of the supply chain is in China, and if something happened in Taiwan, the US would fuck up US-China relations and wreck that supply chain.

It's possible for TSMC to use the machines better and more efficiently than even ASLM could. Plus the step ASML covers is only a tiny slice of the entire chain of events to get to a finished product.

Given that this exists as a sort of defence mechanism against Taiwan being invaded, this isn't so bad, is it? Being within striking distance of cutting edge is far better than being miles behind, at least to my mind.

It's not bad at all. The reason it is noteworthy is because it is not a competitor fab to intel's cutting edge domestic fabs. That is if intel can get their act together.

that fab needs to be active and profitable to keel afloat for many years forward. Not being cutting edge can put it into scrutiny eventually.

There are bigger U.S. interests like not giving the control over the South China Sea to China. TSMC is a minor issue and would probably be destroyed by either the U.S. or Taiwan itself in case of a successful invasion.

> control over the South China Sea to China

Why shouldn't China should control the South China Sea? And why do we care about a body of water on the other side of the planet?

South China Sea is just a name, not a cause for maritime irredentism, and that Sea also borders most countries in Southeast Asia, countries which consider themselves independent sovereign nations. So it’s international waters which an enormous amount of global trade flows through. Allowing the PRC to call it their sovereign territory is conceding that they have license to fuck with that trade at-will, since those ships which are currently going through international waters would instead be going through PRC jurisdiction.

The claim is not just the PRC's actually, as it predates it. It's "China's claim" and so the ROC/Taiwan has the same one. Obviously only the PRC is starting to reach the power to actually trying to enforce it.

The historical context, really, is that China has been weak in the last two centuries, a period during which Western powers divided the world among themselves and decided modern borders while China was majorly screwed.

In the South China Sea for instance all countries apart from Thailand have been colonies of Western countries.

I am aware of the historical context, but right now the ROC isn’t the major problematic entity proactively asserting claims in the South China Sea and building up its Navy with an eye towards enforcing them against independent and sovereign Southeast Asian nations and threatening the flow of international trade. If they become the problem, we can bring them into the conversation at that time.

They are disrupting the Western-established order. That is the issue, the rest is just rhetoric to sugar-coat that deeper truth. The most strategically impacted countries are actually the East Asian ones, Taiwan, Korea, Japan. That's an important point because they are almost de facto US protectorates on mainland China's doorsteps.

There is no right or wrong. There are competing interests as always. The US are trying to protect their control of the region, while China is trying to disrupt that and increase control of its own backyard and gain leverage in East Asia.

> They are disrupting the Western-established order.

Yes, this is the problem. That Western-established order sees a full third of global maritime shipping transiting the South China Sea.

> The most strategically impacted countries are actually the East Asian ones, Taiwan, Korea, Japan. That's an important point because they are almost de facto US protectorates on mainland China's doorsteps.

Speaking of rhetoric.

> There is no right or wrong.

No, there is very much a right and a hypothetical wrong here. Right is for both the sovereign territory of nations and international waters to be respected as such. Wrong would be for the PRC to be able to assert its most extremist position on what parts of the South China Sea it considers to be its territory as this line cuts through both the sovereign waters of other nations nearby and their land in some cases, allowing the PRC to put its thumb on the scale in one of the largest shipping channels in the world. Don’t forget, the State called the “People’s Republic of China” is by its own laws only an entity subordinate to the Communist Party of China. No country should have that much power over international shipping, but a totalitarian one even less so.

> both the sovereign waters of other nations nearby and their land in some cases

I would refer to my previous comment about what happened in the past two centuries. What is "sovereign water and land" depends on past agreements and use of force. In this case it is not even always clear because indeed most of the area is disputed.

What power a country should or should not have is relative to which side you're standing. The US have military control over the Panama Canal, should they have that much power? So far China has less that 1/10th of the power the US have on the international stage but it is growing. It is 'bad' if you are the US, it is 'good' if you are China.

Now, the political system in China is a red herring and irrelevant. It's only convenient for the US as it allows to build an anti-China narrative more easily ("freedom!"). But if China was a democracy nothing would change in the South China Sea or with respects to the issue the US have with China, which is that it is big and powerful and does not defer to them.

> There is no right or wrong

There's such a thing as too much moralism in geopolitics. There's also such thing as too little.

Geopolitics is amoral. "Moral" is only brought to build a narrative, ie. for propaganda.

Are you referring to Taiwan as independent and sovereign? Had the PRC pursued ROC 70 years ago, this conversation wouldn’t be happening. China certainly sees Taiwan as belonging to it. It would be like saying Catalonia is not Spain (many there would like to).

The Chinese perspective is that Taiwan is China (and currently the UN agrees). Unfortunately, unless they peacefully fold back into China, a war for their independence is the most likely outcome.

> Are you referring to Taiwan as independent and sovereign?

You’re goddamned right I am and I will defer to no commies or their stooges on this subject. As of this moment in time, Taiwan is independent as the Republic of China.

> In the South China Sea for instance all countries apart from Thailand have been colonies of Western countries.

And that's relevant, why? I mean, the present-day United States used to be colonies of Great Britain, France, Spain, and Russia.

I hereby declare the South China Sea is now named the RandomCitizen12 Sea. I now have the moral imperative to control it. Pay your tolls or be judged.

I declare wherever rayiner lives to be exe34 territory. please send rent payments.

> Why shouldn't China should [sic] control the South China Sea?

For the same reason India shouldn't control the Indian Ocean.

> why do we care about a body of water on the other side of the planet?

Just how close geographically must a body of water be for us to care about it? Or might there be other criteria?

You've written about this yourself in the past. If you want to provoke the thread, you should at least be forthright that you've changed your mind, rather than feigning bafflement that anyone would agree with what you yourself used to advocate.

> TSMC is a minor issue

No it's not. Disruption of the world's chip supply would be grave, and is a strategic asset very much worth being protected. If it weren't for TSMC, Taiwan's situation would be much different.

The US started assisting Taiwan long before the rise of TSMC though. For example, a treaty was signed in 1955:

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

It's just self-preservation instinct: if they move they bleeding edge manufacturing to the US then the US no longer has a reason to defend Taiwan against Chinese invasion. Which sucks for all the TSMC C-level executives and their families.

I have to imagine the C-level employees at TSMC have an exit strategy involving private planes if that were to come to pass. At least I hope they do.

probably possible to check where families live and kids go to college (US vs Taiwan)

I get the feeling that might not even be needed. There's a pattern of those in power thinking they'll be kept in power even in trying times, patterns where they're wrong, but also where they are right.

China is hardly a fully closed society.

The Taiwan Strait is still pretty important.

TSMC was founded in 1987, I think there might just be other reasons the US may defend Taiwan which would justify the existence of the older original mutual defense treaty from 1955-1980 or the currently standing Taiwan relations act that replaced it in 1980.

Where are all the 'nano meters' is just marketing guys the way GHz became back in the day that Intel ended up obsessing over. Are we using these values as proxies for performance now? It was true back in the day -- is it still true?

It is a proxy for performance in a sense. I think it's either logic density or some arbitrary weighting of PPA. It's definitely not the same as it was when we were scaling actual gate lengths.

Although it seems the foundries are now making the minimum drawn length close to or the same as the process designation. This was less so the case in the 5-7nm generation. I wonder if people were being stupid about it...

Why Phoenix? I would assume a plant like this has high cooling and water demands?

Workforces are in or like cities.

I have heard the water needs are massive, but the reclamation tech is mind blowing. I haven't dug into it.

It is hot here in Arizona, but its generally a dry heat. We have humidity in 15% range for most of the year. Our winters are very, very awesome and generally dry as well.

Just replace Palo Verde with PV and batteries. Huge amounts of evaporated cooling water would be saved. 6.6 GW of waste heat is a lot of evaporation.

It will happen eventually, as Palo Verede continues to have to reduce its use of wastewater for cooling [1]. The US gov recently approved 31 million acres of federal land in the west for solar generation [2]. Assuming ~8 acres per MW of solar generation capacity (per the NREL) and 20% capacity factor, total land needed is ~168k acres (4.2GW nuclear vs 21GW solar needed). Plenty of land available directly near Palo Verde for this, and some already used for solar immediately south and southwest (Mesquite Solar Complex, Sun Stream Solar Park, Agave Solar).

Edit: Fixed my land use math.

[1] https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2020/02/25/palo-verde-nuclear...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41407984

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_...

I believe utility-scale solar in Arizona achieves a 30% capacity factor with 1-axis tracking (which is the default these days for utility-scale solar in the desert SW). Not sure if this is DC capacity factor or AC; the latter is typically smaller because the PV is oversized for the inverters, although the discrepancy is lower with 1-axis tracking as the peak gets spread out more, justifying more inverter capacity.

Cheap solar power is also abundant in the Southwest.

No water demand is high relative to agriculture. Industrial use is a drop in the bucket (pun intended).

Cooling is sort of a thing, but AC is pretty good now, and construction / compliance / land costs in other places vastly outweigh the (cheap, in AZ) energy needed.

Wow, by like an order of magnitude. TSMc used 100 million metric tons of water in 2023 - a single californian farm apparently can use 2.9 acre feet per acre, for 8.4 million acres. And acre foot is 325851 gallons… For a total of 2.7e12 gallons!!!

"The primary use of water in semiconductor fabs is for cleaning and rinsing silicon wafers during production. This requires ultrapure water (UPW), which is thousands of times purer than drinking water"

So it's not water usage that evaporates and can cause droughts, it can be heavily recycled back into the system.

Correct!

Arizona is dropping the hammer on a bunch of alfalfa farms here. Interesting side note is that most of them were run and owned by Saudi companies or company. There are markedly less cotton farms than when I was a kid. The farms that I have direct knowledge of are very progressive and not afraid of innovation/change which is very encouraging.

Also of note is what Arizona does with it's share of the Colorado river. My city chose to recharge the ground water and I believe the results have been acceptable.

Phoenix already has a lot of the infrastructure and regulation in place thanks to Intel. And the consistent dry climate is a perk for fabrication. ASM, who works closely with TSMC, has an HQ just up in Scottsdale. Water recycling is a pretty simple problem for fab designers/engineers to deal with compared to the problems they're institutionally dedicated to.

Perhaps too provocative of a question for this forum:

Assuming that this plant (and potentially others) ends up substantially reproducing the capabilities that are currently available only in Taiwan, how much would that fact change the US'/the west's response to a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan?

It enhances the Taiwan plant's blowupability.

This news is good and timely considering China will take Taiwan this decade and basically control a large portion of chip making. For national security reasons, it is imperative that we have enough domestic chip manufacturing/supply to satisfy Western demand. The entire West needs to decouple it's reliance on Chinese manufacturing and supply chains.

No, Taiwan would rather send chips back a generation than give them up.

Mainland China will catch up or even surpass within a decade. They are already paying millions to get the top engineers and researchers in Asia. It's a bumpy ride but they are making a lot of progress. The West dropped the ball. The only edge at the moment is ASML.

And China is ahead in silicon photonics R&D.

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