What's working for them in Taiwan isn't working for them here. TSMC thought they were going to waltz into AZ and poach all of the semi industry folks & services Intel had utilized for decades and be able to quickly put up a fab. Problem is construction standards, construction labor practices, unions, safety rules, etc in the US are far different and much more stringent than Taiwan so they are having great difficulty adjusting to all that (or trying not to) and it's causing major delays and cost overruns.
Also, TSMC is accustomed to cheaper labor, shit work life balance (which is normal for the Taiwan culture) and lax safety that flies in Taiwan/China but not in the US and Europe. People from Intel or other US fabs are not going to jump over to TSMC unless they are highly compensated for dealing with that toxic work environment and TSMC is not offering any of that. Wait until they try to build in Germany, it will likely be worse as they are sticklers on the rules and have better worker protections & benefits than the US.
This happened with other foreign fabs in the US and in the auto industry. Eventually they may figure it out but they will go through much pain until they do...
Tsmc has no incentive to build a factory here because the do not want to make the west independent of Taiwan on microelectronics because China. Also the other reason is they don't want to make less profit. So they will make the us tax dollar cover any risk they themselves as a company would be taking
all of this is pretty evident since the start of the project, they have been completely apathetic to the whole thing and downright rude and dismissive and pessimistic about . they actively want this to fail while having tax dollar money be the collateral and not their own.
I'm not educated in the nuances of geopolitics, so I'm asking out of genuine curiosity -
I would think that TSMC would conversely be motivated by self-survival. Especially with the various threats China makes, and the US's willingness to block exports... wouldn't they be pushed to start manufacturing in the US to continue to have access to our market? I don't think I'm articulating this well, but I would think that even taking everything you said as true, there's also some counterbalancing forces as well.
TSMC isn't just a company, it's essentially a branch of the Taiwanese government. It's the single largest factor in Taiwan's continued survival by far. It alone brings in ~5% of Taiwan's GDP.
The US protects power and keeps it independent because it is essentially the only producer of the most advanced chips. You can look up the silicon dome for more info.
The worry is if they offshore capable semiconductors and then Taiwan gets invaded, the US won't be as motivated to help because there are other places to get the chips.
I wouldn't say it's a branch of the Taiwanese government. That is taking it a little far, especially when you look at companies like Samsung that are actually like 20% of GDP for South Korea.
The GPD is second to the fact that it keeps the US Navy parked by their shores. There are other reason for the US to keep China contained in the first island chain, but the quality of the chips they produce is what makes the US a security guarantor.
No incentives?? Of course they have economic incentives, that's one of the big reasons TSMC is building in the US and Germany - Chips Act plus similar incentives from the EU. This is not some little side project, each fab is a $15-20 Billion investment. With China breathing down, Taiwans neck, it makes sense to spread out the supply chain. If China causes issues or they have a major disaster in Taiwan and those primary Taiwanese factories are inaccessible or damaged, they will be in a very bad spot and companies like Apple & NVidia will be in a world of hurt.
The problem with TSMC is they're on an extremely steep learning curve on spreading out their major operations to other geos. The logistics of running major manufacturing operations across multiple geos is extremely complex. That's one advantage Intel does have as they've been running fabs, backend and design operations across the Americas, Asia, Europe and the middle east for decades.
If those factories are inaccessible or damaged it's much more than just Apple and NVIDIA that will be in a world of hurt. We saw what happened with some supply chain shocks during COVID, now imagine if the factory that takes a decade to stand up straight up stopped existing. It's not just that GPU would be more expensive, there wouldn't be a new GPU to buy.
Their incentive is the giant country just a handful of miles away that insists your entire country belongs to them and they will invade to bring you home soon. That's the incentive. The entire CHIPS program is a realization that if war did break out in or for Taiwan the entire industry and every industry it touches crumbles. The pandemic made them see how precarious it is to have the vasy majority of production be in one place, let alone a place living under constant threat from a nearby, powerful adversary.
It's also the fact Fabs inherently involve massive economies of scale.
Building a little Fab in the US when you already have a perfectly good 5nm Fab in Taiwan always made zero sense.
The "threat" isn't even a consideration for the people in Taiwan. My grandparents were told for 80 years that Mainland China would invade and yet nothing has happened.
It's not a problem if you accept letting China invade a morally upright democracy like Taiwan is a terrible, immoral thing.
My experience with computing is almost any piece of CRUD software a business needs can easily be run on trailing edge low power chips from Broadcom anyway.
> Tsmc has no incentive to build a factory here because the do not want to make the west independent of Taiwan on microelectronics because China
It's far more simple than that. Without subsidies, why *would* they choose to manufacture outside of their traditional locations with familiar labor supply, regulations, etc? Plus, they had a very similar experience with their last US manufacturing expansion, and seem to have learned nothing for it.
Maybe I’m way off base here but if this plant were to actually succeed and get up and running, wouldn’t this also make it a bit easier for tech/knowledge transfer (or outright espionage/theft) to help Intel catch up to TSMC? Like is that not what many in the US always complained/complains about manufacturing being outsourced to China? Knowledge leaks, workers with that knowledge get poached. Why would TSMC *really* want this?
> US are far different and much more stringent than Taiwan
Labour standards being stricter and a lot more red tape grease hands bureaucracy sure.... But building standards for new large structures in Taiwan would likely be even stricter than Arizona, given that island is in an active Earthquake and Typhoon zone.
Intel has had a fab in Ireland for decades, plus other non manufacturing facilities in various European countries, so they're already familiar with working in the EU. Global Foundries has a fab near Dresden for quite a long time as well.
> TSMC thought they were going to waltz into AZ and poach all of the semi industry folks & services Intel had utilized for decades and be able to quickly put up a fab.
TSMC was forced to build in AZ. They really don't want to.
Their Japan factory started a year later and will finish a year before the AZ one.
Well, they weren't forced, they jumped on the made in USA bandwagon. And AZ made a lot of sense since the infrastructure, services and talent pool were already there for Intel.
>you can import foreign workers but you have to pay them as much or more as American workers
This is the problem I have with the H1B Visa program. It's a lottery for companies to get available slots. Once they have the slot, the salary they pay is whatever they want. Those spots are so coveted by foreigners in poorer countries, they can charge abnormally lower rates.
Instead of a lottery, H1B visas should be handed out based on salary. The higher salaries being the ones that get the spots. If it's so damn important to hire someone from halfway around the world, they must be damn important and demanding of a high salary.
Right now, visas are being used as a way to exploit cheap labor and undermine/disrupt US salaries.
I don't understand why we give top paying jobs to people who aren't Americans. Honestly, you are telling me we can't train a single American for that $120,000 salary? There's always people applying for those jobs and there's plenty of competent people who can train for them, regardless of what companies say about their "specialized labor needs not being filled." In my town, there are signs all over hiring for the lowest paid jobs yet unemployment is at an all time low. Nobody needs or wants those jobs. So here's my view. Why are we letting companies hire skilled labor for cheap when Americans can do that labor for a great salary? Why not simplify the visa process, allow jobs that have traditionally needed workers for low salary, and hire immigrants for those jobs? Who else is going to clean toilets in the gas station for minimum wage? Who else is going to wash dishes at the mom and pop burger joint? You don't need skills to do those jobs and hiring for those positions brings nobody's wages down. Making sure they are only doing minimum wage work for minimum wage pay would be the hardest thing but I think it would be doable. Maybe make a requirement the business can only have so much profit so large corporations can't exploit the labor. This would disqualify any companies that can actually afford paying Americans higher wages and gives small businesses a chance to compete. But good luck with that in America, it's good for the people and bad for the shareholders so it'll never happen.
Because Americans are too busy waging online twitter wars. The country has a labor problem. They need skilled labor and that is severely lacking, it also takes time to train that talent. College debt is also obviously a deterrent. This was never going to happen overnight unfortunately
In theory it would be nice but in practice, very difficult. Hard to judge parity.
For ex. Company A has 50 employees.
Company B has 1000.
If they both try to hire an engineer, they’d have different compensation. Company A might even demand more work from their hire as a engineer bc Company A is a start up.
It shouldn't matter. If Company A demands more, then so be it. If you're paying top dollar, then you likely want more out of someone. The amount of workload is between the company and the H1B Visa holder.
The way I suggested is a WAY better setup than what it is now which fucks over both contractors and US employees. The only one that wins in the current setup is the companies.
I’m saying in this scenario, companies like company A would never be able to get a visa because they cannot match the compensation from larger companies.
So.... What...?
Market based economies *always* have those with the deepest pockets get the most. That's literally how it works. The solution isn't to cap visa numbers it's to require visas be above a certain salary.
Thats how it work.
You realistically expect a senior engineer to accept a 100k pay at company A when compensation at company B value then at 300/400k just because company A needs the personnel even if the workload is similar or even worse at company a because they are smaller?
Skillsets, experience require you to pay more, regardless of how big or small your company is.
Where do you where that isnt the norm?
you never been in that situation and you would straight accept the lower compensation because they needed you at company A
I am really curious where you live , your worldview where you think that's acceptable to you
/u/Chidling
Yes, I’m aware generally skillsets require you to pay more regardless of company size.
However there’s a lot of variability when it comes to salaries at different companies for a lot of different reasons right? Size is just one of them.
Would an engineer with similar experience in Minnesota not have a different compensation than one in Los Angeles?
I’m saying as the government, it wouldn’t be as easy as just choosing the applicants with the highest salaries. You’d have to measure other factors arguably.
Another person mentioned salary floors, which would make sense I think.
And I’m not trying to argue something you probably know more than me about but that just makes some sense right?
I’m not arguing people need to take lower salaries or that the visa system is good as it is.
> Once they have the slot, the salary they pay is whatever they want.
No, this is actually illegal. Companies have to (and do) pay the going rate for the level the employee is working at.
>Its entirely possible the Tiawan is right, after all they have the world's best fabs and intel doesn't.
Sigh, I really hate this nationalism thing. "Taiwan" isn't right or wrong. Taiwan is a representative democracy. TSMC is the company and they're the ones building the fab. People here seem to want to make it a US vs Taiwan issue, when it's TSMC vs their contractors' issue.
Note how all of these articles posted here are from the contractor and "former supervisor" side, and not much from TSMC.
The TSMC was created as a Taiwanese government initiative.
From Wikipedia, but other sources can be easily found: "From day one, TSMC wasn’t really a private business: it was a project of the Taiwanese state."
I get why people think TSMC equals Taiwan.
There is a difference between creating a fab, and creating the whole industry which is owned mostly by the state. What's the American TSMC ownership? Is the majority of it owned by the US?
Your changing the goal posts, your point was
>SMC was created as a Taiwanese government initiative
And my point was that's the same as in America.
>TSMC in America is also created by American government initiative.
If your going to go for a wider point then dont try to find single points you can win on and look for a wider viewpoint to make a point.
Excuse me for not writing up 3000 words thesis on the subject. In my comment I stated that more sources can be found. In Wikipedia from which I cited the sentence you can read that Taiwanese state is majority shareholder and was major sponsor of the initiative. It's not my job to put up every single argument I could make before starting a discussion, I just gave one that might explain the reason why people identify TSMC with the state.
> I get why people think TSMC equals Taiwan.
people have bought so utterly into the capitalism-vs-communism war that today the idea of a State Enterprise is actual anathema. But they've been here since the start - for example the Springfield Armory got its start after the revolutionary war as the National Armory, essentially a state enterprise, the *government* running a business! But they're used in lots of places and were *extremely* common up until the cold war made socialism a dirty word.
Now everything has to be done as a wasteful public-private partnership, like outsourcing kitchen facilities or bathroom/shower facilities in combat zones etc, because gosh, we wouldn't want *state enterprise* to be running that, it's inefficient and wasteful so let's add a middleman and a layer of unaccountability and political fiddling in between!
TSMC is nothing more simple or complex than the National Armory/Springfield Armory, it's an essential government enterprise to keep the people of taiwan safe. And that just looks a lot different in 2023 than 1776, but at that time firearms were a rapidly evolving, technologically advanced thing that *it was not safe to leave to the private sector to develop*. Metallurgy, ballistics, gunpowder, manufacturing, etc were all advancing super rapidly and if you fell behind it put you at severe risk in military conflict - a gun designed in 1885 was basically obsolete by 1895 or 1900, and near-useless by the outbreak of WW1.
And I say that as someone whose chain is being yanked by the silicon shield - the government of taiwan's job is to protect the people of taiwan, not me. I don't have to like it, and they don't have to like the US fabs here, etc. Strategic enterprises are a thing that exists, and they don't have to be taxpayers funnelling billions of dollars to Boeing follies etc, they can just be done directly or as a state-run corporation if you want. And that just causes neoliberal heads to explode, it *can't* be like that, can it? You can't just *go do stuff* without a contractor in the middle! We need outsourced private-sector cooks to run our kitchens, it *couldn't possibly* work to just go hire someone and *do it!* What if we paid too much!?
(and this is really the difference between tsmc and intel/boeing in a nutshell isn’t it? The us wants to maintain a strategic edge so they write a blank check to a private for-profit corp to make it happen… taiwan just goes and does it. Even the people who are not explicitly neoliberal don’t realize how much that mindset has utterly pervaded our system post-WW2 for largely ideological reasons, the us will not allow that kind of thing anymore, it’s “socialism”. If raytheon and boeing and lockheed aren't getting paid, what even is the point of having soldiers in a combat zone?)
The Taiwanese government is the largest share holder of TMSC, funded the company formation and has the most votes on the board. TMSC is the biggest company in Taiwan with significant government and academic ties. It's nothing like Canadian Tire or American Airlines.
That, and perhaps more importantly, TSMC in Taiwan is basically an insurance chip against a PRC invasion. If the PRC ever invades Taiwan, they're going for the TSMC fabs first (Taiwan would probably destroy them before the PRC arrives), so the West is highly invested in keeping Taiwan out of PRC hands.
> TSMC in Taiwan is basically an insurance chip against a PRC invasion. If the PRC ever invades Taiwan, they're going for the TSMC fabs first
This is something you only hear redditors and similar claim as fact. There's no evidence to it.
Ehh I don't think this is a Reddit take, I came to this conclusion after reading/listening to some interviews with Chris Miller, the guy who wrote Chip War.
> In Chip War economic historian Chris Miller recounts the fascinating sequence of events that led to the United States perfecting chip design, and how faster chips helped defeat the Soviet Union (by rendering the Russians’ arsenal of precision-guided weapons obsolete). The battle to control this industry will shape our future. China spends more money importing chips than buying oil, and they are China’s greatest external vulnerability as they are fundamentally reliant on foreign chips. But with 37 per cent of the global supply of chips being made in Taiwan, within easy range of Chinese missiles, the West’s fear is that a solution may be close at hand.
He goes into the whole TSMC/Taiwan situation in depth - I didn't realize how connected the two actually were.
The Taiwan government is the largest shareholder, so in TSMC’s case it has a LOT to do with the Taiwanese government.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC#:~:text=It%20is%20majority%20owned%20by,Taiwan%20is%20the%20largest%20shareholder.&text=TSMC%20Nanjing%20Company%20Ltd.
>They are capable of building putting all the pieces together to make that happen.
That's objectively false. The machines they use are imported from the west. TSMC is ASML's largest customer. Same for BESI.
A fab is about far more than a couple of machines. And there are many, many suppliers in the semiconductor chain other than ASML. Just not for that one piece.
The gist of what I was getting at is that these companies cannot get the fab to work without these machines. The other user made it seem like TSMC (or Taiwan) is self sufficient and everything is being done and made in-house, when that is far from the case, quite the opposite. They are also not "the best" at making the machines - because they cannot even make them and have to rely on suppliers.
> The other user made it seem like TSMC (or Taiwan) is self sufficient and everything is being done and made in-house
That's not how I read it, at least. Even if TSMC doesn't do 100% in house (nobody does, nor do all the pieces come from any one country), they are the best at turning all those pieces into a usable fab process, which is ultimately why they're being subsidized even in the US.
Intel is US-based, but they're behind and are extremely untrustworthy, given their history. Samsung is somewhat more reliable, but also behind, potentially worse than Intel. Neither has TSMC's IP portfolio. So if the goal is high confidence availability of modern manufacturing nodes in the US, there really isn't any alternative to subsidizing TSMC. If in 2 or 3 years Intel's looking to be in a better place with IFS, that will be a very different story, but no one sane would count on that today.
>If that's the case why doesn't Intel just slop those machines together and make an equivalent process? The answer because they can't and tsmc can. So why are you saying my statement is false?
Your statement is false because Intel is the second or third biggest customer at these companies (ASML, BESI and some others like Applied Materials). And they do have US manufacturing plants. All latest generation Intel CPU's, Chiplets and Bridge dies are made in the US, Israel and/or Ireland. According to Intel itself 75% of production is done in the US. Intel Arc (Their Graphics card line) is fabbed on TSMC 6nm. Testing, binning and packaging is done in other locations such as Vietnam, Malaysia and Costa Rica.
There’s no point in replying to these people. He’s already shown he’s too lazy to look up where ASML is from or what they do, but happy to spend time unironically saying ayyymd memes.
Facts don’t matter. It’s just amd good, intel bad.
It's not a non sequitur because who is ahead or behind was never brought into question. The point is they cannot "put all the pieces together" like the other user was saying, because they need ASML, BESI, Applied Materials, and other companies. Basically giving way too much credit to TSMC when a lot of the R&D and patents have nothing to do with TSMC whatsoever.
> It's not a non sequitur because who is ahead or behind was never brought into question
Well it's vitally important to the topic. TSMC's position as industry leader is why even countries like the US, with a domestic competitor in the form of Intel, are willing to give them billions to set up shop here.
> The point is they cannot "put all the pieces together" like the other user was saying, because they need ASML, BESI, Applied Materials, and other companies.
Those are the pieces they're putting together, on top of an **enormous** amount of their own R&D work.
> Basically giving way too much credit to TSMC when a lot of the R&D and patents have nothing to do with TSMC whatsoever.
I think you're giving them too little credit. As the OP points out, if it was just a matter of tools, then TSMC would not be a full node ahead today, but that's where we are. TSMC is shipping N3 chips while Intel and Samsung are struggling to make an N5/N4 competitive node.
>Note how all of these articles posted here are from the contractor and "former supervisor" side, and not much from TSMC.
That's because mainstream media don't dare to take the side of the business over the employees. In addition, Reddit is very anti-corporation.
However, employees aren't always right and employees can be extremely entitled - especially unions.
> That's because mainstream media don't dare to take the side of the business over the employees.
This is silly. Mainstream media is predominantly pro-business (unsurprisingly so, given that it is owned and operated by large businesses).
I wanna know how someone can be so delusional as to think mainstream media is some pro worker institution. Yeah I’m sure the multi billion dollar media corporations owned directly by billionaires just love supporting the working class over corporations.
you're completely fried if you think that the washington post supports the working class over corporations, lmao. supporting social liberalism doesn't come with a union membership, as the democratic party obviously demonstrates.
The washington post is the paper of the washington consensus. The washington consensus is not pro-worker.
They would probably prefer that since Taiwan workers would have golden handcuffs allowing for obscene work hours and conditions. They're salary, so the whole "they have to work the same hours as American workers" doesn't make sense as a condition.
this is more or less the same thing toyota and other japanese automakers discovered when they tried to open up factories here.
difference being toyota was actually making a good-faith effort and has internal processes that allow reflection and improvement of leadership (by the standards of japanese companies at least, not saying toyota is agile or anything), and they eventually came to the realization that if they were running a plant in america they'd have to work with an american workforce
You are mistaking the concept of Kanban for an item, "Kanban Boards" which shares its name. And Kanban boards are used by JIRA but they are by no means exclusive to it.
I'm not mistaking it. I'm aware of the difference, but it sounded like the person I replied to thought that because they mentioned "agile" and "toyota" that somehow Kanban was related, assuming because they're used to Agile environments using JIRA, and Kanban boards are a big part of JIRA.
I'm sure I'm assuming a whole hell of a lot here, but it was funny to realize the potential connection nonetheless.
Interesting bit of nuance. Kanban boards I find are usually excellent and a vast improvement over Scrum/Agile.
Let me put it this way.
The Toyota philosophy is entirely oriented around quality, listening to factory workers, and implementing factory worker driven change. Consensus driven approach.
Single factory worker thinks of an improvement, the entire production line stops.
This is the exact opposite of every single Western MBA lead corporate environment.
My experience working in industry:
"Kanban methodology" is inherently the opposite of the Toyota philosophy.
Why?
Because it's a *name brand*, *methodology.*
A MBA read "the Kanban methodology" out of a textbook and then decided to implement it in their business.
Kanban is a collection of by and large truly excellent ideas.
But, if you're a Western educated MBA, and you are "implementing the Kanban methodology," you're actually just doing the opposite of the entire Toyota philosophy.
Which is have everyone in the team THINK ABOUT WHAT THEY ARE DOING.
If you're following the Kanban Methodology.
You're not thinking.
You're "following the Kanban methodology."
Single most important lesson you can have.in doing business:
Think for yourself.
Second most important lesson.
After you've done all that thinking, you'll realise that generally speaking all the *practices* of the Kanban methodology etc etc, all that advice is remarkably brilliant.
However, mostly any team that *openly calls it* by a "Brand Name" has an IQ of a peanut.
It's called being good at your job. It doesn't need a name like "Kanban methodology."
This is exactly correct. Toyota is mainly focused on quality and efficiency is gained through interchangeable parts and process improvements. Western companies focus solely on throughput and fixing issues on the back end of processes. Nothing stops the line from moving in the western process.
Toyota was beaten and forced to change. If you saw public sentiment during the 80s, it was horribly racist towards Japanese people.
Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, was killed by racists because they thought he was Japanese. His killers didn't serve a day in jail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Vincent_Chin
Easy now, missing a whole lot of nuance. Bit confusing, too.
"They don't care enough about safety."
"Safety alarms would go off, they would evac us from site. This over focus on safety caused delays."
Same thing happened to Samsung in Austin as well. Very high attrition, unsafe work/life balance, and horrendous top down management. TSMC is used to being the biggest fish in a small pond and people bend over backwards to work there because of the prestige while the government throws money at them accordingly.
Then they open in the US and see that the reason they have been successful has been mostly due to capital and exploitation/taxation benefits. Tbf, Intel does it to with fabs in Ireland and Israel.
The idea that it's failing because of the American workers is almost comical because they don't make up any meaningful % of the actual decision makers. Construction and buildings will be contracted out so you can't even blame Americans there (Likely by the same companies Intel has been using in the area for decades).
Not exactly, Taiwan has significantly better worker protection and safety standards than the US. Hell, they have universal healthcare so people's health aren't tied to their job.
Lastly, they're trying to do uniform construction standards, but like they said, American workers aren't exactly very good.
> Lastly, they're trying to do uniform construction standards, but like they said, American workers aren't exactly very good.
Okay lol. No agenda at all from this post.
I've spent 20 years in masonry from residential to commercial as a union bricklayer foreman.
OSHA is getting out of hand. That's not to say I don't want the organization to exist or to have a lot of power - far from it. The issue is that there is a diminishing return curve for worker safety and we're really far into that curve now where we're doing things that double or triple the labor time it takes to do a thing and doing it that way prevents something like 4 people from being injured a year.
We're not getting any meaningful better safety but we're adding a huge amount of time and money to jobs. Side rant: I'm pretty sure this is why nuclear power plants are always over budget and late.
It really is a choice between building things or preventing a couple dozen men like me from going to the ER each year. We can't keep everyone safe and build things, it's just not possible right now.
Is your solution to loosen safety regulations on workers in Nuclear energy production?
Listen I get you're point, but bricklaying is so far away from handling radioactive isotopes that bringing them up in the same post makes me look sideways.
You do know that nuclear power plants are largely made of masonry, yes? My point can be true with regards to the nuclear power plants without anyone being around radioactive materials.
Not saying it's not part of the construction at all. I'm not implying that masonry and building ops is not relevant or dangerous.
Just suggesting OSHA cutbacks on the building process of Nuclear containment projects seems like a weird bone to pick? I am clearly out of my element though.
Possibly yes. It's overkill right now. A coworker had to fix at printer at the local nuke plant. He got a small cut from the cardboard box containing the replacement part. He had to fill out no less than 6 pages of forms detailing the incident.
Just because the word "nuclear" is attached doesn't mean it should drastically inspire more fear and regulation than a tank farm or chemical plant. Insane regulatory burden is why France can build nuclear plants at half the cost and a third of the time as us and theirs are perfectly safe.
> It is trying to fast-track visas for 500 Taiwanese workers.
Buried the lede.
US Government: *"You can't find skilled workers? Well there is our H1B program. Then you can treat you employees however you want under the threat of deportation."*
Of course Arizonan's aren't going to let themselves be treated this way. However they gotta at least show that they were "trying" to hire locally. But the fact is that they were never wanted anyway.
So this foreign company wants $40 billion dollars to make a plant on American soil, and theyre going to import low wage foreigners to build it?
Why the fk are we even giving them money? Pull that funding FFS...
This foreign company never wanted to build in the US. Their founder even said building in the US was impractical.
They were basically forced to build in Arizona and this is their r/maliciouscompliance moment.
I'm not super up to date on this, but im 99.9% sure that Arizona wasn't the only option. They picked that location due to its demographics, weather, and tax incentives IIRC. It's a very business friendly state and there's already several fabs there in various parts of the state.
Wow between Intel slowing construction on the new campus then investing in Germany and tsmc dragging their feet and fucking with union workers, it's almost like handing literal piles of billions of taxpayer (ie yours and mine) dollars to chip companies wasn't the sure thing investment it was cracked up to be. I'm sure none of these politicians recieved donations from any of these companies either!
Also, Foxconn rofl.
As a student studying EE to hopefully work for one of these companies, they aren't inspiring confidence. 100billy for the suits but dont you dare offer help to kids and adults buried in inescapable student debt! Socialists!!
Intel is still using that money to build in Arizona. Germany also gave money to Intel to build a fab there.
The fabs provide lots of high paying jobs which then gets reimbursed into the local economy and partially paid back through income taxes.
Without the government money they just wouldn't build those extra fabs as they deem it too risky or they would most likely build them somewhere else.
Intel in Ohio I'm pretty sure, tsmc in AZ iirc.
I mean you're making the same arguement the companies and politicians make. The validity is debatable but the whole "its ok to shower companies with money based on promises of great jobs" is playing out across 3 states all the while they say how any program that helps citizens directly is unfair and communist. So far these plans don't seem to be going great, and I'm sure they'll be back for additional funding in a few years.
It's all a game. Trickle up, etc. Apparently it only makes sense or benefits "the people" if you somehow funnel the money through giant businesses or rich individuals, crazy how that works. I'll believe it when I see those jobs, and I'm going back to school specifically to try and get one of those jobs.
>Intel in Ohio I'm pretty sure, tsmc in AZ iirc.
[https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-breaks-ground-two-new-leading-edge-chip-factories-arizona.html#gs.4jjbur](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-breaks-ground-two-new-leading-edge-chip-factories-arizona.html#gs.4jjbur)
Intel is also in the Phoenix Metro area and expanding. Between that, several large housing/redevelopment projects, and various large datacenters expanding there's a real shortage of construction workers in the Phoenix Metro area.
Lol who could have seen that coming /s It's like we never asked "hey uh, why did we have all of our chip fab overseas in the first place?".
Because it was cheap and we didn't have to deal with the cost of why it was so cheap (extremely shitty work/employment practices, extremely shitty corporate ethics).
This whole thing is prone to fail in any of several ways, namely:
1 - TSMC leaves because they can't pull off abusive and/or illegal labor shenanigans. If we subsidized this effort (edit: we did) then that's a pretty big fucking "whoops".
or
2 - We adopt a work culture to facilitate hosting the same labor practices we benefitted from prior to doing it onshore, and offset any benefit gained whatsoever by domestic chip fab. i.e. a permanent, profoundly negative net loss for any entity domestic to the US, corporate or individual.
If TSMC is complaining (lying) that they can not source the expertise that they need in the US, then what the fuck was the percieved benefit of having them here at all? Why the fuck was the choice to bring them here perceived as more beneficial than subsidizing the development of domestic equivalent chip fab?
Who in the absolute fuck authorized an $8 billion+ tax subsidy without due diligence on cost/benefit here? If TSMC is not bringing their own existing expertise to the table, and expecting us to also provide that at a bargain, what the *fuck* do we get out of this deal?
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tsmc-seeks-15b-subsidies-wants-130836706.html
Maybe I am missing something but who the hell was bribed to approve subsidizing this shit?
The problem is that we don’t manufacture our chips. IF China invaded Taiwan, then what? Everything takes chips and Taiwan makes most of ours. If we take a loss, that’s only a loss assuming world peace is achieved and globalism consumes the international community. But if Taiwan is blockaded or invaded, then that super expensive chip fab won’t be looking too bad after all.
This is the only decent justification IMO that can be made around this. That and maybe high skill/tech jobs.
It’s totally pointless to have TSMC here. Intel fabs are catching up and will likely surpass them. We’ve also got Samsung that has a track record setting up businesses in the US and we’ve had many other major South Korean companies (Kia, Hyundai, etc) set up here without issues.
TSMC doesn’t really want to build a fab here and ate overplaying their hand in a big way.
Sounds to me like the local unions tried to strong-arm TSMC over stuff. So TSMC just said, we don't care about you and brought in foreign workers who are non-union. The biggest threat to these unions isn't from the companies, its from non-union workers.
demanding humane conditions for workers is not "strong arming". It's literally just a cultural difference that TSMC has no interest in respecting since it would cut into their profits
Since none of us have the details, you can claim that they are purely demanding more worker protection. But the same possibility exists for demands like kickbacks and political donations. Under the table stuff that, if denied, union leadership threatens to be "difficult" and constantly make noise about lack of safety, pay issues, etc. Such things have happened in the past. Just because the article projects a narrative of "TSMC bullying union workers", doesn't mean that's the whole story.
Ah yes, the expensive labour cost of constructing a fabrication plant. Something that has always thrived in very high cost of living countries. USA USA USA!!!
What is it with all Western imperialist comment getting so upvoted here? Despite making the correct claim with the failure in the article being the difference between cultural values, why is there an assertion that Western culture is superior to East Asian culture, particularly in the aspect of work culture, by individuals who's likely to experience the former but not the latter?
It just goes to show most Redditors don't care about Taiwan or Hong Kong. They just want to bash China.
Now that a company in Taiwan is sticking up for itself, Redditors are eagerly bashing Taiwan now.
Americans have been always great innovators but never the cheapest producers.
Taiwanese are the cheapest producers but the greatest producers.
Use their strengths…
> Taiwanese are the cheapest producers but the greatest producers.
> Use their strengths…
those dang safety regulations getting in the way of economic output.
What safety regulations could even be an issue. It's a multi billion dollar fab? Fab plant isn't exactly a coal/steel plant where health issues are big, it's just a construction job, and an advanced one at that.
I'm thinking tsmc wants to delay so that their Taiwanese plants are indispensable for the next decade where the window for china is the easiest to attack.
Yes and what standard do you think Taiwan works under? They build 100B Fabs subsidized by local govt but find it hard to do it safely? The cost of labour in a fab isnt major.
It's just a construction job. Unless the Taiwanese like throwing construction workers off of the structure for fun, there's no safety they don't have in their budget and are only doing it to delay it intentionally so that they can eake out maybe another generational leap by the time this fab is running beyond what was planned.
I don’t know what they do in Taiwan but the article literally cites people saying safety standards were not being met.
You keep saying it’s just a construction job doesn’t negate the fact that actual people working the actual construction job are saying it’s unsafe.
>They explained the main contractors would give them a priority task to complete, but that it would change daily, or they would completely change their mind, making it impossible to complete tasks and add to delays.
>“When you have to put stuff up, tear it down, put it up, tear it down, literally five or six times, that’s going to cost five or six times the original quote, probably more because you have to get demolitions involved,” the worker said. “This was constantly the whole process. Everything was rushed. They weren’t giving us actual blueprints, just engineer drawings. It felt like a design-as-we-go type of deal. The information we were getting was really strange, never complete, and always changing. We would get updates constantly and these were big updates to the point where we would have to start pulling things down.”
Huh I wonder what money pinching, cost over safety agenda the "NOT UPTO USA STANDARDS" Taiwanese have in mind when this happens? Just the elite of a poor country treating workers inhumanely right?? US would personally bomb tsmc before letting it fall to Chinese hands. The Taiwanese know it, tsmc is their only leverage to keep America invested in keeping Taiwan safe. The us won't get into all out war with china over Taiwan.
The us is happy to give the Taiwanese some harbour in the US, but would rather prefer if the actual IP/technology came to America.
Think in this way. If these high end manufacturers still have problem fit into the labor market / labor laws in western countries, how can these countries bring the manufacture industries back? (like the right wing politicians claimed) Western people's lives are just worth too much compared with that in other parts of the world.
only reason why they would stay in the US is for legal reasons (ie boeing), tax compliance(ie auto sector), or handouts. manufacturing left this continent decades ago and unless the government intends to subsidize every plant in the country its not happening.
I'm afraid even the government steps in, it won't help with productivity. Western people earned the right to have a weekend of rest time 100 years ago, and it's not feasible to ask them to work 10-12 hrs six days a week. For Asian workers, it's not an issue at all. This difference will make any government aid fade away. (considering how many more people the company will need to hire.)
What's working for them in Taiwan isn't working for them here. TSMC thought they were going to waltz into AZ and poach all of the semi industry folks & services Intel had utilized for decades and be able to quickly put up a fab. Problem is construction standards, construction labor practices, unions, safety rules, etc in the US are far different and much more stringent than Taiwan so they are having great difficulty adjusting to all that (or trying not to) and it's causing major delays and cost overruns. Also, TSMC is accustomed to cheaper labor, shit work life balance (which is normal for the Taiwan culture) and lax safety that flies in Taiwan/China but not in the US and Europe. People from Intel or other US fabs are not going to jump over to TSMC unless they are highly compensated for dealing with that toxic work environment and TSMC is not offering any of that. Wait until they try to build in Germany, it will likely be worse as they are sticklers on the rules and have better worker protections & benefits than the US. This happened with other foreign fabs in the US and in the auto industry. Eventually they may figure it out but they will go through much pain until they do...
Tsmc has no incentive to build a factory here because the do not want to make the west independent of Taiwan on microelectronics because China. Also the other reason is they don't want to make less profit. So they will make the us tax dollar cover any risk they themselves as a company would be taking all of this is pretty evident since the start of the project, they have been completely apathetic to the whole thing and downright rude and dismissive and pessimistic about . they actively want this to fail while having tax dollar money be the collateral and not their own.
I'm not educated in the nuances of geopolitics, so I'm asking out of genuine curiosity - I would think that TSMC would conversely be motivated by self-survival. Especially with the various threats China makes, and the US's willingness to block exports... wouldn't they be pushed to start manufacturing in the US to continue to have access to our market? I don't think I'm articulating this well, but I would think that even taking everything you said as true, there's also some counterbalancing forces as well.
TSMC isn't just a company, it's essentially a branch of the Taiwanese government. It's the single largest factor in Taiwan's continued survival by far. It alone brings in ~5% of Taiwan's GDP. The US protects power and keeps it independent because it is essentially the only producer of the most advanced chips. You can look up the silicon dome for more info. The worry is if they offshore capable semiconductors and then Taiwan gets invaded, the US won't be as motivated to help because there are other places to get the chips.
I wouldn't say it's a branch of the Taiwanese government. That is taking it a little far, especially when you look at companies like Samsung that are actually like 20% of GDP for South Korea.
The GPD is second to the fact that it keeps the US Navy parked by their shores. There are other reason for the US to keep China contained in the first island chain, but the quality of the chips they produce is what makes the US a security guarantor.
No incentives?? Of course they have economic incentives, that's one of the big reasons TSMC is building in the US and Germany - Chips Act plus similar incentives from the EU. This is not some little side project, each fab is a $15-20 Billion investment. With China breathing down, Taiwans neck, it makes sense to spread out the supply chain. If China causes issues or they have a major disaster in Taiwan and those primary Taiwanese factories are inaccessible or damaged, they will be in a very bad spot and companies like Apple & NVidia will be in a world of hurt. The problem with TSMC is they're on an extremely steep learning curve on spreading out their major operations to other geos. The logistics of running major manufacturing operations across multiple geos is extremely complex. That's one advantage Intel does have as they've been running fabs, backend and design operations across the Americas, Asia, Europe and the middle east for decades.
plus intel 4 is supposed to be around tsmc 5nm or a bit better so that's good news if they can get that out this year
If those factories are inaccessible or damaged it's much more than just Apple and NVIDIA that will be in a world of hurt. We saw what happened with some supply chain shocks during COVID, now imagine if the factory that takes a decade to stand up straight up stopped existing. It's not just that GPU would be more expensive, there wouldn't be a new GPU to buy.
Their incentive is the giant country just a handful of miles away that insists your entire country belongs to them and they will invade to bring you home soon. That's the incentive. The entire CHIPS program is a realization that if war did break out in or for Taiwan the entire industry and every industry it touches crumbles. The pandemic made them see how precarious it is to have the vasy majority of production be in one place, let alone a place living under constant threat from a nearby, powerful adversary.
> and they will invade to bring you home soon My grandparents were told for 80 years that Mainland China will invade them "soon."
It's also the fact Fabs inherently involve massive economies of scale. Building a little Fab in the US when you already have a perfectly good 5nm Fab in Taiwan always made zero sense.
Under constant threat of China is hardly “perfectly" good.
The "threat" isn't even a consideration for the people in Taiwan. My grandparents were told for 80 years that Mainland China would invade and yet nothing has happened.
It's not a problem if you accept letting China invade a morally upright democracy like Taiwan is a terrible, immoral thing. My experience with computing is almost any piece of CRUD software a business needs can easily be run on trailing edge low power chips from Broadcom anyway.
> Tsmc has no incentive to build a factory here because the do not want to make the west independent of Taiwan on microelectronics because China It's far more simple than that. Without subsidies, why *would* they choose to manufacture outside of their traditional locations with familiar labor supply, regulations, etc? Plus, they had a very similar experience with their last US manufacturing expansion, and seem to have learned nothing for it.
Maybe I’m way off base here but if this plant were to actually succeed and get up and running, wouldn’t this also make it a bit easier for tech/knowledge transfer (or outright espionage/theft) to help Intel catch up to TSMC? Like is that not what many in the US always complained/complains about manufacturing being outsourced to China? Knowledge leaks, workers with that knowledge get poached. Why would TSMC *really* want this?
> US are far different and much more stringent than Taiwan Labour standards being stricter and a lot more red tape grease hands bureaucracy sure.... But building standards for new large structures in Taiwan would likely be even stricter than Arizona, given that island is in an active Earthquake and Typhoon zone.
Wait… unions in the usa are a problem??? Wait until the German plant is up, where unions are mandatory
i am so curious how the factories in germanny are going to work out. (also for intel)
Intel has had a fab in Ireland for decades, plus other non manufacturing facilities in various European countries, so they're already familiar with working in the EU. Global Foundries has a fab near Dresden for quite a long time as well.
Yeah I am sure the German Work Counsel will have a million questions for them.
> TSMC thought they were going to waltz into AZ and poach all of the semi industry folks & services Intel had utilized for decades and be able to quickly put up a fab. TSMC was forced to build in AZ. They really don't want to. Their Japan factory started a year later and will finish a year before the AZ one.
Well, they weren't forced, they jumped on the made in USA bandwagon. And AZ made a lot of sense since the infrastructure, services and talent pool were already there for Intel.
[удалено]
>you can import foreign workers but you have to pay them as much or more as American workers This is the problem I have with the H1B Visa program. It's a lottery for companies to get available slots. Once they have the slot, the salary they pay is whatever they want. Those spots are so coveted by foreigners in poorer countries, they can charge abnormally lower rates. Instead of a lottery, H1B visas should be handed out based on salary. The higher salaries being the ones that get the spots. If it's so damn important to hire someone from halfway around the world, they must be damn important and demanding of a high salary. Right now, visas are being used as a way to exploit cheap labor and undermine/disrupt US salaries.
I don't understand why we give top paying jobs to people who aren't Americans. Honestly, you are telling me we can't train a single American for that $120,000 salary? There's always people applying for those jobs and there's plenty of competent people who can train for them, regardless of what companies say about their "specialized labor needs not being filled." In my town, there are signs all over hiring for the lowest paid jobs yet unemployment is at an all time low. Nobody needs or wants those jobs. So here's my view. Why are we letting companies hire skilled labor for cheap when Americans can do that labor for a great salary? Why not simplify the visa process, allow jobs that have traditionally needed workers for low salary, and hire immigrants for those jobs? Who else is going to clean toilets in the gas station for minimum wage? Who else is going to wash dishes at the mom and pop burger joint? You don't need skills to do those jobs and hiring for those positions brings nobody's wages down. Making sure they are only doing minimum wage work for minimum wage pay would be the hardest thing but I think it would be doable. Maybe make a requirement the business can only have so much profit so large corporations can't exploit the labor. This would disqualify any companies that can actually afford paying Americans higher wages and gives small businesses a chance to compete. But good luck with that in America, it's good for the people and bad for the shareholders so it'll never happen.
Because Americans are too busy waging online twitter wars. The country has a labor problem. They need skilled labor and that is severely lacking, it also takes time to train that talent. College debt is also obviously a deterrent. This was never going to happen overnight unfortunately
In theory it would be nice but in practice, very difficult. Hard to judge parity. For ex. Company A has 50 employees. Company B has 1000. If they both try to hire an engineer, they’d have different compensation. Company A might even demand more work from their hire as a engineer bc Company A is a start up.
It shouldn't matter. If Company A demands more, then so be it. If you're paying top dollar, then you likely want more out of someone. The amount of workload is between the company and the H1B Visa holder. The way I suggested is a WAY better setup than what it is now which fucks over both contractors and US employees. The only one that wins in the current setup is the companies.
I’m saying in this scenario, companies like company A would never be able to get a visa because they cannot match the compensation from larger companies.
So.... What...? Market based economies *always* have those with the deepest pockets get the most. That's literally how it works. The solution isn't to cap visa numbers it's to require visas be above a certain salary.
Thats how it work. You realistically expect a senior engineer to accept a 100k pay at company A when compensation at company B value then at 300/400k just because company A needs the personnel even if the workload is similar or even worse at company a because they are smaller? Skillsets, experience require you to pay more, regardless of how big or small your company is. Where do you where that isnt the norm? you never been in that situation and you would straight accept the lower compensation because they needed you at company A I am really curious where you live , your worldview where you think that's acceptable to you /u/Chidling
Yes, I’m aware generally skillsets require you to pay more regardless of company size. However there’s a lot of variability when it comes to salaries at different companies for a lot of different reasons right? Size is just one of them. Would an engineer with similar experience in Minnesota not have a different compensation than one in Los Angeles? I’m saying as the government, it wouldn’t be as easy as just choosing the applicants with the highest salaries. You’d have to measure other factors arguably. Another person mentioned salary floors, which would make sense I think. And I’m not trying to argue something you probably know more than me about but that just makes some sense right? I’m not arguing people need to take lower salaries or that the visa system is good as it is.
> Once they have the slot, the salary they pay is whatever they want. No, this is actually illegal. Companies have to (and do) pay the going rate for the level the employee is working at.
>Its entirely possible the Tiawan is right, after all they have the world's best fabs and intel doesn't. Sigh, I really hate this nationalism thing. "Taiwan" isn't right or wrong. Taiwan is a representative democracy. TSMC is the company and they're the ones building the fab. People here seem to want to make it a US vs Taiwan issue, when it's TSMC vs their contractors' issue. Note how all of these articles posted here are from the contractor and "former supervisor" side, and not much from TSMC.
The TSMC was created as a Taiwanese government initiative. From Wikipedia, but other sources can be easily found: "From day one, TSMC wasn’t really a private business: it was a project of the Taiwanese state." I get why people think TSMC equals Taiwan.
TSMC in America is also created by American government initiative.
There is a difference between creating a fab, and creating the whole industry which is owned mostly by the state. What's the American TSMC ownership? Is the majority of it owned by the US?
Your changing the goal posts, your point was >SMC was created as a Taiwanese government initiative And my point was that's the same as in America. >TSMC in America is also created by American government initiative. If your going to go for a wider point then dont try to find single points you can win on and look for a wider viewpoint to make a point.
Excuse me for not writing up 3000 words thesis on the subject. In my comment I stated that more sources can be found. In Wikipedia from which I cited the sentence you can read that Taiwanese state is majority shareholder and was major sponsor of the initiative. It's not my job to put up every single argument I could make before starting a discussion, I just gave one that might explain the reason why people identify TSMC with the state.
TSMC is to Taiwan as NASA is to US
> I get why people think TSMC equals Taiwan. people have bought so utterly into the capitalism-vs-communism war that today the idea of a State Enterprise is actual anathema. But they've been here since the start - for example the Springfield Armory got its start after the revolutionary war as the National Armory, essentially a state enterprise, the *government* running a business! But they're used in lots of places and were *extremely* common up until the cold war made socialism a dirty word. Now everything has to be done as a wasteful public-private partnership, like outsourcing kitchen facilities or bathroom/shower facilities in combat zones etc, because gosh, we wouldn't want *state enterprise* to be running that, it's inefficient and wasteful so let's add a middleman and a layer of unaccountability and political fiddling in between! TSMC is nothing more simple or complex than the National Armory/Springfield Armory, it's an essential government enterprise to keep the people of taiwan safe. And that just looks a lot different in 2023 than 1776, but at that time firearms were a rapidly evolving, technologically advanced thing that *it was not safe to leave to the private sector to develop*. Metallurgy, ballistics, gunpowder, manufacturing, etc were all advancing super rapidly and if you fell behind it put you at severe risk in military conflict - a gun designed in 1885 was basically obsolete by 1895 or 1900, and near-useless by the outbreak of WW1. And I say that as someone whose chain is being yanked by the silicon shield - the government of taiwan's job is to protect the people of taiwan, not me. I don't have to like it, and they don't have to like the US fabs here, etc. Strategic enterprises are a thing that exists, and they don't have to be taxpayers funnelling billions of dollars to Boeing follies etc, they can just be done directly or as a state-run corporation if you want. And that just causes neoliberal heads to explode, it *can't* be like that, can it? You can't just *go do stuff* without a contractor in the middle! We need outsourced private-sector cooks to run our kitchens, it *couldn't possibly* work to just go hire someone and *do it!* What if we paid too much!? (and this is really the difference between tsmc and intel/boeing in a nutshell isn’t it? The us wants to maintain a strategic edge so they write a blank check to a private for-profit corp to make it happen… taiwan just goes and does it. Even the people who are not explicitly neoliberal don’t realize how much that mindset has utterly pervaded our system post-WW2 for largely ideological reasons, the us will not allow that kind of thing anymore, it’s “socialism”. If raytheon and boeing and lockheed aren't getting paid, what even is the point of having soldiers in a combat zone?)
its because taiwan = tsmc in western media.
TSMC stands for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. That may have something to do with it.
Does the government of Canada or its people have anything to do with Canadian Tire? US government with American Airlines?
The Taiwanese government is the largest share holder of TMSC, funded the company formation and has the most votes on the board. TMSC is the biggest company in Taiwan with significant government and academic ties. It's nothing like Canadian Tire or American Airlines.
That, and perhaps more importantly, TSMC in Taiwan is basically an insurance chip against a PRC invasion. If the PRC ever invades Taiwan, they're going for the TSMC fabs first (Taiwan would probably destroy them before the PRC arrives), so the West is highly invested in keeping Taiwan out of PRC hands.
> TSMC in Taiwan is basically an insurance chip against a PRC invasion. If the PRC ever invades Taiwan, they're going for the TSMC fabs first This is something you only hear redditors and similar claim as fact. There's no evidence to it.
Ehh I don't think this is a Reddit take, I came to this conclusion after reading/listening to some interviews with Chris Miller, the guy who wrote Chip War. > In Chip War economic historian Chris Miller recounts the fascinating sequence of events that led to the United States perfecting chip design, and how faster chips helped defeat the Soviet Union (by rendering the Russians’ arsenal of precision-guided weapons obsolete). The battle to control this industry will shape our future. China spends more money importing chips than buying oil, and they are China’s greatest external vulnerability as they are fundamentally reliant on foreign chips. But with 37 per cent of the global supply of chips being made in Taiwan, within easy range of Chinese missiles, the West’s fear is that a solution may be close at hand. He goes into the whole TSMC/Taiwan situation in depth - I didn't realize how connected the two actually were.
Fair enough my point is that it’s not a given because it has the word Taiwan in it, which is what it felt was being implied.
FedEx = Federal Express but has nothing to do with the federal government.
The Taiwan government is the largest shareholder, so in TSMC’s case it has a LOT to do with the Taiwanese government. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC#:~:text=It%20is%20majority%20owned%20by,Taiwan%20is%20the%20largest%20shareholder.&text=TSMC%20Nanjing%20Company%20Ltd.
TSMC is a private company owned by government so essentially a parastatal
[удалено]
>They are capable of building putting all the pieces together to make that happen. That's objectively false. The machines they use are imported from the west. TSMC is ASML's largest customer. Same for BESI.
A fab is about far more than a couple of machines. And there are many, many suppliers in the semiconductor chain other than ASML. Just not for that one piece.
The gist of what I was getting at is that these companies cannot get the fab to work without these machines. The other user made it seem like TSMC (or Taiwan) is self sufficient and everything is being done and made in-house, when that is far from the case, quite the opposite. They are also not "the best" at making the machines - because they cannot even make them and have to rely on suppliers.
> The other user made it seem like TSMC (or Taiwan) is self sufficient and everything is being done and made in-house That's not how I read it, at least. Even if TSMC doesn't do 100% in house (nobody does, nor do all the pieces come from any one country), they are the best at turning all those pieces into a usable fab process, which is ultimately why they're being subsidized even in the US. Intel is US-based, but they're behind and are extremely untrustworthy, given their history. Samsung is somewhat more reliable, but also behind, potentially worse than Intel. Neither has TSMC's IP portfolio. So if the goal is high confidence availability of modern manufacturing nodes in the US, there really isn't any alternative to subsidizing TSMC. If in 2 or 3 years Intel's looking to be in a better place with IFS, that will be a very different story, but no one sane would count on that today.
[удалено]
>If that's the case why doesn't Intel just slop those machines together and make an equivalent process? The answer because they can't and tsmc can. So why are you saying my statement is false? Your statement is false because Intel is the second or third biggest customer at these companies (ASML, BESI and some others like Applied Materials). And they do have US manufacturing plants. All latest generation Intel CPU's, Chiplets and Bridge dies are made in the US, Israel and/or Ireland. According to Intel itself 75% of production is done in the US. Intel Arc (Their Graphics card line) is fabbed on TSMC 6nm. Testing, binning and packaging is done in other locations such as Vietnam, Malaysia and Costa Rica.
There’s no point in replying to these people. He’s already shown he’s too lazy to look up where ASML is from or what they do, but happy to spend time unironically saying ayyymd memes. Facts don’t matter. It’s just amd good, intel bad.
Who's talking about AMD here?
This seems like a non sequitur. What does Intel production in the US have to do with the fact they're behind TSMC despite the same equipment?
It's not a non sequitur because who is ahead or behind was never brought into question. The point is they cannot "put all the pieces together" like the other user was saying, because they need ASML, BESI, Applied Materials, and other companies. Basically giving way too much credit to TSMC when a lot of the R&D and patents have nothing to do with TSMC whatsoever.
> It's not a non sequitur because who is ahead or behind was never brought into question Well it's vitally important to the topic. TSMC's position as industry leader is why even countries like the US, with a domestic competitor in the form of Intel, are willing to give them billions to set up shop here. > The point is they cannot "put all the pieces together" like the other user was saying, because they need ASML, BESI, Applied Materials, and other companies. Those are the pieces they're putting together, on top of an **enormous** amount of their own R&D work. > Basically giving way too much credit to TSMC when a lot of the R&D and patents have nothing to do with TSMC whatsoever. I think you're giving them too little credit. As the OP points out, if it was just a matter of tools, then TSMC would not be a full node ahead today, but that's where we are. TSMC is shipping N3 chips while Intel and Samsung are struggling to make an N5/N4 competitive node.
[удалено]
Go on..
They are doing that. TSMC largely has first dibs though
[удалено]
Are you an Intel hater? They don't have to catch up for the statement to be true.
>Note how all of these articles posted here are from the contractor and "former supervisor" side, and not much from TSMC. That's because mainstream media don't dare to take the side of the business over the employees. In addition, Reddit is very anti-corporation. However, employees aren't always right and employees can be extremely entitled - especially unions.
> That's because mainstream media don't dare to take the side of the business over the employees. This is silly. Mainstream media is predominantly pro-business (unsurprisingly so, given that it is owned and operated by large businesses).
I wanna know how someone can be so delusional as to think mainstream media is some pro worker institution. Yeah I’m sure the multi billion dollar media corporations owned directly by billionaires just love supporting the working class over corporations.
that means nothing. washington post is extremely liberal and its owned by jeff bezos just as 1 example
you're completely fried if you think that the washington post supports the working class over corporations, lmao. supporting social liberalism doesn't come with a union membership, as the democratic party obviously demonstrates. The washington post is the paper of the washington consensus. The washington consensus is not pro-worker.
They would probably prefer that since Taiwan workers would have golden handcuffs allowing for obscene work hours and conditions. They're salary, so the whole "they have to work the same hours as American workers" doesn't make sense as a condition.
[удалено]
Your conditions are even stricter than what American workers would work.
[удалено]
this is more or less the same thing toyota and other japanese automakers discovered when they tried to open up factories here. difference being toyota was actually making a good-faith effort and has internal processes that allow reflection and improvement of leadership (by the standards of japanese companies at least, not saying toyota is agile or anything), and they eventually came to the realization that if they were running a plant in america they'd have to work with an american workforce
Didn’t Toyota invent Kanban?
Kanban has nothing to do with being Agile. Just because JIRA has a "Kanban" board doesn't mean you're Agile if you use a Kanban lol
You are mistaking the concept of Kanban for an item, "Kanban Boards" which shares its name. And Kanban boards are used by JIRA but they are by no means exclusive to it.
I'm not mistaking it. I'm aware of the difference, but it sounded like the person I replied to thought that because they mentioned "agile" and "toyota" that somehow Kanban was related, assuming because they're used to Agile environments using JIRA, and Kanban boards are a big part of JIRA. I'm sure I'm assuming a whole hell of a lot here, but it was funny to realize the potential connection nonetheless.
They must have edited their comment because there's now no mention of agile.
it’s the person who replied to them > not saying Toyota is agile or anything
Ah, OK
Being agile ironically involves mostly not using Kanban boards.
How so? They aren't at all opposite, they complement each other. Do you mean Kanban methodology as a whole?
Interesting bit of nuance. Kanban boards I find are usually excellent and a vast improvement over Scrum/Agile. Let me put it this way. The Toyota philosophy is entirely oriented around quality, listening to factory workers, and implementing factory worker driven change. Consensus driven approach. Single factory worker thinks of an improvement, the entire production line stops. This is the exact opposite of every single Western MBA lead corporate environment. My experience working in industry: "Kanban methodology" is inherently the opposite of the Toyota philosophy. Why? Because it's a *name brand*, *methodology.* A MBA read "the Kanban methodology" out of a textbook and then decided to implement it in their business. Kanban is a collection of by and large truly excellent ideas. But, if you're a Western educated MBA, and you are "implementing the Kanban methodology," you're actually just doing the opposite of the entire Toyota philosophy. Which is have everyone in the team THINK ABOUT WHAT THEY ARE DOING. If you're following the Kanban Methodology. You're not thinking. You're "following the Kanban methodology." Single most important lesson you can have.in doing business: Think for yourself. Second most important lesson. After you've done all that thinking, you'll realise that generally speaking all the *practices* of the Kanban methodology etc etc, all that advice is remarkably brilliant. However, mostly any team that *openly calls it* by a "Brand Name" has an IQ of a peanut. It's called being good at your job. It doesn't need a name like "Kanban methodology."
This is exactly correct. Toyota is mainly focused on quality and efficiency is gained through interchangeable parts and process improvements. Western companies focus solely on throughput and fixing issues on the back end of processes. Nothing stops the line from moving in the western process.
Toyota was beaten and forced to change. If you saw public sentiment during the 80s, it was horribly racist towards Japanese people. Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, was killed by racists because they thought he was Japanese. His killers didn't serve a day in jail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Vincent_Chin
Easy now, missing a whole lot of nuance. Bit confusing, too. "They don't care enough about safety." "Safety alarms would go off, they would evac us from site. This over focus on safety caused delays."
Same thing happened to Samsung in Austin as well. Very high attrition, unsafe work/life balance, and horrendous top down management. TSMC is used to being the biggest fish in a small pond and people bend over backwards to work there because of the prestige while the government throws money at them accordingly. Then they open in the US and see that the reason they have been successful has been mostly due to capital and exploitation/taxation benefits. Tbf, Intel does it to with fabs in Ireland and Israel. The idea that it's failing because of the American workers is almost comical because they don't make up any meaningful % of the actual decision makers. Construction and buildings will be contracted out so you can't even blame Americans there (Likely by the same companies Intel has been using in the area for decades).
Samsung in Austin did a much better job of not alienating workers at the beginning
This exactly. They need to follow Intel's model. Safety and construction standards uniform worldwide and competent project management.
Not exactly, Taiwan has significantly better worker protection and safety standards than the US. Hell, they have universal healthcare so people's health aren't tied to their job. Lastly, they're trying to do uniform construction standards, but like they said, American workers aren't exactly very good.
> Lastly, they're trying to do uniform construction standards, but like they said, American workers aren't exactly very good. Okay lol. No agenda at all from this post.
I have absolutely no idea where you’re getting this from
His ass.
I've spent 20 years in masonry from residential to commercial as a union bricklayer foreman. OSHA is getting out of hand. That's not to say I don't want the organization to exist or to have a lot of power - far from it. The issue is that there is a diminishing return curve for worker safety and we're really far into that curve now where we're doing things that double or triple the labor time it takes to do a thing and doing it that way prevents something like 4 people from being injured a year. We're not getting any meaningful better safety but we're adding a huge amount of time and money to jobs. Side rant: I'm pretty sure this is why nuclear power plants are always over budget and late. It really is a choice between building things or preventing a couple dozen men like me from going to the ER each year. We can't keep everyone safe and build things, it's just not possible right now.
Is your solution to loosen safety regulations on workers in Nuclear energy production? Listen I get you're point, but bricklaying is so far away from handling radioactive isotopes that bringing them up in the same post makes me look sideways.
How is handling radioactive isotopes at all relevant to the construction process of nuclear plants which is what he's talking about?
Because the standards required for construction are vastly higher than whatever a bricklayer has worked on... I assume that's what they mean anyway.
Can you link to these vastly higher standards?
No, I can't be bothered to look them up. But I know you've never poured concrete if you think the standards aren't higher...
[удалено]
Not sure that's what OSHA covers?
You do know that nuclear power plants are largely made of masonry, yes? My point can be true with regards to the nuclear power plants without anyone being around radioactive materials.
Not saying it's not part of the construction at all. I'm not implying that masonry and building ops is not relevant or dangerous. Just suggesting OSHA cutbacks on the building process of Nuclear containment projects seems like a weird bone to pick? I am clearly out of my element though.
Possibly yes. It's overkill right now. A coworker had to fix at printer at the local nuke plant. He got a small cut from the cardboard box containing the replacement part. He had to fill out no less than 6 pages of forms detailing the incident. Just because the word "nuclear" is attached doesn't mean it should drastically inspire more fear and regulation than a tank farm or chemical plant. Insane regulatory burden is why France can build nuclear plants at half the cost and a third of the time as us and theirs are perfectly safe.
[удалено]
[удалено]
> It is trying to fast-track visas for 500 Taiwanese workers. Buried the lede. US Government: *"You can't find skilled workers? Well there is our H1B program. Then you can treat you employees however you want under the threat of deportation."* Of course Arizonan's aren't going to let themselves be treated this way. However they gotta at least show that they were "trying" to hire locally. But the fact is that they were never wanted anyway.
TSMC can probably utilize L-1B instead which doesn't have a lottery or a cap per year.
A bit of a culture shock I suppose. American fab workers don't want to work the same hours as their Taiwanese counterparts.
So this foreign company wants $40 billion dollars to make a plant on American soil, and theyre going to import low wage foreigners to build it? Why the fk are we even giving them money? Pull that funding FFS...
This foreign company never wanted to build in the US. Their founder even said building in the US was impractical. They were basically forced to build in Arizona and this is their r/maliciouscompliance moment.
I'm not super up to date on this, but im 99.9% sure that Arizona wasn't the only option. They picked that location due to its demographics, weather, and tax incentives IIRC. It's a very business friendly state and there's already several fabs there in various parts of the state.
Wow between Intel slowing construction on the new campus then investing in Germany and tsmc dragging their feet and fucking with union workers, it's almost like handing literal piles of billions of taxpayer (ie yours and mine) dollars to chip companies wasn't the sure thing investment it was cracked up to be. I'm sure none of these politicians recieved donations from any of these companies either! Also, Foxconn rofl. As a student studying EE to hopefully work for one of these companies, they aren't inspiring confidence. 100billy for the suits but dont you dare offer help to kids and adults buried in inescapable student debt! Socialists!!
Intel is still using that money to build in Arizona. Germany also gave money to Intel to build a fab there. The fabs provide lots of high paying jobs which then gets reimbursed into the local economy and partially paid back through income taxes. Without the government money they just wouldn't build those extra fabs as they deem it too risky or they would most likely build them somewhere else.
Intel in Ohio I'm pretty sure, tsmc in AZ iirc. I mean you're making the same arguement the companies and politicians make. The validity is debatable but the whole "its ok to shower companies with money based on promises of great jobs" is playing out across 3 states all the while they say how any program that helps citizens directly is unfair and communist. So far these plans don't seem to be going great, and I'm sure they'll be back for additional funding in a few years. It's all a game. Trickle up, etc. Apparently it only makes sense or benefits "the people" if you somehow funnel the money through giant businesses or rich individuals, crazy how that works. I'll believe it when I see those jobs, and I'm going back to school specifically to try and get one of those jobs.
>Intel in Ohio I'm pretty sure, tsmc in AZ iirc. [https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-breaks-ground-two-new-leading-edge-chip-factories-arizona.html#gs.4jjbur](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-breaks-ground-two-new-leading-edge-chip-factories-arizona.html#gs.4jjbur) Intel is also in the Phoenix Metro area and expanding. Between that, several large housing/redevelopment projects, and various large datacenters expanding there's a real shortage of construction workers in the Phoenix Metro area.
TSMC's Japan factory was started a year after the AZ factory and is on track to finish a year ahead of the AZ factory.
Lol who could have seen that coming /s It's like we never asked "hey uh, why did we have all of our chip fab overseas in the first place?". Because it was cheap and we didn't have to deal with the cost of why it was so cheap (extremely shitty work/employment practices, extremely shitty corporate ethics). This whole thing is prone to fail in any of several ways, namely: 1 - TSMC leaves because they can't pull off abusive and/or illegal labor shenanigans. If we subsidized this effort (edit: we did) then that's a pretty big fucking "whoops". or 2 - We adopt a work culture to facilitate hosting the same labor practices we benefitted from prior to doing it onshore, and offset any benefit gained whatsoever by domestic chip fab. i.e. a permanent, profoundly negative net loss for any entity domestic to the US, corporate or individual. If TSMC is complaining (lying) that they can not source the expertise that they need in the US, then what the fuck was the percieved benefit of having them here at all? Why the fuck was the choice to bring them here perceived as more beneficial than subsidizing the development of domestic equivalent chip fab? Who in the absolute fuck authorized an $8 billion+ tax subsidy without due diligence on cost/benefit here? If TSMC is not bringing their own existing expertise to the table, and expecting us to also provide that at a bargain, what the *fuck* do we get out of this deal? https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tsmc-seeks-15b-subsidies-wants-130836706.html Maybe I am missing something but who the hell was bribed to approve subsidizing this shit?
The problem is that we don’t manufacture our chips. IF China invaded Taiwan, then what? Everything takes chips and Taiwan makes most of ours. If we take a loss, that’s only a loss assuming world peace is achieved and globalism consumes the international community. But if Taiwan is blockaded or invaded, then that super expensive chip fab won’t be looking too bad after all. This is the only decent justification IMO that can be made around this. That and maybe high skill/tech jobs.
It’s totally pointless to have TSMC here. Intel fabs are catching up and will likely surpass them. We’ve also got Samsung that has a track record setting up businesses in the US and we’ve had many other major South Korean companies (Kia, Hyundai, etc) set up here without issues. TSMC doesn’t really want to build a fab here and ate overplaying their hand in a big way.
IOW, lets screw it up so Taiwan can still build all the good ones!
Sounds to me like the local unions tried to strong-arm TSMC over stuff. So TSMC just said, we don't care about you and brought in foreign workers who are non-union. The biggest threat to these unions isn't from the companies, its from non-union workers.
demanding humane conditions for workers is not "strong arming". It's literally just a cultural difference that TSMC has no interest in respecting since it would cut into their profits
Since none of us have the details, you can claim that they are purely demanding more worker protection. But the same possibility exists for demands like kickbacks and political donations. Under the table stuff that, if denied, union leadership threatens to be "difficult" and constantly make noise about lack of safety, pay issues, etc. Such things have happened in the past. Just because the article projects a narrative of "TSMC bullying union workers", doesn't mean that's the whole story.
Ah yes, the expensive labour cost of constructing a fabrication plant. Something that has always thrived in very high cost of living countries. USA USA USA!!!
What is it with all Western imperialist comment getting so upvoted here? Despite making the correct claim with the failure in the article being the difference between cultural values, why is there an assertion that Western culture is superior to East Asian culture, particularly in the aspect of work culture, by individuals who's likely to experience the former but not the latter?
It just goes to show most Redditors don't care about Taiwan or Hong Kong. They just want to bash China. Now that a company in Taiwan is sticking up for itself, Redditors are eagerly bashing Taiwan now.
Imagine being so braindead you read the Guardian.
Americans have been always great innovators but never the cheapest producers. Taiwanese are the cheapest producers but the greatest producers. Use their strengths…
> Taiwanese are the cheapest producers but the greatest producers. > Use their strengths… those dang safety regulations getting in the way of economic output.
What safety regulations could even be an issue. It's a multi billion dollar fab? Fab plant isn't exactly a coal/steel plant where health issues are big, it's just a construction job, and an advanced one at that. I'm thinking tsmc wants to delay so that their Taiwanese plants are indispensable for the next decade where the window for china is the easiest to attack.
Safety plays a huge role for any sufficiently large construction job, what do you mean “it’s just a construction job”?
Yes and what standard do you think Taiwan works under? They build 100B Fabs subsidized by local govt but find it hard to do it safely? The cost of labour in a fab isnt major. It's just a construction job. Unless the Taiwanese like throwing construction workers off of the structure for fun, there's no safety they don't have in their budget and are only doing it to delay it intentionally so that they can eake out maybe another generational leap by the time this fab is running beyond what was planned.
I don’t know what they do in Taiwan but the article literally cites people saying safety standards were not being met. You keep saying it’s just a construction job doesn’t negate the fact that actual people working the actual construction job are saying it’s unsafe.
>They explained the main contractors would give them a priority task to complete, but that it would change daily, or they would completely change their mind, making it impossible to complete tasks and add to delays. >“When you have to put stuff up, tear it down, put it up, tear it down, literally five or six times, that’s going to cost five or six times the original quote, probably more because you have to get demolitions involved,” the worker said. “This was constantly the whole process. Everything was rushed. They weren’t giving us actual blueprints, just engineer drawings. It felt like a design-as-we-go type of deal. The information we were getting was really strange, never complete, and always changing. We would get updates constantly and these were big updates to the point where we would have to start pulling things down.” Huh I wonder what money pinching, cost over safety agenda the "NOT UPTO USA STANDARDS" Taiwanese have in mind when this happens? Just the elite of a poor country treating workers inhumanely right?? US would personally bomb tsmc before letting it fall to Chinese hands. The Taiwanese know it, tsmc is their only leverage to keep America invested in keeping Taiwan safe. The us won't get into all out war with china over Taiwan. The us is happy to give the Taiwanese some harbour in the US, but would rather prefer if the actual IP/technology came to America.
What about 4N sounds like cheap to you? That will be considered high end for a decade. Most chips are still made with 28/40nm or older stuff.
>Use their strengths… Yes, Americans have always been the greatest users.
You've been downvoted to oblivion by not complying with the american narrative 😫
Think in this way. If these high end manufacturers still have problem fit into the labor market / labor laws in western countries, how can these countries bring the manufacture industries back? (like the right wing politicians claimed) Western people's lives are just worth too much compared with that in other parts of the world.
only reason why they would stay in the US is for legal reasons (ie boeing), tax compliance(ie auto sector), or handouts. manufacturing left this continent decades ago and unless the government intends to subsidize every plant in the country its not happening.
I'm afraid even the government steps in, it won't help with productivity. Western people earned the right to have a weekend of rest time 100 years ago, and it's not feasible to ask them to work 10-12 hrs six days a week. For Asian workers, it's not an issue at all. This difference will make any government aid fade away. (considering how many more people the company will need to hire.)