Apple’s chip fabricator TSMC is building an Arizona facility that’s been pitched as lessening reliance on foreign chipmaking facilities — specifically those in Taiwan, which has been under threat of a blockade or even takeover by China.
In December last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook traveled to Phoenix, Arizona to visit a highly touted multi-billion-dollar factory TSMC was constructing and said the facility would produce chips for the company.
But Cook avoided speaking an uncomfortable truth: The Arizona factory—which has been a focal point of the Biden plan and will cost $40 billion to build—will do little to make the U.S. self-reliant in chips. That’s because many advanced chips made in Arizona for Apple or other customers such as Nvidia, AMD and Tesla will still require assembly in Taiwan in a process known as packaging, according to interviews with multiple TSMC engineers and former Apple employees.
TSMC has no plans to build a packaging facility in Arizona or elsewhere in the U.S., mainly due to the high costs associated with such a project, the TSMC employees said.“The TSMC Arizona fab is effectively a paperweight in any geopolitical tension or war [with China over Taiwan] due to the fact that it still requires sending the chips back to Taiwan for packaging,” said Dylan Patel, chief analyst at SemiAnalysis, a semiconductor research firm.
The revelation shows how TSMC’s Arizona facility — which will employ 4,500 people across two factories when it begins mass production in 2025 — may serve to score political points but doesn’t reduce America’s reliance on Taiwan.
“The TSMC Arizona fab is effectively a paperweight in any geopolitical tension or war [with China over Taiwan] due to the fact that it still requires sending the chips back to Taiwan for packaging,” said Dylan Patel, chief analyst at SemiAnalysis, a semiconductor research firm.
MacDailyNews Take: If the urgent need arises for packaging outside of Taiwan, there’s no better partner for TSMC to have than Apple when costs are high.
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“TSMC has no plans to build a packaging facility in Arizona or elsewhere in the U.S., mainly due to the high costs associated with such a project.” Anyone who’s worked in a semiconductor plant knows that’s laughable.
WTF? Is it just to stamp “made in the USA” on the box?
Actually it takes some sophisticated equipment to remove the chip from the wafer and put it in a package but compared to the equipment it takes to make the wafer the cost is very little. Expensive yes but not much in comparison.
I remember back over a decade ago I worked for a print company in Portland, OR, and we created a lot of products and packaging for one of our local famous companies. (I want to name that company but I won’t) We created the products, we created the packaging for the products, and we slapped “Made in China” labels on that same packaging. There was nothing actually made in China so we were guessing this was some form of weird virtue signaling. Couldn’t an Arizona factory just stamp a “Made in Taiwan” sticker on it for that virtue signaling? Seems like a thing!
Why would a company intentionally make its product seem crappier by putting “Made in China” on the box when it wasn’t? Sounds like you don’t know what you’re talking about..
That’s a good question, and I have no idea why a company would do that other then some sort of virtue signaling. I actually do know what I’m talking about since I was one of the people in the shop putting on those stickers as well involved in making the products. Why would I want to make up something that sounds so stupid?
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
That is beyond crazy. You know it almost make one think they are implanting circuitry to tap, back door, access to information.
This of course will be calculated into Apple’s eco-green environmentally safe status report?
Now tell me again how gasoline fueled cars are the problem.
Makes as much sense as this… Maybe Apple should rename the company to Pears. No?
So reducing pollution from car exhausts is a dumb idea?
This doesn’t sound carbon neutral to me. What a damn joke.