America’s semiconductor boom [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-jt3qBzJ4A

by zdw • 9 months ago

191 136 9 months ago

This is just anecdote, but my roommate's dad works in construction management specifically for semiconductor fabs, and he was working for about a year on one of Intel's new fabs in Arizona up until a few months ago when the entire project was suddenly scrapped. IIRC he got the sense it was someone high up in intel that decided to pull the plug on it.

maplant• 9 months ago

I mean, not to sound rude, but of course it would be someone high up who would make that decision. It’s not like a grunt could decide to scrap a whole new fab

vivalahn• 9 months ago

I could be wrong but I’d assume what the OP is trying to say is that the leadership of these companies does not want these fabs to actually open and work. That something transpired maybe between them and govt.

AxiomaticSpace2• 9 months ago

Yea fair. What I was trying to say was that it seemed like a decision that was less the construction/development team saying "this plan isn't workable for xyz reason and we need to reconsider our approach" and more someone high up saying "we are cancelling this and we won't say why".

dboreham• 9 months ago

I left the semiconductor industry 30 years ago but back then every company had "a fab that hasn't been completed in Arizona" that people would talk fondly of perhaps opening one day if business picks up. Seems like not much has changed.

itsnowandnever• 9 months ago

I always thought it was funny that for my entire lifetime people have talked about Arizona being perfect for fabs because it's dry there and not subject to tremors meanwhile Taiwan where 60% of all chips are produced (and 90% of the most sensitive ones) is tropical and has earthquakes fairly frequently.

WillPostForFood3• 9 months ago

https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/tech/2025/10/...

ojbyrne2• 9 months ago

New CEO started in March, I vaguely recall him cancelling fabs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lip-Bu_Tan

x3n0ph3n3• 9 months ago

So are they going to give back the money they got from the feds to build them?

ggm• 9 months ago

Fabs need pretty solid foundations IIRC, the systems don't like vibration. So this won't have been a cheap build. I also believe the construction methods for clean room is like a VOC purge on steroids. Whatever else goes into this build would have a huge impact on potentially reclaiming it for VLSI.

tonyhart72• 9 months ago

well, intel is loser on semiconductor boom

pjob• 9 months ago

https://www.wsj.com/tech/intels-chips-act-requirements-waive...

https://archive.is/nhLyB

echelon• 9 months ago

Is America's semiconductor boom real?

How much capacity are we building?

What processes? What types of semiconductor products? High end? Middle? Low?

How much capacity?

Can we substitute or replace Taiwan in the future in the event of conflict?

I can't watch the video right now, but I'm curious about its claims. Or any additional HNer context.

phendrenad22• 9 months ago

This video has lots of details, but conspicuously absent is exactly WHAT chips are being made in Arizona. I guess it's still a closely-guarded secret for some reason.

coliveira4• 9 months ago

It's not the high-end type. Otherwise they would announce it.

IronyMan100• 9 months ago

I think it's N5/N3 or so, current state of the art.

fungi2• 9 months ago

how competitive will american made cpu's be? will american consumers just end up paying n * more for same product that the rest of the world gets from taiwan?

bee_rider2• 9 months ago

I don’t think the mix of engineers we’ve been producing is right for this. We need a whole generation of folks at a higher hardware:software ratio. Check back in a decade to see if we’ve seriously started.

edverma2• 9 months ago

Does America need to produce the talent or can they import it?

yieldcrv3• 9 months ago

Have you seen how much of a premium Americans are already paying for chips in the face of constrained supply?

Gamers are still buying them and so is everyone else

Given that this is the same curiosity and question since pre-pandemic and now we have many examples of a premium, I think its not a real worry as long as the chips perform

walsh404• 9 months ago

Get ready for your 8 year repayment plan with TMOBILE!

coliveira4• 9 months ago

Of course cost is an issue. If costs are higher than in Asia, everybody else in the world is going to buy Asian chips, not American ones.

nebula88042• 9 months ago

I keep seeing this in every industry. "We can't give up America because they buy so much"

"China needs the American market because they can't make up the numbers for the rest of the world combined in the short term"

Can people here help answer where the heck does everyone have the money to buy all this stuff? Especially post COVID with all the layoffs? The US is only 5% of the world population. Europe isn't that poor and many chunks of Asia have a lot of wealth now. Yet America's appetite and more importantly capability of absorbing all manner of goods remains unimpaired...how?!

fungi2• 9 months ago

everyone pays the premium now not just the USA.

this would represent an additional cost on top of that that only USA consumers pays.

ojbyrne2• 9 months ago

I am guessing that it’s a highly automated process, so per unit costs are not going to be affected much by the cost of labor.

numpad02• 9 months ago

No one will be until US gives couple nukes to Taiwan so that they no longer need the killswitch for the entire global semiconductor supply chain merely as the substitute. TSMC is going to just keep undercutting everyone else till then.

They can compensate for that by lowering living standards and simultaneously raising expectations in the country.

Everyone was competitive against TSMC until just 10 or 20 years ago. Then they all lost to TSMC one by one. Even IBM was competitive in price against others back in 2000s.

christkv• 9 months ago

Why would they not be competitive?. Intel makes state of the art cpus in the us and they are competitive on price. It's weird that we seem to forget Intel when this issue comes up.

phendrenad22• 9 months ago

This is actually a good video (I say actually because this youtuber sometimes has surface-level reporting on things, but this one is quite a bit better).

It's investigative on-the-ground reporting of the TSMC plant in Arizona, and the recent SemiCon West conference.

darquomiahw• 9 months ago

What's TSMC's headcount down in AZ? I ask because Intel has laid off or retired around 40k employees in the past two years and they still need to cut a little more to please the new boss.

alephnerd• 9 months ago

Ime, most of those cuts were employees working on legacy nodes and processes - especially at Beaverton.

Daub• 9 months ago

If you haven't already, I encourage you to subscribe this guys channel - Asianometry. How he finds the time to reserach in such detail such a wide range of tek-related subjects is beyond me.

bl4ckneon• 9 months ago

He probably has a team who helps him. He makes bank so not unrealistic

edg5000• 9 months ago

I think he still has a dayjob actually, or at least until recently. So I'm not sure wether he has staff.

Dban1• 9 months ago

Mr Gemini and Mrs Claude

dev1ycan• 9 months ago

If you know about a topic well, his videos are not as accurate as he may try to make you believe

switchbak• 9 months ago

That’s a good point, he did a video in my space recently and while it sounded impressive it was clear he only had a surface level understanding of the domain. Still impressive, but I find it hard to trust folks that represent themselves as experts on topics they’re not really experts in.

idoco• 9 months ago

I love Asianometry! The semiconductor history videos are incredible. The level of quality on that channel just blows my mind. It’s one of the best examples of the revolution happening in high-quality, independently produced content.

I actually first heard about it from the Acquired podcast, which is another great example of that same trend.

noir_lord3• 9 months ago

His unix videos are excellent as well.

0xDEAFBEAD3• 9 months ago

I found an interesting thread on the /r/semiconductors subreddit discussing what it is like to work at TSMC

https://reddit.com/r/Semiconductors/comments/1m96m4f/my_expe...

mlindner• 9 months ago

They sent Taiwanese over to clean up because they just couldn't handle all the American blue-collar workers.

Translation: Unions got in the way of actually efficient construction so they had to bypass them with their own people.

Unions in the US, in general, are extremely luddite as any new technology improvement that's better is treated with hatred because it removes jobs from the union's control. This is how the longshoremen have basically permanently prevented any technology improvement at our ports because they refuse to accept any automation and lobby heavily to prevent it.

In general though that post just comes off of "disgruntled former employee who doesn't understand high-intensity work cultures".

regentbowerbird• 9 months ago

I disagree with your assessment, the poster is obviously disillusioned but they just detail their point of view. You can't just write off safety violation and toxic environment as "high-intensity work culture". You also just work in your own anti-union discourse without any basis in the actual text.

NemoNobody5• 9 months ago

Capitalism is Luddite at a fundamental level - if their isn't competition, there is absolutely no reason to innovative, change, or maintain a quality level - so, in a capitalist economy all participants are always incentivised to grow as large as possible, above all other things, bc at some point, they really will become "too big to fail" - whether in a small monopolized niche or a massive but dominated industry, that is always true, without fail as profits are always most important.

It works with everything in a capitalist system too - all production, resources, and outputs of a society that allows unchecked greed, will grow until it stops due to market consolidation (not always nefarious either). Google search as an example, we all picked it first, then they got greedy - even if they were saints that always was going to play out like that, bc of capitalism.

Once a market is controlled by a few players - ALL TRUE GROWTH STOPS and bare minimum, most cost effective to profit ratio "limited/controlled/planned" growth follows.

Hard drives for my adult life are my singular example. Lots of tech is like that actually.

Capitalism without competition will naturally evolve into full on Feudalism and Serfdom if it is allowed to.

laborcontract• 9 months ago

Reading that post, all i felt what a splendid luxury it is to live in the united states and be paid much better than those in other nations because of the country’s brand.

pwarner• 9 months ago

Not for much longer

IAmBroom• 9 months ago

... while having a 38th-in-the-world healthcare system that can completely bankrupt you, and an obscenely puny PTO allotment.

Tradeoffs.

America’s semiconductor boom [video]

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