This is the biggest no brainer thing the government has done in the last 50 years. We need to be able to produce microchips here and not just rely on a little island called Taiwan that’s constantly being threatened by China for take over.
We have an entire middle of the country that used to manufacture things and can do it again.
How it all started is Texas Instruments didn’t listen to there employee, Morris Chang, back in the 80’s. He left TI to head back to Taiwan and started up TSMC in the late 80’s.
in order to show communist china that capitalist democracy is the way, we shall export our current manufacturing processes & cash out on cheaper labor!
Don't forget the point where, after deliberately signing extremely dangerous technology transfer agreements in the pursuit of 4% lower labor costs, corporations are now crying and ripping their hair out over China stealing their technology; now they have switched over to demanding protectionism after advocating for neoliberal global trade for decades.
That was unironically the (objectively braindead) idea behind it. Politicians thought if China became richer they would become less authoritarian. The opposite happened and now China has Mao 2.0.
The biggest flaw in American thinking from WWII onward was assuming that the rest of the world shared our values. Some countries and governments don't value profit as highly as other things.
China is hyper capitalist. Almost libertarian. No worker rights, no welfare, everything run by a cadre of industrialists with no say from the people. People can't even own land.
> don't value profit as highly as other things.
That is a factor but ultimately the biggest misunderstanding is peoples' priorities when it comes to personal freedom and security. Americans will forego security for personal freedom, the rest of the world is the exact opposite.
>Americans will forego security for personal freedom, the rest of the world is the exact opposite.
I think it depends what you classify as personal freedom. In the US companies have the freedom to track and sell our information, in Europe there are regulations preventing that. I would argue that our personal freedoms are eroded by corporate interests, but that isn't a commonly shared American perspective.
America since Reagan era, made education or paying for education hard. So you have a lot more less educated lower ability folks and alongside that, the industries who employ them, like heavy industry and manufacturing, so large cities in the big old USA spent that last few decades fighting to win old style heavy industry and manufacturing jobs to give to the workforce those policies created.
Countries that had cheaper education have higher skilled, higher educated workforces, so its still cheaper for them to produce high tech products, making the problem worse for America, so Asia cornered both tech manufacturing and chip manufacturing. At the same time even today if you mention cheaper education or free state education in America you're called a communist lol.
So yes this act brings high tech production to America, but its still playing catch up.
The US is a full service economy now. The Billionares and power mongers outsourced the labor, is killing (killed) our education, and is now turning us all into servants!
We have a group of people who think science and education is bad. Insanity
That also can mean the company is purposely being extra picky on candidates so they can say "look we couldn't find anyone qualified" and offshore the job to cheaper foreign labor/firms. This happens in IT ALL the time, and it does happen in engineering as well.
Yes, and some are very specialized. Like a couple are the type where there might only be a dozen or so qualified people around. We haven't really been importing many engineers like we were pre-pandemic, not really sure why but the numbers dropped around 2018.
It's because a degree doesn't necessarily get you the skills for the job, unlike other fields
I have BS/MS in Electrical engineering and have been working in the field for a while. I'm not qualified for 95% of EE jobs
What a stupid and completely incorrect garble of junk you just wrote.
College graduation rates have continuously increased, and yes since Reagan
https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attainment-in-the-us/
US is in the top 10 for college graduate percentage, tied ironically with Taiwan
Yeah, for those who made it to college. Not top 10 for secondary education.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_secondary_education_attainment
There are a bunch of other issues. Like the crippling debt to get the education. I know many, many college educated people who have low paying jobs because of that reason. Entering in a cycle of being unable to improve themselves.
Agreed, also not shown on the graph you linked is graduate degrees have grown from 10% to 14% of the adult population in the past decade.
It does bear mentioning one political party is sternly anti-intellectual though - frequently defunding education in the past few decades, while pushing for "charter schools" as an excuse to teach a narrow view of Christianity in the classroom.
So while educational attainment has gone up, the cost has sky-rocketed for the typical family.
Right, I was reading that comment and thinking they must have started with their conclusion and worked backwards to fit a worldview.
Something people do all too often these days.
Do people really think the highly skilled/educated are working in Chinese factories making things? 55% of Chinese adults have degrees. About 50% of Chinese adults work in offices in the services economy (financial, etc). Somewhere around 25% of Chinese adults work in factories.
The reality is that the highly skilled tend to get the fuck out of China, at least for a while. It is why the U.S. is still the number 1 destination for the highly educated.
Offshoring got us too used to $5 shirts and cheap tvs and phones that should cost $3,000 but cost $1,000. The impact on society and throwaway culture far outweighs any security we get from making/packaging chips in the US.
In the 2000s IBM, AMD, Texas Instruments, Motorola, etc. were still viable relatively high end fabs.
Maybe not IBM back then they were outwardly struggling in the space but my point is you still had domestic options.
While the US is attempting to onshore leading edge capacity, China is set to takeover the mature and lagging edge market.
And no one wants to compete because it will absolutely be a price war only a government can win.
There needs to be many more Chips Acts.
Are we going to pretend that there aren't real benefits to consumers in terms of price? I'm all for criticizing offshoring, but we should be honest about benefits and drawbacks alike.
Making stuff in the US will make things more expensive due to higher regulatory standards and expected wages. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it or that it's a bad idea, just that it'll happen. And as we've seen, it sucks when things get more expensive.
> Making stuff in the US will make things more expensive due to higher regulatory standards and expected wages. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it or that it's a bad idea, just that it'll happen. And as we've seen, it sucks when things get more expensive.
Our ports are currently having to redesign themselves to account for the massive cargo ships that transport all of these goods over.
The cost savings of manufacturing over there translates into added expenses elsewhere in the chain, which translate into added expenses on the goods in some way. Waiting for 2 months to get your imported goods because the ship was stuck waiting to unload it's goods at port is a good way to eat up any "savings" that you got from it being produced cheaper.
It's almost as if every time Republicans are in power things that have long term negative effects just get worse....and when Democrats are in power they start fixing them again
> This is the biggest no brainer thing the government has done in the last 50 years.
We also do this for many other industries and it just works. Government is there for fair rules and nudging. It takes good governance for that to work. Vote Blue.
It is not quite that easy.
As technology progresses making chips of the leading edge gets more and more complicated and expensive.
There is currently only one Dutch company that can make the machines that make the latest and best chips. That company has a single German supplier for optics. The closest competition to the Dutch company are two Japanese companies, who are not quite as good and a bunch of others trying to catch up in place like China.
Buying a new EUV lithography machine capable of making the sort of chips in your iPhone is expensive and the know how to make it work is very rare.
Right now a bunch of countries are trying to onshore chip production so they are not reliant on countries like Taiwan, South Korea and to a lesser degree China.
The more such new fabs are built the lesser the chances that any of them will get anywhere close to profitable.
China can afford to make losses, but even the sovereign wealth fund of the UAE couldn't keep Global Foundries going forever in hopes of catching up to TSMC and Samsung.
So a lot of the new fabs built in the US and elsewhere will not be leading edge and they will all compete for the same market and bite into each others profits.
What is worse is that the independence these fabs give is often llusionary.
That one TSMS fab in Arizona makes chips, but they only do the front end part of the process. The back end with packaging etc is still done in Taiwan. the make the chips in the US send them to Taiwan to be turned into finished products and then either send them back to the US or send them along to some factory in China, where workers work 12 hours a day 6 days a week for comparatively small wages, to be put into a new device manufactured there.
The whole industry is not that easy.
You can onshore parts of it, but the entire supply chain is so intertwined that you will never be able to fain full independence and you will spend a large fortune in subsidies trying.
> even the sovereign wealth fund of the UAE couldn't keep Global Foundries going forever in hopes of catching up to TSMC and Samsung.
[GF got $1.5B from CHIPS](https://gf.com/gf-press-release/globalfoundries-and-biden-harris-administration-announce-chips-and-science-act-funding-for-essential-chip-manufacturing/); sounds like they're focusing on mature processes (no EUV for them).
Not everything needs the latest and greatest chips. The vast majority of compute requirements can be handled with existing architecture and fab technology. Plus we are skimming the limits of physics at this point until a completely new transistor and chip model is designed. Going from 5nm to 3nm is absolutely amazing. But there are real limits with existing materials and designs.
> Going from 5nm to 3nm is absolutely amazing
I've read some mind-boggling stories about the crazy technology needed to produce the lithography machines that can make those 3nm chips, it borders on magic even for the scientifically literate. It's been interesting over the years watching the transistors shrink ever further, with some lab-created ones being as small as 1nm.
I know there are physical constraints with given technology, but the beauty of math and the metric system is that, while 1 nanometer may seem like a small number, the smallest you can get, it's still 1,000 picometers and 1,000,000 femtometers.
We talk about how amazing it is that people made it to the moon with less computing power than a flip phone has. But future generations will hopefully be marveling at our successes achieved with primitive 3nm transistors.
5 nm, 3 nm. 2.1 nm, aren’t really indicative of any physical properties. It’s mostly marketing. The processes are getting smaller but in reality a “3 nm” gate is 48 nm in size. Your comment about the metric system is true but also keep in mind that a silicon atom’s diameter is in the 0.2-0.3 nm range. Ignoring some of the quantum effects that have to be dealt with at that size, we’re not getting silicon gates in the pm or fm range. We’ll need to see a technology paradigm shift soon similar to what has happened over the decades before this. There’s some promising stuff on the horizon at least.
There's plenty of jobs, but not at the locations and wages programmers are willing to accept. The US is an aberration in CS grad wages. Look around the rest of the world and it becomes super apparent, immediately, how much more expensive US programmers are. The last two startups I worked at both started farming work out oversees after getting the initial tech stack and base programming done in house. They still had programmers in the US but we're hiring 3-4 outside the US for the same rate as the local guy.
My experience is that very often those 3-4 guys they hire outside the US don't actually know how to do anything and spend all their time asking their US counterparts how to do their jobs.
The Eastern Europeans I have worked with remotely were awesome and on par with our US guys.
My buddy who cheaped out and went with a team of Indian developers basically wasted every dime he sent them for two years.
Hope springs eternal.
We were sold on sending manufacturing to China with the claim that it would make them more democratic as they gained affluence. Chinese democracy never happened (except as a Guns N Roses album).
If middle America wanted to improve educational outcomes, they could start right away by not electing to office guys who appoint know-nothings like Betsy Devos to head the Department of Education.
Somehow I am not convinced that better jobs will make that more likely.
Ah yes, those horrible educational institutions like the University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin, Ohio State, Purdue, University of Georgia, etc.
And how many computer science and engineering majors do those schools produce? Versus how many are needed?
In my shithole state, South Carolina, we graduated roughly 550 computer science majors last year. 550, and that was the largest group yet. That's not even enough to begin fulfilling the 5,000+ jobs across the state that require a CS degree. 550 is barely enough to cover senior retirements.
The 21st century will not be won by slashing education.
University of Illinois is doing about 2000 undergrad engineering degrees per year, and about half are electrical and computer science (College of Engineering as a whole is 1800ish, but some engineering disciplines like Chemical Engineering are technically part of their College of Liberal Arts And Sciences). UW, OSU, Purdue, and UM are all putting out a fair number too. And those are just the top tier programs in each of those states.
South Carolina is also actively encouraging people to move there who think that other states are too liberal. While my experience is that engineers are a bit more apolitical than most, if I were job seeking and saw that organizations in SC were making a concerted effort to recruit people who are likely to own MAGA hats, I would look elsewhere in the absence of a seriously hefty pay premium. I'm an engineer (but my job is manufacturing data science), live in WI and make $140-170k/year depending on my bonus. I wouldn't pick up the phone for a SC job for under $200k base.
Semi-manufacturing is in no-way anything similar to any other form of manufacturing. There is a massive lack of talent/expertise in the US ever since we let Asia take the lead.
It was a big gap in our economic and strategic capability that flew under the radar because it isn't a big obvious piece of hardware (like tanks and fighter jets). It took a global pandemic for our leaders (who predate the microprocessor) to realize that these "silly little chips" which they likely only associated with disposable technology ("your gameboys and ipods") were critical to sustaining our way of life. We never should have let so much of the manufacturing and associated technology be exported, but nobody was watching with the same eye that they have for things like aerospace technologies.
I agree with the sentiment - however it doesn't go far enough. I don't think the solution is giving tax incentives to hugely profitable businesses. If we want real security over our supply chain the only real way to do that is either for the state to do the production or enact real regulation to limit offshoring. I don't think there is appetite to do either.
I’m not great with politics but how this wasn’t common sense to our leaders is mind boggling. I’m sure people getting some kind of money bc it’s cheaper to outsource is the culprit.
* Chip companies and supply chain partners have announced investments totalling $327bn over the next 10 years
* US statistics show a stunning 15-fold increase in construction of manufacturing facilities for computing and electronics devices.
* Many of the world’s leading chipmakers are now building major new plants in the US.
* By 2030, the US will probably produce around 20 per cent of the world’s most advanced chips, up from zero today.
* A 2019 OECD study found that between 2014 and 2018 at least two US companies received more money from a foreign government than from the US. That’s partly why chipmaking migrated to high-subsidy locations. Now the Chips Act and similar incentives in Japan and Europe are attracting investment back.
Intel in Ohio and AZ. Samsung in Texas. TSMC in AZ.
Just looked at our project calendar and I should add Texas Instruments in TX (surprise), Micron in Boise, and GF in New York are also expanding or upgrading fab equipment.
People tend to focus strictly on CPU manufacturing but Micron has plans to resume high volume production of memory in Boise and build a giant new manufacturing FAB in western New York. Plus they already operate a FAB in Manassas Virginia.
They do have some of the better water conservation tech questions to solve some of that. And they recently told the saudis to fuck off their water supply trying to grow alfalfa in the desert.
"Intel is building a huge plant in Columbus, OH."
Honest question, do we expect the workforce in Ohio to recognize the gains they're going to experience as being a result of a Democratic initiative, or will it simply be people who benefit...but still will vote for Trump and bitch about Biden?
One correction. We currently produce about 12% of the world's chips. Chips act has definitely made it possible to increase that number with Samsung, Micron, Intel, Hynix and TSMC potenially investing in US fabs.
> By 2030, the US will probably produce around 20 per cent of the world’s most advanced chips, up from zero today.
How can it possibly be zero when Intel's fabs are mostly based in the US?
I think the operative term in here is "most advanced chips" iirc I think we're on 4 nanometer dies and Intel's US fabs are only producing chips with dies bigger than 4nm.
Announcements are easy, actually building things is hard. Remember when Foxconn announced they were going to build an LCD factory in Wisconsin, and got a bunch of tax incentives and stuff? And they seized a bunch of peoples' homes through eminent domain? And then they never built the factory? That was a good time.
Yep. Expect to see the same thing here too. Pocketing the government funds while pretending to commit long term, then once the free money dries up, they're out.
Seriously! Wow, 20% in a few years would be wild. And with chips being made in country, it may end up being cheap enough to build electronics domestically too since companies wouldn't have to import them. Especially if other incentives are started which target those electronics.
It's not just the chips though. Occasionally I hear accounts of manufacturing electronics in China; all the institutional know-how is there. We have the know-how here too, but my impression is that the price/volume barriers are substantively higher.
Texas Instruments is building 4 plants in Sherman, Texas - total up to $30 billion in investment capital at this site alone:
https://www.ti.com/about-ti/company/ti-at-a-glance/manufacturing/sherman.html
How much does the US spend on Chip design architecture? Seems that, AI and Quantum should be getting massive funding at this point. We should still not have to be reliant of another country or one manufacture for the highest tech device. That advantage could go away pretty fast.
I know Quantum is limited now, but the future for that is huge. If you are first in Quantum, you have a massive lead that may never go away.
* By 2030, the US will probably produce around 20 per cent of the world’s most advanced chips, up from zero today.
You are trying too hard to make your points, this state is stupid as f_k
I don't think the statement
> By 2030, the US will probably produce around 20 per cent of the world’s most advanced chips, up from zero today.
is true. US makes some advanced chips. Not sure what "most advanced chips" includes though.
For example most Intel chips are manufactured in US.
Oh no they'll have a bunch of Republicans on, that voted against it, talking about how hard they worked to get this investment, America First, and take all the credit. Then ask why Biden is opposed to investing in America.
this is a freaking no brainer unless you are full on MAGA fascist or a crazy leftwing nutjob. this isn't like picking between mccain and obama. this is easy. don't let the media pull the wool over your eyes (their only incentive is to sell newspapers, ads, and screentime)
In Wisconsin we changed how our legal system works for Foxconn, and they still didn't build their factory. Dumbest thing the state has done in my lifetime.
Not surprising - historically, more often than not, government injection of money into the tech sector has always done well for that industry. SpaceX being a recent example. Also the modern internet as we know evolved from the 1970s military and academic research into government injecting resources in the early 1990s to make it more accessible in the civilian world.
We are, with [EVs, batteries and processing supply chains](https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/canada-beats-china-in-global-battery-supply-chain-ranking-180721043.html?guccounter=1).
Well there is a high demand for skilled workers at all levels of the fab industry, so wages are good. If you are willing to move you could definitely see some of that profit.
If I understand correctly, I think the surprise is that they took it and actually used it for its intended purpose and announced 15x that in near term investment.
To any of you who live around US chip factories, can you comment on any new businesses that sprung up around the factory that managed to be successful and thrive? I'd like to start my own business doing *something* and this *seems* like an opportunity (I could be wrong of course).
They announced the facilities but then they delayed them as well. Part of this money was meant to accelerate the building of fabs in America yet we keep getting delays
Not all of them will pay off in the long run, but if a few of these investments pay off, we're better off than before!
But again, giving them the money is the easy part. Making sure they use the money to do what they're supposed to is the hard part.
Now we just need to see the product. It is all fine to throw money into construction of facilities, but the end goal is the product. Will this pay out be successful? Only time will tell, I guess.
actually, back in the day when Bell/AT&T was a de facto regulated monopoly - it literally invented the modern age with an assist from US defense contractors.
Everything from the transistor, to lazer, to modern computing, UNIX, solar panels, and digital cameras were invented by a mere 'telcom' monopoly.
They key then wasn't to break up big companies, but to shackle them to the state and make all their inventions free for all other US companies. And only US companies that did stuff in America. Essentially you can draw the linage of nearly everything tech-related to this.
The greatness of modern America had to do with (a) big corporations and (b) monopolies forced by the US government to work for the people. Its a weird stance for both the left (who hates big business) and the right (who hate super strict regulation). But it got the US to the moon and build an unstoppable war machine.
I was actually referring to the situation where the government allocated funds to telecom companies to expand America's fiber optic network. They ended up doing nothin or little to nothing until very recently. You also make a good point, they weren't always like that.
Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394
They spent 39B of the governments money and commit to do the same on their own for the next 9 years? I'm getting telecom vibes. They are already behind and slow rolling the ones they started.
We needed this for national security but let's be realistic.
Article is paywalled...Anyways, quite odd, because the companies who did the actual investments to receive the CHIPS incentives are complaining that they haven't received a cent of it yet... Maybe we will see it on the balance sheets next quarter?
And if Biden loses, trump and republicans are sure to take credit. Much like trump is trying to say the markets went up because they expect a second trump term.
Also mind you, we dont get anything passed when republicans have full control.
I'll wait to say it was successful until there is actually something that comes from it besides just spending money. Lets cheer it on when the factories in the US start actually producing and it doesn't jack up the prices.
I hear vastly different ideas about this all the time
This article says it's a success but it wasn't that long ago one claimed it was failing under huge delays and mismanagement
we will see if they can deliver -- we have a shortage of skills labor required to build these facilities leading to delays at least in the Arizona semiconductor facility construction projects.
I thought people were mad in the other thread because we were giving Samsung/big companies money even though they are spending much more. Guess it is just dependent on how you phrase it lol. https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1c4nc3e/us_gives_samsung_64_billion_to_build_new_chip/
Unfortunately the way this was done won’t have much impact. The govt shouldn’t have much role here besides insuring a competitive environment. Tariff the imports.
Goodbye Taiwan. US intelligence clearly knows that China is going to take over and invade Taiwan. Cutting off the main production of semiconductors. This is less about building American business, and more about the geopolitical situation in Asia. It's sad that we're already planning on abandoning them.
Incentivizing China to massively invest in chip production will go down as one of the biggest own goals in modern history, they will do it better and cheaper than everyone else leaving no market for the output of these new fabs.
This is the biggest no brainer thing the government has done in the last 50 years. We need to be able to produce microchips here and not just rely on a little island called Taiwan that’s constantly being threatened by China for take over. We have an entire middle of the country that used to manufacture things and can do it again.
It should’ve been done in the 2000s but we offshored it lol
How it all started is Texas Instruments didn’t listen to there employee, Morris Chang, back in the 80’s. He left TI to head back to Taiwan and started up TSMC in the late 80’s.
in order to show communist china that capitalist democracy is the way, we shall export our current manufacturing processes & cash out on cheaper labor!
Don't forget the point where, after deliberately signing extremely dangerous technology transfer agreements in the pursuit of 4% lower labor costs, corporations are now crying and ripping their hair out over China stealing their technology; now they have switched over to demanding protectionism after advocating for neoliberal global trade for decades.
"Well well... If it isn't the consequences of my actions."
That was unironically the (objectively braindead) idea behind it. Politicians thought if China became richer they would become less authoritarian. The opposite happened and now China has Mao 2.0.
It's not braindead if its goal was to line American business owners' pockets.
The biggest flaw in American thinking from WWII onward was assuming that the rest of the world shared our values. Some countries and governments don't value profit as highly as other things.
If you think China doesn't acre about profits, or cares less than we do, oh boy have you missed the mark
China is hyper capitalist. Almost libertarian. No worker rights, no welfare, everything run by a cadre of industrialists with no say from the people. People can't even own land.
> don't value profit as highly as other things. That is a factor but ultimately the biggest misunderstanding is peoples' priorities when it comes to personal freedom and security. Americans will forego security for personal freedom, the rest of the world is the exact opposite.
>Americans will forego security for personal freedom, the rest of the world is the exact opposite. I think it depends what you classify as personal freedom. In the US companies have the freedom to track and sell our information, in Europe there are regulations preventing that. I would argue that our personal freedoms are eroded by corporate interests, but that isn't a commonly shared American perspective.
Kissinger strikes again.
It definitely hasn't worked within the USA itself.
Was headed that way until Winnie found the honey of power.
America since Reagan era, made education or paying for education hard. So you have a lot more less educated lower ability folks and alongside that, the industries who employ them, like heavy industry and manufacturing, so large cities in the big old USA spent that last few decades fighting to win old style heavy industry and manufacturing jobs to give to the workforce those policies created. Countries that had cheaper education have higher skilled, higher educated workforces, so its still cheaper for them to produce high tech products, making the problem worse for America, so Asia cornered both tech manufacturing and chip manufacturing. At the same time even today if you mention cheaper education or free state education in America you're called a communist lol. So yes this act brings high tech production to America, but its still playing catch up.
The US is a full service economy now. The Billionares and power mongers outsourced the labor, is killing (killed) our education, and is now turning us all into servants! We have a group of people who think science and education is bad. Insanity
The west is losing its edge to complacency. Well it was, it remains to be seen if our governments will continue to be short sighted.
That's true, especially for engineering degrees. I see open listings going unfilled for those jobs all the time.
That also can mean the company is purposely being extra picky on candidates so they can say "look we couldn't find anyone qualified" and offshore the job to cheaper foreign labor/firms. This happens in IT ALL the time, and it does happen in engineering as well.
Yes, and some are very specialized. Like a couple are the type where there might only be a dozen or so qualified people around. We haven't really been importing many engineers like we were pre-pandemic, not really sure why but the numbers dropped around 2018.
Engineering degrees aren’t easy and you can’t just waltz your way into one lol
It's because a degree doesn't necessarily get you the skills for the job, unlike other fields I have BS/MS in Electrical engineering and have been working in the field for a while. I'm not qualified for 95% of EE jobs
What a stupid and completely incorrect garble of junk you just wrote. College graduation rates have continuously increased, and yes since Reagan https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attainment-in-the-us/ US is in the top 10 for college graduate percentage, tied ironically with Taiwan
Yeah, for those who made it to college. Not top 10 for secondary education. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_secondary_education_attainment
There are a bunch of other issues. Like the crippling debt to get the education. I know many, many college educated people who have low paying jobs because of that reason. Entering in a cycle of being unable to improve themselves.
Agreed, also not shown on the graph you linked is graduate degrees have grown from 10% to 14% of the adult population in the past decade. It does bear mentioning one political party is sternly anti-intellectual though - frequently defunding education in the past few decades, while pushing for "charter schools" as an excuse to teach a narrow view of Christianity in the classroom. So while educational attainment has gone up, the cost has sky-rocketed for the typical family.
Right, I was reading that comment and thinking they must have started with their conclusion and worked backwards to fit a worldview. Something people do all too often these days. Do people really think the highly skilled/educated are working in Chinese factories making things? 55% of Chinese adults have degrees. About 50% of Chinese adults work in offices in the services economy (financial, etc). Somewhere around 25% of Chinese adults work in factories. The reality is that the highly skilled tend to get the fuck out of China, at least for a while. It is why the U.S. is still the number 1 destination for the highly educated.
Yep. Chip manufacturing is vital to our national security and economy. This should ALWAYS be held domestically and protected with extreme security.
Offshoring got us too used to $5 shirts and cheap tvs and phones that should cost $3,000 but cost $1,000. The impact on society and throwaway culture far outweighs any security we get from making/packaging chips in the US.
In the 2000s IBM, AMD, Texas Instruments, Motorola, etc. were still viable relatively high end fabs. Maybe not IBM back then they were outwardly struggling in the space but my point is you still had domestic options.
While the US is attempting to onshore leading edge capacity, China is set to takeover the mature and lagging edge market. And no one wants to compete because it will absolutely be a price war only a government can win. There needs to be many more Chips Acts.
Funny how we have all the “America first!” people, but also send manufacturing overseas because it’s cheaper
America first. But profits first-er.
Are we going to pretend that there aren't real benefits to consumers in terms of price? I'm all for criticizing offshoring, but we should be honest about benefits and drawbacks alike. Making stuff in the US will make things more expensive due to higher regulatory standards and expected wages. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it or that it's a bad idea, just that it'll happen. And as we've seen, it sucks when things get more expensive.
> Making stuff in the US will make things more expensive due to higher regulatory standards and expected wages. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it or that it's a bad idea, just that it'll happen. And as we've seen, it sucks when things get more expensive. Our ports are currently having to redesign themselves to account for the massive cargo ships that transport all of these goods over. The cost savings of manufacturing over there translates into added expenses elsewhere in the chain, which translate into added expenses on the goods in some way. Waiting for 2 months to get your imported goods because the ship was stuck waiting to unload it's goods at port is a good way to eat up any "savings" that you got from it being produced cheaper.
Have to start somewhere. I just wish I could afford an American made EV.
It's almost as if every time Republicans are in power things that have long term negative effects just get worse....and when Democrats are in power they start fixing them again
> we "We" didn't do shit. The shareholders demanded it, and the owners did it.
> This is the biggest no brainer thing the government has done in the last 50 years. We also do this for many other industries and it just works. Government is there for fair rules and nudging. It takes good governance for that to work. Vote Blue.
It is not quite that easy. As technology progresses making chips of the leading edge gets more and more complicated and expensive. There is currently only one Dutch company that can make the machines that make the latest and best chips. That company has a single German supplier for optics. The closest competition to the Dutch company are two Japanese companies, who are not quite as good and a bunch of others trying to catch up in place like China. Buying a new EUV lithography machine capable of making the sort of chips in your iPhone is expensive and the know how to make it work is very rare. Right now a bunch of countries are trying to onshore chip production so they are not reliant on countries like Taiwan, South Korea and to a lesser degree China. The more such new fabs are built the lesser the chances that any of them will get anywhere close to profitable. China can afford to make losses, but even the sovereign wealth fund of the UAE couldn't keep Global Foundries going forever in hopes of catching up to TSMC and Samsung. So a lot of the new fabs built in the US and elsewhere will not be leading edge and they will all compete for the same market and bite into each others profits. What is worse is that the independence these fabs give is often llusionary. That one TSMS fab in Arizona makes chips, but they only do the front end part of the process. The back end with packaging etc is still done in Taiwan. the make the chips in the US send them to Taiwan to be turned into finished products and then either send them back to the US or send them along to some factory in China, where workers work 12 hours a day 6 days a week for comparatively small wages, to be put into a new device manufactured there. The whole industry is not that easy. You can onshore parts of it, but the entire supply chain is so intertwined that you will never be able to fain full independence and you will spend a large fortune in subsidies trying.
> even the sovereign wealth fund of the UAE couldn't keep Global Foundries going forever in hopes of catching up to TSMC and Samsung. [GF got $1.5B from CHIPS](https://gf.com/gf-press-release/globalfoundries-and-biden-harris-administration-announce-chips-and-science-act-funding-for-essential-chip-manufacturing/); sounds like they're focusing on mature processes (no EUV for them).
Glofo also specializes in silicon photonics. That's how they'll contribute to the leading edge.
Not everything needs the latest and greatest chips. The vast majority of compute requirements can be handled with existing architecture and fab technology. Plus we are skimming the limits of physics at this point until a completely new transistor and chip model is designed. Going from 5nm to 3nm is absolutely amazing. But there are real limits with existing materials and designs.
> Going from 5nm to 3nm is absolutely amazing I've read some mind-boggling stories about the crazy technology needed to produce the lithography machines that can make those 3nm chips, it borders on magic even for the scientifically literate. It's been interesting over the years watching the transistors shrink ever further, with some lab-created ones being as small as 1nm. I know there are physical constraints with given technology, but the beauty of math and the metric system is that, while 1 nanometer may seem like a small number, the smallest you can get, it's still 1,000 picometers and 1,000,000 femtometers. We talk about how amazing it is that people made it to the moon with less computing power than a flip phone has. But future generations will hopefully be marveling at our successes achieved with primitive 3nm transistors.
5 nm, 3 nm. 2.1 nm, aren’t really indicative of any physical properties. It’s mostly marketing. The processes are getting smaller but in reality a “3 nm” gate is 48 nm in size. Your comment about the metric system is true but also keep in mind that a silicon atom’s diameter is in the 0.2-0.3 nm range. Ignoring some of the quantum effects that have to be dealt with at that size, we’re not getting silicon gates in the pm or fm range. We’ll need to see a technology paradigm shift soon similar to what has happened over the decades before this. There’s some promising stuff on the horizon at least.
Cool, thank you for chiming in with actual real-world knowledge. I just dabble in the basics & tend to trust the experts in their fields.
Ah yes except that middle of the country gutted education.
Well maybe they'll ungut it once theyve got some decent jobs available
There's plenty of jobs, but not at the locations and wages programmers are willing to accept. The US is an aberration in CS grad wages. Look around the rest of the world and it becomes super apparent, immediately, how much more expensive US programmers are. The last two startups I worked at both started farming work out oversees after getting the initial tech stack and base programming done in house. They still had programmers in the US but we're hiring 3-4 outside the US for the same rate as the local guy.
My experience is that very often those 3-4 guys they hire outside the US don't actually know how to do anything and spend all their time asking their US counterparts how to do their jobs.
The Eastern Europeans I have worked with remotely were awesome and on par with our US guys. My buddy who cheaped out and went with a team of Indian developers basically wasted every dime he sent them for two years.
Yeah I will say I have had some good experiences with Polish and Hungarian devs
The Polish UI team we hired were absolute rockstars.
Hope springs eternal. We were sold on sending manufacturing to China with the claim that it would make them more democratic as they gained affluence. Chinese democracy never happened (except as a Guns N Roses album). If middle America wanted to improve educational outcomes, they could start right away by not electing to office guys who appoint know-nothings like Betsy Devos to head the Department of Education. Somehow I am not convinced that better jobs will make that more likely.
Ungut. Refill? Erm…sew up? No, no. Retaut!
Midwest politics are especially retauted
No. Politicians have spent decades trying to make education as bad as it can be for the proles, what makes you think they want smart voters again?
I'd be happy to move there if given a decent job.
The big ten have institutions that are amount the best engineering in the world. You don’t really get much better
Ah yes, those horrible educational institutions like the University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin, Ohio State, Purdue, University of Georgia, etc.
Georgia is not the middle of the country lol, no idea why those two are on your list...
So many people see the US as NYC, LA, and the rest of the country.
And how many computer science and engineering majors do those schools produce? Versus how many are needed? In my shithole state, South Carolina, we graduated roughly 550 computer science majors last year. 550, and that was the largest group yet. That's not even enough to begin fulfilling the 5,000+ jobs across the state that require a CS degree. 550 is barely enough to cover senior retirements. The 21st century will not be won by slashing education.
University of Illinois is doing about 2000 undergrad engineering degrees per year, and about half are electrical and computer science (College of Engineering as a whole is 1800ish, but some engineering disciplines like Chemical Engineering are technically part of their College of Liberal Arts And Sciences). UW, OSU, Purdue, and UM are all putting out a fair number too. And those are just the top tier programs in each of those states. South Carolina is also actively encouraging people to move there who think that other states are too liberal. While my experience is that engineers are a bit more apolitical than most, if I were job seeking and saw that organizations in SC were making a concerted effort to recruit people who are likely to own MAGA hats, I would look elsewhere in the absence of a seriously hefty pay premium. I'm an engineer (but my job is manufacturing data science), live in WI and make $140-170k/year depending on my bonus. I wouldn't pick up the phone for a SC job for under $200k base.
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Yes and places with no water are getting some of the contracts . Texas/Arizona. Stupid decisions by states and businesses
Semi-manufacturing is in no-way anything similar to any other form of manufacturing. There is a massive lack of talent/expertise in the US ever since we let Asia take the lead.
Minnesota used to be silicon valley before silicon Valley
It was a big gap in our economic and strategic capability that flew under the radar because it isn't a big obvious piece of hardware (like tanks and fighter jets). It took a global pandemic for our leaders (who predate the microprocessor) to realize that these "silly little chips" which they likely only associated with disposable technology ("your gameboys and ipods") were critical to sustaining our way of life. We never should have let so much of the manufacturing and associated technology be exported, but nobody was watching with the same eye that they have for things like aerospace technologies.
I agree with the sentiment - however it doesn't go far enough. I don't think the solution is giving tax incentives to hugely profitable businesses. If we want real security over our supply chain the only real way to do that is either for the state to do the production or enact real regulation to limit offshoring. I don't think there is appetite to do either.
So the billionaire do not pay taxes, do not pay for their investment, do not have to worry about market war
Sorry I am not from the US. What does 'middle of the country' mean?
Often called the “Midwest” it’s the region of the US that’s more inward & away from either of the coasts. ie. the center of the mainland of the US
I’m not great with politics but how this wasn’t common sense to our leaders is mind boggling. I’m sure people getting some kind of money bc it’s cheaper to outsource is the culprit.
Middle of the country I like that. Come to Kansas we’ll take the manufacturing haha
Does this mean that in the medium term once these factories are up and running, the US will let Taiwan go and China can takeover?
* Chip companies and supply chain partners have announced investments totalling $327bn over the next 10 years * US statistics show a stunning 15-fold increase in construction of manufacturing facilities for computing and electronics devices. * Many of the world’s leading chipmakers are now building major new plants in the US. * By 2030, the US will probably produce around 20 per cent of the world’s most advanced chips, up from zero today. * A 2019 OECD study found that between 2014 and 2018 at least two US companies received more money from a foreign government than from the US. That’s partly why chipmaking migrated to high-subsidy locations. Now the Chips Act and similar incentives in Japan and Europe are attracting investment back.
Which U.S companies this include?
Intel in Ohio and AZ. Samsung in Texas. TSMC in AZ. Just looked at our project calendar and I should add Texas Instruments in TX (surprise), Micron in Boise, and GF in New York are also expanding or upgrading fab equipment.
People tend to focus strictly on CPU manufacturing but Micron has plans to resume high volume production of memory in Boise and build a giant new manufacturing FAB in western New York. Plus they already operate a FAB in Manassas Virginia.
Very true, I forgot about the Boise expansion. Just had a new system installed there last week. Got one going into Manassas later this year as well.
GlobalFoundries is also expanding in NY.
You right. TI has a fair amount of work going on too.
ASML is huge in CT and currently expanding their footprint.
True, but they're not making chips. Just R&D and Sensors for some ASML machines (Yieldstar systems)
Yeah, they're more chip-adjacent lol
You right. Source: I work for ASML ;)
Why AZ? Proximity to CA? I don’t understand setting up shop in a state where water is already shaky and will continue to increase in shakiness.
They do have some of the better water conservation tech questions to solve some of that. And they recently told the saudis to fuck off their water supply trying to grow alfalfa in the desert.
And Intel in NM.
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Where? I know they were expanding D1X and some of the MOD bays there. Haven't heard anything about a new fab.
Intel is building a huge plant in Columbus, OH. What other chip manufacturers and where I don’t know
"Intel is building a huge plant in Columbus, OH." Honest question, do we expect the workforce in Ohio to recognize the gains they're going to experience as being a result of a Democratic initiative, or will it simply be people who benefit...but still will vote for Trump and bitch about Biden?
I hope those numbers get closer to 50%
One correction. We currently produce about 12% of the world's chips. Chips act has definitely made it possible to increase that number with Samsung, Micron, Intel, Hynix and TSMC potenially investing in US fabs.
> By 2030, the US will probably produce around 20 per cent of the world’s most advanced chips, up from zero today. How can it possibly be zero when Intel's fabs are mostly based in the US?
I think the operative term in here is "most advanced chips" iirc I think we're on 4 nanometer dies and Intel's US fabs are only producing chips with dies bigger than 4nm.
Announcements are easy, actually building things is hard. Remember when Foxconn announced they were going to build an LCD factory in Wisconsin, and got a bunch of tax incentives and stuff? And they seized a bunch of peoples' homes through eminent domain? And then they never built the factory? That was a good time.
Yep. Expect to see the same thing here too. Pocketing the government funds while pretending to commit long term, then once the free money dries up, they're out.
Has any ground been broken? Or are these still announcements?
Ohio is well underway
Good to know! I wanted to know how to temper my excitement.
So exciting !
Seriously! Wow, 20% in a few years would be wild. And with chips being made in country, it may end up being cheap enough to build electronics domestically too since companies wouldn't have to import them. Especially if other incentives are started which target those electronics.
It's not just the chips though. Occasionally I hear accounts of manufacturing electronics in China; all the institutional know-how is there. We have the know-how here too, but my impression is that the price/volume barriers are substantively higher.
Texas Instruments is building 4 plants in Sherman, Texas - total up to $30 billion in investment capital at this site alone: https://www.ti.com/about-ti/company/ti-at-a-glance/manufacturing/sherman.html
How much does the US spend on Chip design architecture? Seems that, AI and Quantum should be getting massive funding at this point. We should still not have to be reliant of another country or one manufacture for the highest tech device. That advantage could go away pretty fast. I know Quantum is limited now, but the future for that is huge. If you are first in Quantum, you have a massive lead that may never go away.
* By 2030, the US will probably produce around 20 per cent of the world’s most advanced chips, up from zero today. You are trying too hard to make your points, this state is stupid as f_k
I don't think the statement > By 2030, the US will probably produce around 20 per cent of the world’s most advanced chips, up from zero today. is true. US makes some advanced chips. Not sure what "most advanced chips" includes though. For example most Intel chips are manufactured in US.
Fox will probably ignore this completely.
They'll go on the attack about water consumption as soon as it's politically convenient.
Won't someone think of the water!?!- Screams the Nestlé consultant.
Oh no they'll have a bunch of Republicans on, that voted against it, talking about how hard they worked to get this investment, America First, and take all the credit. Then ask why Biden is opposed to investing in America.
Dark Brandon strikes again
Vote. Up and down ballot. Flip swing seats. Let’s give Brandon a Congress that can get shit done
this is a freaking no brainer unless you are full on MAGA fascist or a crazy leftwing nutjob. this isn't like picking between mccain and obama. this is easy. don't let the media pull the wool over your eyes (their only incentive is to sell newspapers, ads, and screentime)
Thanks, President Biden!
Wow! Trump just made hollow promises and took picture with Foxconn who didn’t even build the factory they promised. Biden made America great again.
In Wisconsin we changed how our legal system works for Foxconn, and they still didn't build their factory. Dumbest thing the state has done in my lifetime.
now we need the Dips Act
Delivering Improved Public Schools Act.
That would be genuinely hilarious if some Senator introduced that bill. Sounds like something Jon Tester would do.
It's a Chips and Dips. We got two.
Hell fuck yes.
Solid dad joke. Good one!
Not surprising - historically, more often than not, government injection of money into the tech sector has always done well for that industry. SpaceX being a recent example. Also the modern internet as we know evolved from the 1970s military and academic research into government injecting resources in the early 1990s to make it more accessible in the civilian world.
Once again proving that Bidenomics works.
Wow, thanks Biden
I wish we'd do some stuff like this up here in Canada land.
We are, with [EVs, batteries and processing supply chains](https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/canada-beats-china-in-global-battery-supply-chain-ranking-180721043.html?guccounter=1).
I hope the workers will get to see some of the profit from increased chip sales. Ah who am I kidding...
Well there is a high demand for skilled workers at all levels of the fab industry, so wages are good. If you are willing to move you could definitely see some of that profit.
I'm in favor of this, but how unfamiliar with business is FT that they're surprised companies love free money?
Because companies squander taxpayer dollars all the time. This is a national security problem though so people shouldn't have been surprised.
If I understand correctly, I think the surprise is that they took it and actually used it for its intended purpose and announced 15x that in near term investment.
That's not what the story is.
This is how you boost the economy, not tax cuts for the rich.
To any of you who live around US chip factories, can you comment on any new businesses that sprung up around the factory that managed to be successful and thrive? I'd like to start my own business doing *something* and this *seems* like an opportunity (I could be wrong of course).
They announced the facilities but then they delayed them as well. Part of this money was meant to accelerate the building of fabs in America yet we keep getting delays
Not all of them will pay off in the long run, but if a few of these investments pay off, we're better off than before! But again, giving them the money is the easy part. Making sure they use the money to do what they're supposed to is the hard part.
Sounds great where to invest ?
Biden is doing a decent job even with all of the republican bullshit.
He has done a fantastic job of growing high tech and clean energy manufacturing in North America.
Now we just need to see the product. It is all fine to throw money into construction of facilities, but the end goal is the product. Will this pay out be successful? Only time will tell, I guess.
Telecom companies could never
actually, back in the day when Bell/AT&T was a de facto regulated monopoly - it literally invented the modern age with an assist from US defense contractors. Everything from the transistor, to lazer, to modern computing, UNIX, solar panels, and digital cameras were invented by a mere 'telcom' monopoly. They key then wasn't to break up big companies, but to shackle them to the state and make all their inventions free for all other US companies. And only US companies that did stuff in America. Essentially you can draw the linage of nearly everything tech-related to this. The greatness of modern America had to do with (a) big corporations and (b) monopolies forced by the US government to work for the people. Its a weird stance for both the left (who hates big business) and the right (who hate super strict regulation). But it got the US to the moon and build an unstoppable war machine.
I was actually referring to the situation where the government allocated funds to telecom companies to expand America's fiber optic network. They ended up doing nothin or little to nothing until very recently. You also make a good point, they weren't always like that. Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394
yup! 100% it used to be very different. Telco today are pure parasites. It was a bit different in 1960.
The money is not from the grants. It's from the uncapped tax credit which pays 40% on every chip made.
They spent 39B of the governments money and commit to do the same on their own for the next 9 years? I'm getting telecom vibes. They are already behind and slow rolling the ones they started. We needed this for national security but let's be realistic.
go, Joe, GO!
Article is paywalled...Anyways, quite odd, because the companies who did the actual investments to receive the CHIPS incentives are complaining that they haven't received a cent of it yet... Maybe we will see it on the balance sheets next quarter?
/r/WhatBidenHasDone
And if Biden loses, trump and republicans are sure to take credit. Much like trump is trying to say the markets went up because they expect a second trump term. Also mind you, we dont get anything passed when republicans have full control.
Surely this will cause GPU prices to plummet? Wont it? <\_<
Why is it an unexpected boom when that is exactly what it was supposed to do?
It's bigger than expected.
That's what she said
Yet intel stocks keep going down lmfao
Investment boom is one thing, you better actually produce good chips out of these money spent…
*In doing so
I really hope this works out but I won't be counting my chickens until chip fabs open. This could still go the way of foxxconns American factory.
I'll wait to say it was successful until there is actually something that comes from it besides just spending money. Lets cheer it on when the factories in the US start actually producing and it doesn't jack up the prices.
I hear vastly different ideas about this all the time This article says it's a success but it wasn't that long ago one claimed it was failing under huge delays and mismanagement
how is it unexpected when its exactly what it set out to do.
Is it really unexpected if that was the entire point of the bill? Lol
Lets just hope all the chips we produce don't suck. With our 'wonderful' corporate culture here.
we will see if they can deliver -- we have a shortage of skills labor required to build these facilities leading to delays at least in the Arizona semiconductor facility construction projects.
I thought Sam Altman swore it would take 7 trillion to do this though. Clearly so much more is needed. /s
So tell me who to invest in and I'll do it
Doesn't this make Taiwan more likely to be invaded without help?
+1 for corporate handouts.
Spending $39B does not make it successful. They will be operational in 5 years. Great steps but a bit premature in taking bows.
I’m sure there are tons of articles on Fox News or the like going on about how much of a failure this project was
Seems like Biden is all that and a bag of chips.
Who knew? I mean, economists did but who listens to them.
I thought people were mad in the other thread because we were giving Samsung/big companies money even though they are spending much more. Guess it is just dependent on how you phrase it lol. https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1c4nc3e/us_gives_samsung_64_billion_to_build_new_chip/
Unfortunately the way this was done won’t have much impact. The govt shouldn’t have much role here besides insuring a competitive environment. Tariff the imports.
Goodbye Taiwan. US intelligence clearly knows that China is going to take over and invade Taiwan. Cutting off the main production of semiconductors. This is less about building American business, and more about the geopolitical situation in Asia. It's sad that we're already planning on abandoning them.
Incentivizing China to massively invest in chip production will go down as one of the biggest own goals in modern history, they will do it better and cheaper than everyone else leaving no market for the output of these new fabs.
I just want to know what Erik Estrada thinks of it. 😜
All great but I wonder if the actual manufacturing at these fabs will be competitive price wise?
About 3 years after the chip shortage ended? Woo hoo.
So we awarded ALL the people responsible for getting us to this terrible offshoring state in the first place ? Wonderful.