Comment by digdigdag 4 months ago
- Over 50% of the workers flew in from Taiwan to work on this plant and make these chips.
- The chips still need to fly back to Taiwan to be packaged as there are no facilities here with such a capability.
Made in america is a hard sell. But at least showing the glaring STEM field gap in the U.S. is a start to finally addressing the brain drain.
Surely there is a lot of software involved in the design / operation of these fabs, it's not just designing the chip directly. Another commenter mentioned EDA so maybe I'll look into that.
EDA software has some of the most amazing algorithms. I'm always surprised more CS people aren't into it.
You can find many great opensource projects here: https://theopenroadproject.org
But to get some context, and try out the flow and how everything works together, start here: https://tinytapeout.com
I'm not too sure but I would assume there's going to be faster turn prototype chips in the USA now? Is packaging needed to prove a prototype? Can we start buying IP blocks and make our own ICs? I'd love a MCU with built in IMU and wide range LDO, not sure if that's possible all on the same node.
There's going to be some niches opening as a result of this IMO.
It might be possible but domain knowledge might give some candidates a leg up on the competition, going in blind just seems suboptimal, though most of the relevant EE undergraduate classes were in sophomore and junior level for me in the late 1980's and I only got to use EDA software when working a couple of semesters for AMD as a junior.
it's first step. you gotta do something to bootstrap, solve chicken-egg problem. From what I can see around me, the "made in america" is a no joke branding. a lot of pppl going tobuyjust because of that. and may even consider it as social status and their policial support.
The Purism Librem 5 phone is very expensive and unfortunately not that popular. Haven't met anyone who uses one yet
And it's also a pile of shit compared to an iPhone or a Galaxy S device.
There's your real issue right there. People are already paying $1199 for new phones. According to this article: https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/9/13/17851052/apple-ipho...
Another $100. That's a little over six years old now though, so bump it up to $200.
Would I pay $1399 for an American made iPhone with American made internals, as the article suggests it would cost ($100, but I doubled it for inflation, because, why not?)? You bet your sweet ass I would.
I have two kids in grade school and middle school and I see why we have a STEM gap. I have to constantly correct the learning at home in math. Also, I think it's fair to assume that in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China the school kids are actually put on an academic grindset unlike here where there is such little academic rigor or discipline being enforced by the school it makes sense why the k-12 education numbers are as bad as they are in the USA.
It might be worth getting up in front of the kids in middle school + and saying "Hey you're in competition at a global scale here. You're going to have to work your butts off to stay relevant."
Maybe that's how US is going to have enough STEM talents -- just like WWI and WWII, take as many talents as possible when the other parts of the world are in shit.
The scenario that we’re going to be able to fight a war with another first world power, where we will attack their infrastructure but ours will be left untouched, seems unlikely.
We just need to make sure that we never fight directly with another regional power, e.g. China or Russia. IMO, neither of them wants a fight with the US too, because you don't want to push a super power to the corner, EVEN if you think you are good enough to win.
In the mean time, the situation in EU and Asia is going to deteriorate and North America can absorb more talents as it sees fit. The last two times it was mostly EU but this time Asia might be the new talent pool we can draw from.
China invading Taiwan seems a ton more likely than China lobbing missiles into Arizona.
It seems likely enough if the situation escalates. The conflict could be anything from a naval skirmish where neither side attacks the other's mainland to a total war scenario. It will likely start as naval-only and become gradually more involved if no side backs down.
However, it's safe to assume cyber attacks will hit Arizona. It's not unreasonable to assume crazy people will attack critical infrastructure, and we'll have to deal with the social fallout from that.
I have no specific info regarding this plant, but for anyone who never experienced this: flying in people from other plants at the starts (and all 3rd party vendors for a hypercare phase at launch) seems pretty normal.
If they have to keep staffing it that way, that's different.
> - The chips still need to fly back to Taiwan to be packaged as there are no facilities here with such a capability.
This seems to be a much more achievable barrier to work around than not having a fab.
you can fly a few hundred million dollars worth of chips in a single flight. You need not be concerned. The impact from temu shipments is several orders of magnitude higher.
e.g. you can get 572 a15 dies per 300mm wafer at 90% yield. These likely weigh a few hundred grams.
By my rough calculations a million iPhones of a15s is about 200kg of silicon. excluding packaging, which would dwarf this mass entirely.
made in america is also a federally defined standard that these chips categorically fail to meet. assembled in the united states is more appropriate, and even then if you didnt hire americans to do it, what was the point?
this is starting to feel like the best of intentions that has spiraled into a political theatricality where close-enough will be good-enough.
given the current state of declining US college enrollment, the affordability crisis of college, the growing wage gap, the failure of the minimum wage to keep up with the cost of living, and the failure to reform predatory US student lending practices I do not see how the US will in the next 25 years ever manage to curate the type of braintrust for which it was once renowned across the globe.
This is so disconnected from reality. They've gone from breaking ground to replicating one of the most advanced fabrication processes in the history of the world _at scale_ in about 4 years, but they'll be sending the dies off for packaging while their packaging partner comes online so its just political theatre?
Also, over half of the employees are local hires and the ratio will increase as more of the fab spins up. IMO it would be much worse political theatre to delay and balloon the cost of the project by forcing TSMC to exclusively use a workforce that has no experience with the companies tools and processes.
Off topic but currently relevant:
Over 50% of the workers flew in from Taiwan to work on this plant and make these chips.
Those are the 50% we’re willing to bring in no questions asked via any visa program.
Not the elusive Java developer.
Does anyone know the general path to get involved in this? Perhaps its romantic, but this seems important, it seems hard, and it seems like something I can be proud of working on (as opposed to maximizing ad clicks). I'm just a SWE w/ a Comp sci degree, so what's the entry-point here?