Intel...that's my customer.
Wait... "Oh-Hee-Oh ?"
Yul Brynner rolls over in his grave.
Wait... "Oh-Hee-Oh ?"
Yul Brynner rolls over in his grave.
Intel Is Investing $20 Billion Towards a Massive New Semiconductor Plant
- Thread starter buster
- Start date
The boards are primarily made in China because that's where the Taiwanese contract manufacturers have set up shop. Foxconn makes the boards off of Apple or other companies' specifications and they assemble all that stuff there.
There probably are some specialty circuit board manufacturers in Mexico though.
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Yeah - just feel we’d fix more current and future problems doing less with China and more down south …
Too many eggs in one basket …
Labor cost in China is very high now, I think some contract manufacturers are moving back to Taiwan instead, or if they want cheap they are moving to Vietnam.
Why not Mexico? Manufacturing doesn't happen in thin air. Taiwan has been doing it for so long they are the backbone on engineering and management support, and it is easier for them to work with China and Vietnam than Mexico (language barrier, cultural barrier, travel distance, etc).
Mexico probably has better support on the auto side of manufacturing for the US market so they are there.
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They are doing aerospace components as well … and who knows what happens with the China sea situation … having things reached by truck/rail has some value I’d think … Feels like we are paying for our own demise now …
Foxconn was supposedly trying to set up shop in Brazil, but for whatever reason that didn't work out.
The other deal is that the average high school graduate in China is probably better educated than the average high school graduate in Latin America. Although they're a Taiwanese company, they're not so invested in China that they won't go elsewhere. They actually assemble iPhones in India now.
Foxconn set to discontinue Brazil manufacturing operations
The firm appears to be giving up on the country following promises of $12bn investment.
www.zdnet.com
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/7RL3NKW7QBJDBF7TS3QAJALYNQ.jpg)
Foxconn India iPhone plant to reopen on Wednesday -legislator
Apple Inc supplier Foxconn will reopen an iPhone manufacturing facility in southern India on Wednesday, government officials and a legislator in the region where the plant is located told Reuters.
www.reuters.com
I just mentioned that Foxconn has at least one factory in India, although my understanding is that they're currently making iPhones for the Indian market before they start making them for other parts of the world.
While the language issue has been cited as why Foxconn and Pegatron set up shop in mainland China, they don't seem to be that invested in only working in China. Not sure about Taiwan as they've primarily shifted to the highest end assembly. Obviously Taiwan is where the majority of semiconductor wafer fabrication is in the entire world now, but it's a small island, most of it is mountainous, and there's only so much land that's suitable for manufacturing. Thank TSMC and UMC for all that wafer manufacturing. When they started out, people thought that they were crazy. I don't remember any company I was at working with them. Most fabless companies back then used spare capacity at major companies making their own products.
But it's really weird. I've heard of big semiconductor companies (like maybe Micron) going to TSMC for manufacturing when they don't have the specific process they need if all their internal processes are designed for specific products like memories. The business is like that. I heard that Intel is on of ARM's top 10 customers. Buying something from a competitor isn't all that unusual. Especially Apple buying stuff from Samsung.
I remember it was because Brazil charges a lot for import, so they try to get around it by making their local units there. Probably yield is not good for a small market or other problems.Foxconn was supposedly trying to set up shop in Brazil, but for whatever reason that didn't work out.
The other deal is that the average high school graduate in China is probably better educated than the average high school graduate in Latin America. Although they're a Taiwanese company, they're not so invested in China that they won't go elsewhere. They actually assemble iPhones in India now.
Foxconn set to discontinue Brazil manufacturing operations
The firm appears to be giving up on the country following promises of $12bn investment.Foxconn India iPhone plant to reopen on Wednesday -legislator
Apple Inc supplier Foxconn will reopen an iPhone manufacturing facility in southern India on Wednesday, government officials and a legislator in the region where the plant is located told Reuters.
Brazil has some world class manufacturing. I mean - I flown on an Embraer jet before.
Not sure what happened with Foxconn though. They claim it was a combination of workforce productivity along with government money that was promised but which never materialized.
I was under the impression that environmental concerns were a major roadblock to chip fabrication in America due to the massive amount of cleaning water needed and the resulting heavy metal contamination. Glad to know that's now the case.
I visited a fab once. I was taking a class on semiconductor fabrication taught by a process engineer at HP. He took us on a tour of the fab on a weekend. Didn't get to see any active work, but I do remember seeing the pipes that were labelled as arsine gas.
They're supposed to have processes in place to prevent contamination. They can't simply dump all the waste they have into a municipal sewer. But of course there are more modern techniques that are supposed to be better than 30 years ago where certain chemicals have been phased out. Not sure how that's done around the world though.
I've only been in a fab 15 years ago (HP's fab in Eugene Oregon), so this info may be outdated by now. Basically the environmental concern of the processing chemical are not big because whatever they do the biggest concern is contamination: from human particles from breathing, skins, etc. All the 300mm equipments are enclosed with HEPA filters chambers to reduce contamination. The chemicals used for processing, are either water based and decontaminated within the facility, and the chemical gas are isolated between chambers that are often "vacuumed" to prevent cross contamination.
The bigger problem though is they use a lot of water, and from what I heard Hsinchu has a limit on how much they can grow because of the amount of water they use for FABs. I wonder if they are better now with the advancement in water filtration technologies.
One thing I learned is a lot of the TSMC's advance fab were partly funded by World Bank, and I wouldn't be surprised that South Korea and Japan got the same funding for their DRAM and NAND fabs. Sometimes these investments are political, rather than market economy driven. Andy Grove said in his book that Intel couldn't compete with the Japanese when their R&D staffs are 4x as big and they don't know where they got their funding from, so they had to exit the DRAM market.
The bigger problem though is they use a lot of water, and from what I heard Hsinchu has a limit on how much they can grow because of the amount of water they use for FABs. I wonder if they are better now with the advancement in water filtration technologies.
One thing I learned is a lot of the TSMC's advance fab were partly funded by World Bank, and I wouldn't be surprised that South Korea and Japan got the same funding for their DRAM and NAND fabs. Sometimes these investments are political, rather than market economy driven. Andy Grove said in his book that Intel couldn't compete with the Japanese when their R&D staffs are 4x as big and they don't know where they got their funding from, so they had to exit the DRAM market.
There was a news clip a month ago about Taiwan building a new plant to make the lstest chips and they are investing 100 billion into that new plant.
So building a 20 billion dollar plant here might still not keep up to be number one.
So building a 20 billion dollar plant here might still not keep up to be number one.
Still a big demand for older tech. Those old ic’s might not be latest and greatest, but once designed into a module, it has to be proven that something newer works as expected.
Some of the stuff can’t take advantage of fine lithography, not if it is high voltage/current and without any real digital content inside of it.
The new TSMC plant is in Arizona, and is expected to cost about $12B. It is a 5nm tech node, which is used for the most advanced products today.
Technology node, or geometry, refers to the width of the smallest traces (wires) on the densest chip layer.
That's 5 billionths of a meter... Boggles the mind.
Intel has to make these investments, been falling behind to the point that Apple gave them the boot and designed their own better chips.
Well - Taiwan is surrounded by water. That kind of comes with the territory when you're an island.
Wells, desalination plant to tackle water shortage - Taipei Times
Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwan
www.taipeitimes.com
From what I understand, the main issue with pollution these days isn't necessarily going to be all the metals that are used, as those are captured and properly disposed. But there might be some emissions into the air for whatever reason. And something I read about some old fabs that were decommissioned was that they had leaky underground pipes that leaked contaminants. But that was a long time ago and I'd hope they would have learned how to prevent soil contamination. There isn't much wafer processing going on now in Silicon Valley, but in the 70s and 80s it was a hotbed of wafer manufacturing.
Silicon Valley Is One of the Most Polluted Places in the Country
Microchip manufacturers contaminated the groundwater in the 1980s. Almost 40 years later, the cleanup still isn’t complete.
www.theatlantic.com
The instructor I mentioned worked out of HP's fab in Palo Alto. I believe by the 90s it was just a research fab to develop new processes, but I don't think they did a lot of production there. He also did some work out of Stanford, and they had a small fab right there in the center of the building. I had to turn in an assignment late once, and he said he would be at his desk there. It was really interesting seeing this thing right in the middle of an office building.
Good! That's a good strategic move for the USA. Imagine if we had a supply over the last year that was uninterrupted. We've lost our strategic sense over the last 20 years over lust for cheap crap.
Intel Is Investing $20 Billion Towards a Massive New Semiconductor Plant
Intel is set to invest $20 billion into a massive new semiconductor chip manufacturing site near Columbus, Ohio.interestingengineering.com
Intel is set to invest $20 billion into a massive new semiconductor chip manufacturing site near Columbus, Ohio, a report from Reuters reveals.
The news comes as an analyst informs that China, which has invested heavily in semiconductor technology in recent years, is "three or four generations" away from being at the cutting edge of semiconductor production.
Interesting that California, which prides itself so much on being on the cutting edge of environmental protection, allowed Silicon Valley to become so polluted. But then again, that's where people have to clean human feces of their front porches in some cities. (My cousin, being one of them, in SF. Lives in a 2 million dollar bay front house and has to do this a couple times a week. Nice.)
