Apple chip supplier TSMC is moving ahead with plans for a manufacturing plant in Phoenix, Arizona, according to Bloomberg.
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In November of 2020, Phoenix city officials approved financial incentives and government support for the new plant. The city agreed to provide $200 million in support to build infrastructure including roads and sewers, according to a notice from the city's council.
TSMC estimates that its total spending on the project, including capital expenditure, will be approximately $12 billion from 2021 to 2029, with the facility expected to directly create over 1,600 high-tech professional jobs.
Construction of the Arizona plant is now said to be "well under way." The facility will mass-produce chips fabricated with a five-nanometer process by 2024. TSMC has been gradually miniaturizing its process over the years, going from a 16nm A10 chip in iPhone 7 models, to a 7nm A13 chip in iPhone 11 models, and a 5nm process for the iPhone 12's A14 chip. Likely clients for the chips from the Arizona factory include Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Apple.
TSMC already operates a factory in Camas, Washington and design centers in Austin, Texas and San Jose, California, so the Arizona facility will be its second manufacturing site in the United States. The company's main factories are located in Taiwan.
The new Arizona plant will increase the opportunity for Apple's custom silicon chips, such as the A14 or M1 chip, to be feasibly manufactured within the United States.
Top Rated Comments
The points on water use in the area are legitimate. My understanding was this Fab will use new water conservation (more efficient recycling) of the cooling system?
vs. an island nation next to a hostile neighbor that continuously threatens their existence with developing the fastest amphibious assault craft? I'm happy that not all the worlds eggs aren't going to be in one basket anymore as Intel and GF has fallen way behind TSMC....
People upset that more manufacturing related to Apple products isn't occurring within the United States. And then they're upset because some is now coming to the US. And oh noes, TSMC, an extraordinarily successful and profitable global company, bringing a fab to the US and with that 1,600 US jobs, somehow forgot to think about water. Someone please let them know!
(b) People lose their minds around the issue of water because they immediately analogize it to something else.
Water does not disappear. Obviously so, in the sense that no matter disappears; but for water this is a stronger claim.
What one cares about is "useful" water, and this is an EXCEEDINGLY slippery concept, especially when one considers the whole US Southwest, not just a locality.
Water that evaporates may be lost for practical purposes (though even that is dodgy, if it marginally encourages rainfall elsewhere in the Southwest) but consider water used by TSMC. What happens to that water? Well,
(i) presumably it is no longer potable, sure, so can't be *immediately* drunk BUT ALSO
(ii) presumably it is also not deadly poisonous in the sense of having to live in holding tanks till the end of time.
Probably it is tainted with some chemicals, but safe to release into the environment where it gets diluted, filtered through earth, etc, and at some point it becomes equivalent to all the other water in the earth nearby.
SO -- what actually happens? Water comes into TSMC. It gets used. Then it gets discarded into the ground.
At which point it is not "wasted"! Most of it replenishes the water table (which is, of course, constantly being reduced by wells). Some of it flows into rivers, and gets used downstream.
So what's the actual problem?
Almost everything you hear about water use (and water "wastage") in the Southwest is wrong and, frankly, insane as soon as you think it through. Water is usually not "wasted" (even if it just runs off watering a golf course) in the sense that spilling gasoline onto the ground is wasting it. Not in the Southwest, where water table level is so important.
If you want to read more about this, THE book is _Where the Water Goes_ by David Owen. (Be aware that this is a book for people who want to understand; it is not a book for people who are convinced they already know everything and just want to be told how great they are. It is no _Cadillac Desert_ or similar dumb hit jobs. The author is an environmentalist, but he is that rarest of creatures, an environmentalist with both a brain and a sense of what is reasonable. It takes time, but he explains what the *real* water issues are, and how they fit together.)