Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

(tomshardware.com)

Comments

digdigdag 14 January 2025
- 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.

duxup 14 January 2025
Seems like this is actually happening.

I saw so many predictions of how this couldn't happen and "yeah but" ... but it seems to be happening for the most part.

blackeyeblitzar 14 January 2025
I like the idea of made in America and bringing manufacturing self sufficiency to the US. But I don’t like the idea of reducing dependency on Taiwan, which makes it so that the world may ignore their plight in face of increasing aggression from China. The CCP is an authoritarian dictatorial government that seeks illegitimate control over Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and other areas. They need to be stopped and the solution isn’t to remove incentives to defend those areas.
datadrivenangel 14 January 2025
These chips are still sent to Taiwan for packing, so it's a good step but not a complete step.
lysace 14 January 2025
Made using which process? The article doesn't mention this.

https://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/log...

notepad0x90 15 January 2025
I keep hearing about a skills gap in the US for fabs, what skills or jobs are actually suffering from this? people with masters in nanotech, compeng, EE?

Perhaps there is a skill gap because nobody actually knows there is a demand? I have no idea what to recommend to people who are trying to choose a college degree.

With my industry in infosec, at least there are certifications one can take, even proper masters degrees these days. In my experience, there is no skills gap in cybersec, despite what CEO's and linkedin-types' sentiment. They just don't want to pay market price for skilled talent. "skills gap" has meant "we need more talent so we can pay less", there is no actual shortage of people who can do the jobs adequately.

Is it different for chip fabrication? and if so, how can regular people work/study to obtain these skills? If I, having read HN for years and reading about the fab process have no clue, how can regular people who don't visit HN?

If you all can help me answer this, I'll try to recruit a few people into pursuing the right career to help meet this demand.

seethishat 14 January 2025
Off topic... Taiwan also machines and heat treats some of the best cutlery steels in the world. Taichung City is famous for this. This is not as delicate a process as producing CPU chips, but it is hard to get right consistently.

Most all major cutlery companies have product lines that are produced solely in Taiwan (Spyderco, Cold Steel, Demko, etc.)

It would be nice to see Taiwanese steel industy move some production to the US as well.

bitsage 14 January 2025
Funny enough, Fab 21 was announced in May 2020 and completed construction in July 2022, a month before the Chips Act was signed.
souenzzo 14 January 2025
Half of the works are from Taiwan All machines were imported to build the factory. USA can't do anythings without immigrants. China was able to develop its own chip factory without immigrants and without buying machines (because USA blocked the 'free market')

USA lost.

rglover 14 January 2025
This is really exciting. It'd be awesome if the rebirth of American industrialism was tech hardware driven. It sounds like this being mass production ready is still a few years off, but kudos to Apple and TSMC for working to make this happen.
nottorp 14 January 2025
As an european, all I wonder is if this will make Apple devices even more expensive.
xattt 14 January 2025
Is this the first “Made in USA” chip in Apple devices since the Fishkill PPC 970?
misiti3780 14 January 2025
How hard will this be to scale to up 50% of Taiwan production into the US?
hintymad 14 January 2025
Do we know why the US government did not promise to buy chips but to give tax breaks (or investment thereof)? Wouldn't promise to buy create a better incentive to the manufacturers?
__loops__ 14 January 2025
3nm? 5nm? What chips are being made? A chip isn’t a chip
Havoc 15 January 2025
Surprised they're going to apple rather than say military purposes
throwaway-blaze 14 January 2025
They'll be flown from the US to Taiwan for packaging, at least until packaging services exist here. Then they'll be flown to China, Southeast Asia, India, or possibly Brazil for final assembly into an iPhone or computer, at least until lower cost assembly plants are built here or someplace cheaper like Mexico.
disapointed 15 January 2025
I'm not interested what Apple says. What they do in FB is so many posts they posting what ever they like even posts of almost naked women and girls, looks like prostitution in FB. They are saying is their right to do that and their policy. It is disgusting thing in my point of view. Used to be postings of my friends now is totally disaster.
bfrog 14 January 2025
Imagine TSMC not getting US funds to bring over a Taiwanese workforce large enough to result in "Little Taiwan" being constructed in the desert.
ashoeafoot 14 January 2025
Taiwan exodus in 3..2..1
hettygreen 14 January 2025
with required NSA backdoor of course.
zombiwoof 14 January 2025
Make America good at slave labor again basically
sylware 14 January 2025
This is only the first (significant) step for the american continent to be able to build cutting edge chips (again).