[Updated] TSMC Reportedly to build US Foundries

[Kisai]

On 5/12/2020 at 2:27 PM, tarfeef101 said:

Ofc on the more public side of things, politics is definitely something. People love to insist everything should be done in their country, even if it would end up increasing costs (not sure about just silicon fabrication, but a lot of the electronics supply chain is overseas, for example). 

The pandemic has kinda proved how fragile some logistics pipelines are. Really every country should have domestic capacity to do everything that their population relies on. So some company producing processors that could be easily swapped with domestically produced processors would be nice, but AMD and Intel don't even share the same socket. There is no possibility of buying an entirely US-sourced parts PC. 

 

Now on the other hand, domestically produced food, protective equipment, cleaning materials, snacks and such is something that should be produced domestically for various reasons, of which one being "what happens if the logistics pipeline is derailed", like protesters blocking rail and truck shipping routes, or a warehouse catches fire, or a train derails or a ship sinks. We can live without computers (believe it or not) but we can't live without food and medical supplies. If certain countries can produce something cheaper, let them, and buy excess from them when domestic supply is pinched. But relying on 100% imports for some goods is just kinda insane.

 

Just to provide a stupid example. How long do you think your clothing lasts. Nearly all clothing is produced in south asia, and much of it such poor quality that it is worn out after being washed 20 times. We can survive a year or two without any clothing imports, but the fact that very little clothing is produced domestically, means that a large scale interruption may result in people not having winter clothing.

[tarfeef101]

15 hours ago, Kisai said:

The pandemic has kinda proved how fragile some logistics pipelines are. Really every country should have domestic capacity to do everything that their population relies on. So some company producing processors that could be easily swapped with domestically produced processors would be nice, but AMD and Intel don't even share the same socket. There is no possibility of buying an entirely US-sourced parts PC. 

 

Now on the other hand, domestically produced food, protective equipment, cleaning materials, snacks and such is something that should be produced domestically for various reasons, of which one being "what happens if the logistics pipeline is derailed", like protesters blocking rail and truck shipping routes, or a warehouse catches fire, or a train derails or a ship sinks. We can live without computers (believe it or not) but we can't live without food and medical supplies. If certain countries can produce something cheaper, let them, and buy excess from them when domestic supply is pinched. But relying on 100% imports for some goods is just kinda insane.

 

Just to provide a stupid example. How long do you think your clothing lasts. Nearly all clothing is produced in south asia, and much of it such poor quality that it is worn out after being washed 20 times. We can survive a year or two without any clothing imports, but the fact that very little clothing is produced domestically, means that a large scale interruption may result in people not having winter clothing.

Honestly I've been quite impressed with the logistics companies here in Canada at least. They have been stepping up pretty well, at least with the experiences I've had (which there are a good few of, I like to buy shit :D). 

 

Yeah you're absolutely right though. Many countries do subsidize or otherwise help (i.e. import caps, tariffs...) local farmers to continue to exist even if uncompetitive in an open market. This is mainly justified to provide stability in pandemic or war times (and ofc pandering to people with "local is best" sentiments, people who don't want to change careers, isolationists, but the most logical argument is the stability of crucial product supply).

 

This pandemic has exposed countries' ability to produce not just food, but other goods considered essential as well. I'm sure policies will change for other goods/sectors as a result as well. 

[Bombastinator]

Chickens.  Counting. Best not to.  They can even go so far as to buy the property and it can still be vaporware.  If they build the machinery and it opens, then it happened.

[xentropa]

On 5/15/2020 at 8:46 AM, Thomas001 said:

I thought they already had a fab or something here in the US already?

They have a fab in Washington, but it isn't latest gen node and it is only for 8 inch wafers.

[xentropa]

I also don't buy the numerous tech jobs either.  For a fab the size they are proposing, probably 200 hundred engineers for 80K a year salaries, 50 or so upper management, everyone else will be a facilities maintenece, machine operation / cleaning / repair which requires HS education and can probably expect 50K or so a year. 

[Rolling2405]

On 5/12/2020 at 2:36 PM, StDragon said:

I'm sure it's more of national security.

How would this increase US national security? I think it's more about creating American jobs and having more manufacturing done here in the US because that is what the current administration wants.

 

I don't get why TSMC would want to manufacture here in the US because then they have to follow US laws like not doing business with Huawei. Correct me if I am wrong but if they did not do any manufacturing in the US then they would not have to follow US laws right?

[xentropa]

50 minutes ago, Thomas001 said:

How would this increase US national security? I think it's more about creating American jobs and having more manufacturing done here in the US because that is what the current administration wants.

 

I don't get why TSMC would want to manufacture here in the US because then they have to follow US laws like not doing business with Huawei. Correct me if I am wrong but if they did not do any manufacturing in the US then they would not have to follow US laws right?

As is the case with the tariffs, legality of doing business or exemption of restrictions is a function of $$$$ contributed to the administration or at stake with the economy.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, xentropa said:

As is the case with the tariffs, legality of doing business or exemption of restrictions is a function of $$$$ contributed to the administration or at stake with the economy.

Not sure if this is what you are referring to or not but there are multiple parts to that thing.  One is that China feels (rightly or wrongly) that the cia used US electronics to infiltrate Chinese security systems and therefore feel it would be wholly appropriate for them to do the same.  It’s an argument already used to justify chinese cyberattacks on American business.  A gift that keeps on giving.  Also the restrictions on huawaii are a pawn in the trade war. TSMC is sort of chinese and sort of not because of the weird status of Taiwan.  They have the secret sauce for nodes though.

[StDragon]

7 hours ago, Thomas001 said:

How would this increase US national security? I think it's more about creating American jobs and having more manufacturing done here in the US because that is what the current administration wants.

 

I don't get why TSMC would want to manufacture here in the US because then they have to follow US laws like not doing business with Huawei. Correct me if I am wrong but if they did not do any manufacturing in the US then they would not have to follow US laws right?

Because God forbid there's another Cold War (and it's likely depending on whom you ask) between China and the US where Taiwan becomes inaccessible, the US will need fabrication. And frankly, things aren't so rosy in Europe either (geopolitical in regards to NATO).

 

I could easily see this as a hedge for the maintenance and operation of the military industrial complex. But IMHO, if it comes to that, the world has much bigger problems! But, better to have something in your pocket than not.

[Bombastinator]

38 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Because God forbid there's another Cold War (and it's likely depending on whom you ask) between China and the US where Taiwan becomes inaccessible, the US will need fabrication. And frankly, things aren't so rosy in Europe either (geopolitical in regards to NATO).

 

I could easily see this as a hedge for the maintenance and operation of the military industrial complex. But IMHO, if it comes to that, the world has much bigger problems! But, better to have something in your pocket than not.

The impression I get is that for some intelligence groups on both sides of the fence the Cold War never actually ended even though it did for the world at large.

Its embers were stoked and hoarded in the hopes it would return.

 

The worry is apparently that Chinese produced part could have hardware Backdoors baked into them, which is something China accused the us of dining with US produced chips.  In theory a fab on US soil could be checked to make sure that the parts were unadulterated.  The issue is that tsmc is Taiwanese which is both China and not China.  It’s confusing.  There also the huwai connection.  Huwai IS a mainland Chinese company who buys parts from tsmc.

[StDragon]

44 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The impression I get is that for some intelligence groups on both sides of the fence the Cold War never actually ended even though it did for the world at large.

Its embers were stoked and hoarded in the hopes it would return.

 

The worry is apparently that Chinese produced part could have hardware Backdoors baked into them, which is something China accused the us of dining with US produced chips.  In theory a fab on US soil could be checked to make sure that the parts were unadulterated.  The issue is that tsmc is Taiwanese which is both China and not China.  It’s confusing.  There also the huwai connection.  Huwai IS a mainland Chinese company who buys parts from tsmc.

Essentially, yes, it comes down to the element of trust. It's also about not being caught with your pants down should SHTF.

 

Though it's not like the US wouldn't attempt something similar (backdoor) given the prior attempt at legislation via Clipper Chip and PRISM. 

[xentropa]

10 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

In theory a fab on US soil could be checked to make sure that the parts were unadulterated.  The issue is that tsmc is Taiwanese which is both China and not China.  It’s confusing.  There also the huwai connection.  Huwai IS a mainland Chinese company who buys parts from tsmc.

 

TSMC doesn't design any circuits.  They only make what is provided to them.  While TSMC would be in possession of photomasks for the chips, reverse engineering them, mush less modifying them is near impossible.  You'd have to take up backdoor concerns with the designers like apple, qualcomm, huawei etc.

[hishnash]

10 hours ago, StDragon said:

Though it's not like the US wouldn't attempt something similar (backdoor) given the prior attempt at legislation via Clipper Chip and PRISM. 

Yep in-fact since TSMC is not a Chinese company (and does not run fabs in China) and Taiwan is the last country in the world to corporate with china (china considers Taiwan to be a region of China, Taiwan thinks otherwise) moving moving chips fab from Taiwan to US increases the chances of some gov interference. 

 

Taiwan is a small enough country that the risk of damaging one of its largest exports (compute systems, phone etc) is way to high to even consider this.
on the other hand for the US the iimpact of someone finding out they are playing dirty is minimal so there will be attempts to do this from US branches of gov.

[StDragon]

2 hours ago, hishnash said:

Taiwan is a small enough country that the risk of damaging one of its largest exports (compute systems, phone etc) is way to high to even consider this.
on the other hand for the US the iimpact of someone finding out they are playing dirty is minimal so there will be attempts to do this from US branches of gov.

I'm going to start off by saying this - Don't hate me, I'm just the messenger, and I'm not the first to have said it being proposed. That all said....

 

Given how the FBI finally was able to hack the iPhone into a Saudi cadet (killed three soliders) and validated a known tie to al Qaeda, this has gotten AG Barr all lit up again. He's been demanding Apple to create back-doors for years now, and they won't budge. Regardless of where people stand on the issue, I think what will occur is an international treaty that will force the tech industry into key escrow. That means that when you setup a new device (phone) or cloud service, a prerequisite will be to state the country of your nationality or that of the organization you work for. Then the proper key will become available to that nation. No special chip required.

[hishnash]

50 minutes ago, StDragon said:

I think what will occur is an international treaty that will force the tech industry into key escrow.

I dont think they would ever do an `international treaty` for this as it risks the security of every nation. If you are the US you want your spies to be able to operate in `plain site` (that is why they made the tore network) if every nation has 100% coverage of every phone in its boarders then you cant spie on them... 

 

 

51 minutes ago, StDragon said:

that of the organization you work for.

That is already the case with MDM. if your work provides you your phone they own it and 100% of the data that comes from it.

[StDragon]

13 minutes ago, hishnash said:

I dont think they would ever do an `international treaty` for this as it risks the security of every nation. If you are the US you want your spies to be able to operate in `plain site` (that is why they made the tore network) if every nation has 100% coverage of every phone in its boarders then you cant spie on them... 

It's for decrypting stored device data, not SSL traffic. But yet, it would make matters worse for national security. Politics reign supreme over rationality.

 

I never said it was a good idea. But anytime something bad happens "terrorism" or "Someone think of the Children" is the root phrases that will get a law passed and all hell breaks loose. Buy by God, they did it for the people, and the people are happy.  That is what becomes of the heroes in office, but I digress.

[Bombastinator]

4 hours ago, xentropa said:

 

TSMC doesn't design any circuits.  They only make what is provided to them.  While TSMC would be in possession of photomasks for the chips, reverse engineering them, mush less modifying them is near impossible.  You'd have to take up backdoor concerns with the designers like apple, qualcomm, huawei etc.

Near.

human ingenuity and desperation cannot be overestimated.

The allies in world war 2 did not have a copy of the enigma machine.  They had a wooden model of it that was produced in secret by a small cabal of people most of whom died to get that out.  It was enough though.

[xentropa]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

Near.

human ingenuity and desperation cannot be overestimated.

The allies in world war 2 did not have a copy of the enigma machine.  They had a wooden model of it that was produced in secret by a small cabal of people most of whom died to get that out.  It was enough though.

If you really want to reverse engineer a photomask by mapping the entire area with an electron microscope with enough detail to see 20nm features, you are probably looking at somewhere between 10 to 100 million 1920x1080 jpeg images per mask.  Even the best automated SEM machines would take 10 seconds or so to fetch an image.  That's for one mask too.  A 14nm CPU can use as many as 50 masks.

 

It would probably be easier for TSMC to hire their own circuit design engineers to create false chips and pass it off to customers.  But they have no financial incentive to do that because the reason companies trust tsmc is that tsmc can claim ignorance to chip design and thus there is zero conflict of interest between their own goals and the customers'.  That unfortunately wasn't the case with Samsung, Apple and Qualcomm 10 years ago.

[Bombastinator]

7 hours ago, xentropa said:

If you really want to reverse engineer a photomask by mapping the entire area with an electron microscope with enough detail to see 20nm features, you are probably looking at somewhere between 10 to 100 million 1920x1080 jpeg images per mask.  Even the best automated SEM machines would take 10 seconds or so to fetch an image.  That's for one mask too.  A 14nm CPU can use as many as 50 masks.

 

It would probably be easier for TSMC to hire their own circuit design engineers to create false chips and pass it off to customers.  But they have no financial incentive to do that because the reason companies trust tsmc is that tsmc can claim ignorance to chip design and thus there is zero conflict of interest between their own goals and the customers'.  That unfortunately wasn't the case with Samsung, Apple and Qualcomm 10 years ago.

Or some other organization who does have incentive can do all the work and just slide the altered masks into the workflow.  I’m not saying it’s not difficult I’m not saying it’s not unreasonable I’m saying it’s not impossible.  Wouldn’t even be impossible to do it on US soil.  Wouldn’t even be impossible to do it to intel.  Just harder.  The Chinese government thinks this was actually DONE to intel by the CIA.  Strongly enough that they developed their own chip systems for all government computers.  It would be a bit more difficult.  Especially if very careful track of the masks and who had access to them was kept

[xentropa]

AAaaaaannnnnnndd here comes the request for subsidies!

It's almost like governments need to kowtow to companies just to create jobs.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/tsmc-confident-of-replacing-any-huawei-orders-lost-to-u-s-curbs

 

“Subsidies will be a key factor in TSMC’s decision to set up a fab in the U.S.,” he said. “We are still talking to the U.S. government. Our request is that the state and federal governments together make up for the cost gap between the U.S. and Taiwan.”

 

I F@#$ing died reading that.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, xentropa said:

AAaaaaannnnnnndd here comes the request for subsidies!

It's almost like governments need to kowtow to companies just to create jobs.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/tsmc-confident-of-replacing-any-huawei-orders-lost-to-u-s-curbs

 

“Subsidies will be a key factor in TSMC’s decision to set up a fab in the U.S.,” he said. “We are still talking to the U.S. government. Our request is that the state and federal governments together make up for the cost gap between the U.S. and Taiwan.”

 

I F@#$ing died reading that.

It’s a bit like claims by the massively rich that they will leave the US taking their stuff with them unless they are given more special treatment already more special than almost any developed nation.