Comment on Taiwan refuses to move half of U.S.-bound chip production to American shores — trade discussion to be focused on Section 232 investigation for preferential deal on semiconductors

gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  The idea behind that fab was so US can continue to build weapons if Taiwan was under attack, this why it wasn’t the latest technology. The weapons would still be important to defend it, but yeah this admin is signalling Taiwan won’t get help and is asking for 50% so it won’t suffer consequences of not helping them.

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  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    seems very dumb

    Kinda the MO of this regime, if we’re being honest

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  • Dozzi92@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Yeah, I think the whole idea of the US wanting the chips produced inside its own borders makes sense in a vacuum. China fucks around (which, sure, is against their character), chips are safe.

    Obviously we don’t live in a vacuum, and the US diplomatic mission is, at best, totally unreadable, and at worst, won’t help anyone but itself.

    As with just about any other nation, the US is using what is ostensibly it’s only bargaining chip these days, their massive consumerism, knowing that Taiwan sells the majority of its chips to the US.

    This play seems to be Trump’s only play: Demand something outrageous, with some thinly veiled threats overlaying the demand. Get rejected. Receive counterproposal that is far, far less than initial demand. Tout superiority.

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    • takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      They were already building a plant in US via Chips Act.

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• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Good. It was a naked attempt at a shakedown, and also 100% a bluff.

  It takes more than a few years to spin up a chip fab, with an outlay on the order of hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars. Even if they’d been eager to take the US up on the deal (and why would they want to relinquish a functional monopoly on cutting end processors?), there’s no way they’d be dealing with the same administration by the time it was completed. Even if Trump was still in office, the fucker changes his mind every five minutes. Not conducive to long-term economic projects like this.

  Now is emphatically not the time to undermine their strategic defense policy, which largely revolves around “if the CCP invades, we will melt our chip fabs to slag”.

  TSMC won’t have their edge forever. China’s fabs are catching up quickly, with 5nm chips in production and 3nm chips possible in a few more years. This was a good strategy when China needed to import these chips and Taiwan had the market cornered. But if TSMC’s rigged-to-explode labs go up in smoke after China’s a major player in the market, that actually benefits Beijing.

  Strapping yourself with Semtex might be a savvy play in a single moment, but it’s not going to work long term.

  That’s before you consider the real threat Taiwan poses to China is as a launchpad for US strikes into the interior.

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  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Oh I know - but I’m saying they should halt efforts now, because they’ve been going on for several years (I think close to 4-5?) at this point.

    I was also under the impression that Mainland was still meaningfully behind the cutting edge, that TSMC was absolutely not resting on their laurels, and that the prospect of the CCP fabs fully catching up isn’t super likely. Out of curiosity, do you have any references/articles about recent CSMC/etc lithography advancements?

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    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The Chinese state industries have been happy enough to throw big chunks of their GDP at the problem of high end chip fab, and it’s paying dividends.

      That’s not to say TSMC is idle, but the whole problem of living on the bleeding edge is that you’ve got nobody to crib from. All your next-gen advances have to be earned through high end R&D and brute force engineering and lots of money and time. Their rivals can reverse engineer their technology, learn from TSMC’s mistakes, and generally coast in their wake.

      What’s sort of incredibly about America’s Intel is that they haven’t done any of this shit, clinging to their dead-end chip design long after its expiration date and missing the boom in demand for high end chips entirely.

      Out of curiosity, do you have any references/articles about recent CSMC/etc lithography advancements?

      Nothing you couldn’t just Google up yourself, I’m sure. I picked up SMIC based on their advances in DUV lithography employed by ASML and it paid out big. The high margins on sale are justifying comparatively lower success rates of manufacturing.

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      • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        What’s sort of incredibly about America’s Intel is that they haven’t done any of this shit, clinging to their dead-end chip design long after its expiration date and missing the boom in demand for high end chips entirely.

        This is the most baffling thing to me. How could Intel leadership be so incompetent? They had the inside track to hundreds of billions in revenue and just decided to coast.

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      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Interesting, thanks. And yeah, I too find it utterly baffling at how Intel is turning into a has-been before our eyes. They were The Chip Guys for ages, and then the fucking quants got put in charge and carved away so much of the engineering leadership and underpinnings that it’s a husk of what it was in the 80s and 90s.

        I would, however, point out that TSMC’s whole deal is “define, and produce at scale, the bleeding edge of integrated circuit designs”, so the bit about them cribbing off of people hasn’t really been a variable in their equations for at least a couple decades. They have been major (arguably, the predominant) pioneers in chip lithography for a while now.

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      • Rentlar@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Intel: did I hear somebody say we should announce our newest 14nm+++++++++ platform?

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  • humanspiral@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    China has the engineering talent and numbers to catch up for certain, but SMIC is not producing advanced chips in volumes, even as designs for next gens of chips and SMIC technology come out fast.

    The big factor in all of this is that the market for chips in China is 5x+ that of US, and the business interests of anyone in the sector outside of China would be to choose China over US if they only had to pick one. US IP is going to expire soon enough, but is already abused for colonial power over global chip sector.

    China is definitely at a mature point where home grown chips can already compete in phones/laptops (Huawei) and AI due to their energy infrastructure. They don’t need to invade Taiwan to have useful electronics, and the home grown industry will accelerate faster than West’s. While TSMC’s margin of leadership will narrow, they will still be ahead for more than 5 years.

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• CIA_chatbot@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This, moving chip production is basically telling China to invade

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  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    plus its likely not go to built domestically anyways, all the logistic and costs, plus hiring more expensive domestic employees.

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    • CIA_chatbot@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      If only someone in the govt hadn’t defunded the stuff from the CHIPs act. I bet when Trump finds that guy he’s gonna be fired! /s

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• MITM0@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Why do you assume China is inferior in Chip manufacturing ??

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  • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    TSMC produces 3nm chips, SMIC has less economic yields for their 7nm process. I have little doubt they will eventually figure out DUV or some alternative technique, but for now they are still 3-5 years behind.

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    • MITM0@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Exactly; for now

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