Friday, China’s central press represented by the newspaper Global times called TSMC Investment in Arizona Plant “dark turn” in the global semiconductor industry and accused Washington of tricking the world’s most advanced chip maker into setting up a wafer processing factory in the United States. Official Beijing has so far remained silent on this matter, but it is unlikely to be happy with what is happening there.
Image source: TSMC
Quite unexpectedly this week, the management of TSMC announcedthat investments in the construction of semiconductor factories in the United States will triple to $ 40 billion The company will produce about three times more chips than previously planned. If and when that happens, the US will become the largest chip manufacturing center in the world. Given the more expensive labor force in the United States, this, at a minimum, means a sharp increase in the cost of semiconductor products, with all the ensuing consequences.
Global electronics manufacturers will be forced to buy packages at a higher price. In such a scenario, Taiwan will be completely excluded from the supply chain in one way or another, until the evacuation of equipment and personnel to the United States. One can imagine that this is already being considered, since there are not enough specialists in the US to service two new TSMC plants and the growing tension between Beijing and Taipei leaves no doubt that production should be kept away from China .
Chinese authorities have not yet commented on the changes in TSMC’s plans. Beijing has spoken only negatively of the restrictions imposed by the United States and Taiwan on the location of advanced semiconductor plants in mainland China. TSMC’s “flight” to the United States changes the picture not only for Beijing, but also for the whole world.
Under TSMC’s new plans, the first plant in Arizona will begin producing 4nm products in 2024 and 3nm products in 2026. When they reach full capacity, both plants will produce more than 600,000 300mm chip wafers annually. These are colossal volumes and if they are “stolen” from the Pacific region, this will really be a huge blow to the world industry.
By the way, it’s still impossible to say for sure which equipment was installed at the first plant in Arizona – new or removed from factories in Taiwan. The resulting shortage of chips, as well as the limited ability of the ASML company itself to produce EUV scanners, may serve as an argument in favor of the latter hypothesis, and developments in the world suggest that in the next 12 months we may find out for sure.
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