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Apple's mobile chips are now made in the U.S. — TSMC produces the older A16 Bionic at its Arizona fab
(www.tomshardware.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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That's great but, honest question: why?
E: LOL downvotes for asking a question. Never change Lemmy.
Because the U.S. government gave them $6.6 billion to do it under the CHIPS Act: https://www.reuters.com/technology/tsmc-wins-66-bln-us-subsidy-arizona-chip-production-2024-04-08/
With TSMC, it’s insurance against China invading Taiwan but Intel (and probably everyone else) got a load of subsidies too. After the chip shortage during the pandemic and Russia invading Ukraine, chip production became a national security issue.
Mystery solved, I suppose!
From a business perspective: more control over the manufacturing process and less risk of getting hit by tariffs
Less risk of tariffs on China, less risk of supply chain disruptions like with the pandemic, takes advantage of incentives from the US government, and is something that is cool to advertise.
How does being in the US give you more control over manufacturing?
Tariffs are not new.
Tariffs change. Especially when Trump or another nutcase is in office.
Tariffs in general aren't new, but Trump's tariffs were applied haphazardly and poorly determined because he doesn't understand what they are. Avoiding that uncertainty entirely is a good idea.
Not about being in the us specifically. But about keeping your manufacturing near your entire supply chain.
But the uncertainty of what will come soon for tariffs is
Because it's in the US?
Yeah I got that when I put "in the US" in the comment you replied to.
It answers the question for you.
Nice way to be rude.
Multiple sources of production.
We learned during concentrating all of your production in one small country wasn't a good idea. Plus having multiple sources has always been suggested in case anything goes wrong with one company you can still have some production.
Sure but there are other countries that also have cheaper manufacturing rates.
Those countries probably didn't pay 5.5 billion dollars for TSMC to build a new facility in their country.
FUCK
E: $6.6B, according to NYT
These facilities are expensive, like 20-30B for the big ones. If you're curious youtube has some good long videos on how these places work. As far as I've checked all the gov grants given to companies as incentives (whether chips or energy or other infrastructure projects) only partially cover the costs of construction.
And are susceptible to interference. Samsung is also building huge manufacturing infrastructure in the US.
So now it can be subject to US interference. Geopolitics folks.
But then US interference most directly affects US jobs and customers. That’s a much better er situation.
Think of car manufacturers that have done this for decades. They may have a global supply chain, heading mostly back to their home country, but they also have worldwide plants near their customers. Thanks partly to similar incentives and tariffs, my Honda was assembled in, I think, Kentucky, and was as us-manufactured as any us brand, meaning us jobs, us manufacturing, partial us supply chain. The result has been almost entirely good.
Apple wants to cut down on counterfeiting. The US wants to prevent supply chain issues and reduce reliance on foreign chip production. The wiki article on the CHIPS Act is a pretty good overview: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act
Uhh. Who's counterfeiting a cpu that only basically 2 factories in the world can make? Functional fakes are a thing for some really basic chips but an apple arm cpu seems like a little much.
Perhaps unauthorized is a better word than counterfeit. The manufacturing process for CPUs often yields less than ideal chips. Perhaps they don't hit the clock speed they're supposed to, or maybe they consume too much power. Those chips are supposed to be discarded, but they often find their way to the black market. Sometimes those chips aren't even failures. If a fab overproduces, they're not just going to give Apple the extra chips. These are the things Apple worries about, and they view it as far less likely to happen if those chips are made in the US.
I should also point out that the CPU isn't the only chip that TSMC makes for Apple. Apple wants to make sure they're getting a cut of every replacement part that gets sold. You can't even swap screens on two brand new iPhones without Apple giving you a hard time.
How naive.
Yeah that's been my least favourite experience with Lemmy.
Many replies are hostile and highly opinionated.
I don't have an answer for your question but it was a good question and it made me curious.
I'm in favour of domestic production but I would always want more information about it.
We’ve spent the last few decades outsourcing key industries, where US no longer has as much manufacturing and we’re way too dependent on other countries. It took supply chain disruptions from COViD to realize how much of a bad idea that was.
We’re finally trying to recapture some of those key jobs, industries, supply chains, dependencies, starting with chips and renewable energy. THANKS, BIDEN! this is what will make America great again