News Acer Founder Doubts US Can Match Asia's Chip Making Dominance

[Admin]

Acer Founder Stan Shih says that the United States is too far behind Taiwan when it comes to chipmaking prowess.

Acer Founder Doubts US Can Match Asia's Chip Making Dominance : Read more

 

[Deleted member 431422]

I don't believe throwing money left and right can solve anything today. Acer and TSMC made it clear, you can't buy your way out off of years of negligence.

 

[Eximo]

"partly due to a lack of cleanroom tools necessary to produce ships at scale"


The idea behind it is strategic and should help future demand swells and environmental disaster or other production interruptions from being localized to a single region.

I'm sure these places would love to be profitable high volume enterprises. That takes time, but the idea is solid to have fabs all over the place. Especially considering technology adoption rates in the developing world.

 

[ottonis]

I wouldn't be overly pessimistic, though. Intel has demonstrated that it's back on track and not too far behind the latest and greatest chip manufacturing processes of the far east.
Japan is building new facilities aiming for 2 nm production in 2027.
Samsung is neck and neck with TSMC, although there is converging consensus that it cannot match TSMC for process quality (see Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 vs 8 + Gen 1).

And last but not least: I wonder what Apple's strategy might be in order to act preemptively just in case something happens to TSMC: strategic partnership with Intel and/or Samsung, or building own production facilities from scratch?

 

[hotaru251]

I mean TSMC's already having issues getting skilled enough workers for its US fab right?

& educating enough people that well isn't easy nor fast.

I wonder what Apple's strategy might be in order to act preemptively just in case something happens to TSMC: strategic partnership with Intel and/or Samsung, or building own production facilities from scratch?

if soemthing happened you for sure arent building from scratch as you don't have the time to do so.

 

[ottonis]

I mean TSMC's already having issues getting skilled enough workers for its US fab right?

& educating enough people that well isn't easy nor fast.


if soemthing happened you for sure arent building from scratch as you don't have the time to do so.

Exactly! And that's why I was wondering whether or not Apple might already be preparing something preemptively, just in case.
Even though Intel has declared to be building up huge production capacities, it might be difficult to satisfy the massive demands of Apple.

 

[watzupken]

I wouldn't be overly pessimistic, though. Intel has demonstrated that it's back on track and not too far behind the latest and greatest chip manufacturing processes of the far east.
Japan is building new facilities aiming for 2 nm production in 2027.
Samsung is neck and neck with TSMC, although there is converging consensus that it cannot match TSMC for process quality (see Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 vs 8 + Gen 1).

And last but not least: I wonder what Apple's strategy might be in order to act preemptively just in case something happens to TSMC: strategic partnership with Intel and/or Samsung, or building own production facilities from scratch?

I feel it is still too early to conclude if Intel's fab is "out of the woods". If we just take it at face value that Intel's fab branding, i.e. Intel 4, the number makes it sound like they are keeping up. But will the yield and performance keep up with competition, I think we have to see the real product to conclude.

Other thing to consider is price. This is one area that I don't think western fabs will be able to compete, at least not in the near future. So to be honest, unless there is a very strong reason to not use the fabs in Asia, I really don't think the fabs in US will be running anywhere near full capacity.

 

[ottonis]

I feel it is still too early to conclude if Intel's fab is "out of the woods". If we just take it at face value that Intel's fab branding, i.e. Intel 4, the number makes it sound like they are keeping up. But will the yield and performance keep up with competition, I think we have to see the real product to conclude.

Other thing to consider is price. This is one area that I don't think western fabs will be able to compete, at least not in the near future. So to be honest, unless there is a very strong reason to not use the fabs in Asia, I really don't think the fabs in US will be running anywhere near full capacity.

You make very valid points. I, too, think that Asia based fabs do have and will have quite some cost advantages.

That being said: If - and this a BIG "if" - TSMC for whatever reasons drops out off the market, the western countries, which are by the way also the biggest market for microchips, will no longer import any IT tech from China at all. There will be a complete separation of markets, just like we have seen with Huawei. So, in the biggest markets there will be no competetion anymore betweem American and Chinese based CPUs. And without competition, some modest differences in production costs will have no impact on product sales.

 

[Eximo]

Typo is still there.

Now I need to see someone make a silicon boat.