Introduction:
I don’t know how many people still remember that Foxconn went to the United States to build a factory, and the then US President Trump even attended the groundbreaking ceremony in person. What is the result of
?
It’s not that I’m badmouthing TSMC’s move to the United States, but the matter is clearly there.
Arizona Where there is a serious water shortage.
The manufacturing of chips requires a lot of water.
There is no shortage of electricity, but what to do with water? Should it be purified from the distant sea and then pumped there, or will it have to compete with local residents and agricultural water?
and 4nm and 3nm, does it make sense?
This is an industrial factory, not a scientific research laboratory. What is created must be faced by the market.
Who are the customers of TSMC? They are chip designers and manufacturers. Who are the customers of chip designers and manufacturers? They are manufacturers of finished electronic products. The customers of electronic product manufacturers are the end consumer market.
To put it bluntly, technology needs to serve the market at the industrial level.
But with such an advanced manufacturing process, the cost of manufacturing it cannot be as high as the sky.
Who would buy such an expensive product?
Again, will this process advancement bring huge performance improvements to finished electronic products?
4 nanometers can reach the sky higher than 5 nanometers?
For such a small improvement, the market has to pay such a high price. Who will accept it?
Therefore, from an industry point of view, it cannot be said to be meaningless. Anyway, no one is willing to pay that unjust amount of money.
If you don’t believe me, take a look. In the current electronic product market, except for a few very process-sensitive chips that use new processes, the ones with the largest sales and the most uses are still using the old 20-nanometer level process.
Does TSMC know this? Of course it does.
That’s why TSMC went there to develop the 4nm technology that only exists on paper, instead of moving the entire mature 5nm process that has already been put into production.
Enterprises must pay attention to making money after all.
If the 5-nanometer production line that is being produced is moved there, it will soon become obsolete.
Due to the pressure from the United States, TSMC has to cooperate, so it is cheering for something that is still under study and does not know when it will be officially put into production.
The reason why the semiconductor industry has formed its current geographical layout is due to extremely profound internal factors of industrial linkage. It is not something that can be easily reversed by applying political pressure with words.
TSMC, and even Taiwan’s semiconductor industry as a whole, once they are relocated to the United States for political reasons, everyone will die. Anyone who leaves the circle near Taiwan will die, without the United States taking action. He will die quickly just because of commercial competition.
is unlikely to have exceptions.
Why, because China is now the world's largest electronic product consumer market and the world's largest producer of finished electronic products.
However, the United States, even apple , said that it would transfer production capacity from China, but they are only willing to move to India and Southeast Asia, and are not willing to move back to the United States. The
chip, to put it bluntly, is just a component. It is nothing more than that this component is not easy to manufacture, but no matter how difficult it is to manufacture, the component will eventually be concentrated in the finished product manufacturer.
Another thing is that, except for the next trend, the existing electronic product market basically does not need much progress. It’s not that
is no longer technically needed, but that there is no higher demand in the market.
Computer performance is basically excessive, and mobile phone performance is basically excessive.
As for the next trend, artificial intelligence , this requires a new process, but again, how big a difference can 5 nanometers and 4 nanometers make. When it comes to self-driving car-grade chips, the latest process cannot be used, and it must even use a process that cannot be too small.
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is not without competitors.
These principles are understood not only by TSMC, but also by Taiwan’s top executives, as well as by U.S. top executives, and even people who are slightly related to these understand it.
Now that we all know it, we are still doing this. In fact, it is the same as when Foxconn went to the United States to build a high-profile factory. Spend the money first.
Big companies are not afraid of spending money, but they are afraid of cutting off the way to make money.
It is the tradition of businessmen to spend money to buy road signs when they encounter pressure.
spent the money and got the road. As for the rest, whether the factory will be built or not will be decided at that time.
