Comment by enragedcacti

4 days ago

The chips still need to fly back to Taiwan to be packaged as packaging partner Amkor's facility in Arizona won't be ready until 2027*. I'm not sure the cause of the delta but it could be in part because Fab 21 got back on schedule rather impressively following earlier delays.

* updated to reflect newer article that Amkor's facility is delayed beyond late-2025

9 comments

enragedcacti

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onlyrealcuzzo  4 days ago

The hardest part is making the chips, no?

Packaging facilities cost ~20% of a fab, right?

Naively, I'm assuming packaging is also not as complicate and difficult as fabrication.

Surely if they can build a fab in the US, they can build packaging facilities, too.

Rome wasn't built in a day.

MisterTea  4 days ago

I was about to say, surly at some point in the near future the USA will introduce this capability. Shame they did not match each other in completion time.

  • colechristensen  4 days ago

    > Shame they did not match each other in completion time.

    Why?

    If the packaging facility was ready early it would have sat idle losing money.

    If it's ready late, products from the fab can obviously easily be shipped off to be packaged.

    Tight coordination of timelines adds needless cost when there is an easy alternative.

  • enragedcacti  4 days ago

    Yeah definitely unfortunate. That said, I'm guessing the overall cost of overseas packaging is really tiny, otherwise Intel would've made a great customer since they are already packaging TSMC N6, N5, and N3 in New Mexico for their Arrow Lake CPUs.