Comment by Over2Chars
4 days ago
About time.
I seem to recall some detail about how they don't do the packaging, and that' still on the mother island.
This suggests that may be the case: https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/04/tsmc_amkor_arizona/
It's a move in the right direction, but not as much as may be needed.
Packaging isn't done by TSMC.
Packaging is extremely low value and commodified, so companies prefer to contract it out to OSATs like Amkor.
Same reason why most companies became fabless - margins are much more competitive this way compared to owning your own fab.
This margin-oriented mindset is arguably one of the driving factors that makes the US lose its industrial base.
No, its a global product silicon chips, america ships em to 100+ countries and will lose its edge if it doesnt stay at the top.
Margins are crucial for this, the driving factor that made US lose its industrial base, is red-tape, red-tape, red-tape, red-tape, political interference, militant unionism (unions are good and fine, militant unions are not), and foolish gov laws which did not make sure that labour standards are consistent for all products in american market, to make sure slave-labour or extremely shoddy labour standard based countries do not erode away great american jobs and its industrial base.
Margins are fine, and good. Unfair competition, rules and red-tape for domestic manufacturers but none for foreign companies, is what killed it.
It’s cheaper for a chinese company to ship to american households than it is for a local american company to an american household… , this is purely because of crazy gov regulations.
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Companies in every country have this mindset.
Even Taiwan has largely offshored packaging to ASEAN, China, and India. And Taiwan got packaging because the Japanese manufacturers offshored to there.
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Indeed, Apple* seem to be one of the only companies with the long term vision to integrate vertically and improve industry as a result. The short term pennies-on-the-dollar of outsourcing is just brain-dead and non-innovative.
*this is an observation from someone who has never bought a new apple product due to their increasingly closed eco-system
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Are you proposing that the United States should operate factories without regard to margin?
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Modern packaging - high density 2.5D/3D is defintely not a commodity.
Final packaging is.