Chinese semiconductor industry

CMP said:

You CAN throw money at it. But none of the lower-level managers in charge of executing on spending from those budgets are willing to justify to THEIR managers that they must pay 80k+ and benefits for modestly experienced (1-2 years) skilled labor, outside of pharma industry at least. This situation will only get worse because they needed skilled labor that is also educated. Well, hands-on work is not respected in educated society, so nobody will go for it until the offered pay is "right". What is "right"? Adjust for increase to COL, education, and housing, and you're looking at upper 5 figures to start, with rapid promotion opportunities within the first couple of years, unless you want to lose them to competitors. It's MUCH easier and safer for a lower-level manager to just go through all the motions and then let a project take 2x as long than it is to risk making those justifications.

Once the plants are built, they're also going to run into freshwater shortages. The absurdly vast quantities needed for mass production of chips is beyond what the Colorado river can supply. I visited last year and it is already looking bone dry or at crisis levels in some sections. They'll need to ship the water in via mass convoys of trucks on a daily basis. This is going to be a loss driving business unless iPhones start selling for $2500 each. They're going to create a bunch of chips that they have to sell at a huge loss.

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horse said:

Yeah, I agree.

If that fab TSMC is building in Arizona works out, then great!

If it doesn't, then the obvious reasons were too obvious. Lack of talent/(people). Lack of resources/(costs).

That was why that they were saying that that fab project would be expanded double or quadruple the original size, that was surprising.

Could be everything is going great, all systems go, time to expand make it even bigger.

Or it could be the only way out is to expand and make it too big to fail, or expand it in hopes of achieving economies of scale to bring down operational costs.

The Americans may boast and praise this project, but I think no one else in the rest of the world would care one bit, whether or not it succeeds.

First of all, the Americans might not sell any out that plant's output to anyone else other than Apple and the military industrial complex.

Second of all, if that American fab tries to sell their output to the rest of the world, would it be as advanced and price competitive?

That makes this entire chip war kind of odd. The Americans actually look at satellite imagery to see progress of chip fabs inside China. Does anyone in China keep tabs about this TSMC project in Arizona? They probably have better things to do. The whole chip war is kind of retarded. Biden. Bah!

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CMP said:

You CAN throw money at it. But none of the lower-level managers in charge of executing on spending from those budgets are willing to justify to THEIR managers that they must pay 80k+ and benefits for modestly experienced (1-2 years) skilled labor, outside of pharma industry at least. This situation will only get worse because they needed skilled labor that is also educated. Well, hands-on work is not respected in educated society, so nobody will go for it until the offered pay is "right". What is "right"? Adjust for increase to COL, education, and housing, and you're looking at upper 5 figures to start, with rapid promotion opportunities within the first couple of years, unless you want to lose them to competitors.

It's MUCH easier and safer for a lower-level manager to just go through all the motions and then let a project take 2x as long than it is to risk making those justifications.

Once the plants are built, they're also going to run into freshwater shortages. The absurdly vast quantities needed for mass production of chips is beyond what the Colorado river can supply. I visited last year and it is already looking bone dry or at crisis levels in some sections.

Click to expand...

supersnoop said:

Even throwing money to the high 5 figures or even more, you start hitting an absolute limit to how many people are in the qualified labour pool. This is the big problem in Western countries right now. There's less and less people interested in hands on work, even less people that have the technical skill to be competent in those kinds of hands on work, and even less people after natural attrition takes its course. Even in China there are issues with this, but their labour pool is just absolutely larger.

On the water supply:
Yes, there are towns already becoming dry now.

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CMP said:

With the labor shortfall in the US, they'll never master it. Nobody wants to do this kind of work when they can make 1.5-2.5x as much doing easier work from home/a fancy, comfortable office with fully stocked micro kitchens and game rooms. It's tricky because it's the kind of work that takes really smart people that will also need to work really hard in uncomfortable environments. There are very few people like that, since most very smart people who are willing to work very hard pursue careers that put them in remote work/fancy office environments. Or they go into dentistry/medicine instead because it pays 3-5x more and is high prestige.

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olalavn said:

EUV prototype developed by Chang Guang, It came out in 2006
but it's a weak light source... now... China just needs to replace those parts with stronger ones... i guess it won't take too long... especially EUV photoresist is being fast development in China, they need at least 1-1.6 years...and not just 1 but 3 companies have the ability to develop it

late 2024- mid 2025... there will be big news about it

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FairAndUnbiased said:

Reminder that weightlifting 50 lbs is a requirement in semiconductor jobs and even a service technician job is BS preferred.

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I posted one for Hitachi a few months back for their etch engineering positions. Also 50 lbs weightlifting.

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CMP said:

You CAN throw money at it. But none of the lower-level managers in charge of executing on spending from those budgets are willing to justify to THEIR managers that they must pay 80k+ and benefits for modestly experienced (1-2 years) skilled labor, outside of pharma industry at least. This situation will only get worse because they needed skilled labor that is also educated. Well, hands-on work is not respected in educated society, so nobody will go for it until the offered pay is "right". What is "right"? Adjust for increase to COL, education, and housing, and you're looking at upper 5 figures to start, with rapid promotion opportunities within the first couple of years, unless you want to lose them to competitors. It's MUCH easier and safer for a lower-level manager to just go through all the motions and then let a project take 2x as long than it is to risk making those justifications.

Once the plants are built, they're also going to run into freshwater shortages. The absurdly vast quantities needed for mass production of chips is beyond what the Colorado river can supply. I visited last year and it is already looking bone dry or at crisis levels in some sections. They'll need to ship the water in via mass convoys of trucks on a daily basis. This is going to be a loss driving business unless iPhones start selling for $2500 each. They're going to create a bunch of chips that they have to sell at a huge loss.

Click to expand...