Sorry, I do not. I should since two of them are about 12 miles down the road. If you google search "semiconductor plant construction in Peoria, AZ" I imagine you will find it. The third one is in Mesa, at least that was what I was told,
W.

Once upon a time in the 1980s when chips were made out of stone (a little silicon humor), the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) cared about one thing -- CPU speed. That was where the intellectual property was and where there was an advantage in war fighting and space (aka Star Wars). Memory was less important (except from a radiation hardening perspective) and support chips weren't very important at all. Standard ICs were only important to the extent you could get them in Mil Std packaging. And so, there was a lot of money available for CPU fabs in the U.S. along with needing to keep the IP in the U.S.

And then along came ASICs (Application Specific ICs) pioneered by TSMC in Taiwan under a model where you would design them at a "design center" near you and then TSMC would make the chip at their "foundry" (i.e., fab). ASICs allowed faster time to market compared to a full custom IC design, reduced size since something made from standard parts could be put in a single part, reasonable speed, and reasonable cost. None of this was the least bit interesting to the DoD. ASIC design is basically tying together standard "blocks" (such as an NAND gate or D-flip flop) without having to worry about how this winds up being implemented in silicon. Over time, these "blocks" have become quite complex and more general purpose.

As time moved along, as it usually does, TSMC (and others) offered more services and built more complex fabs. DoD spending ebbed and flowed and chips became fast enough that they began to move to COTS (commercial off the shelf) instead of building custom things where there were already commercial products available. Having fabs offshore had a lot of benefits since environmental requirements weren't as strict, labor was cheaper, and there were a lot of talented engineers available for low cost. And as these fabs became obsolete, you could build a new one somewhere else with the most favorable economics. 

And then there's the Internet where it makes no difference whether your foundry is in the next building or in Asia. Files are moved instantly and having a team spread across continents became normal instead of "are you absolutely insane!"

So here we are with a system that optimized economics (as capitalism tends to do) but with weaknesses that are only exposed during some sort of global upheaval. This has always been the case but it would have normally involved raw materials such as iron, water, gold, and other commodities. Now it's access to technology.

I don't have a strong opinion about the Chips Act other than to say we've essentially been down this road once before with the early DoD CPU spending. Just as before, we're just as much at risk of the newest technologies going off shore because of the economics. And there will be unintended consequences as well that we can't predict.

By the way, semiconductors aren't the only thing to worry about. Electric Vehicles all depend on batteries from China (and Taiwan) as do all of our laptops and cell phones. A huge number of drugs are manufactured in China and a disruption in their production won't be easily remedied either.

Hope they can make water out of air. The Colorado River is almost dry.

Jim W4JED

On 6/29/22 07:43, kf7rcm@... via groups.io wrote:

There are three huge "chip" plants being built in the Phoenix area. Hopefully they will be online before too long.

The Global nature of the Semiconductor business is for for sure, and the bill is required to assist  companies to build their plants in US. The subsidies are a competitive lure. I don't get into politics but if democracies are to compete they need to be quick on their feet. 

Something to remember about Taiwan being a global giant in semico mfg:  If (read WHEN) Red China invades Taiwan, one of two things will occur.  Either the Red Chinese will suddenly own practically every fab on Earth, or Taiwan will become a smoking ruin like Ukraine.  In either case, we'll need to duplicate the Taiwanese semico infrastructure here just to get op amps and 555 timer chips.

My living and working in high tech in Austin TX for most of my life has let me see how even minor events can massively affect fabless semiconductor companies.  Remember the Iceland volcano that shut down air travel in Europe for a week?  Remember the loss of Malaysia flight 370?  Remember the Fukushima tsunami?  Remember the Philippine typhoon that left six feet of standing water in every street of the country?  By themselves, each event was relatively isolated, but each left the semico supply chain reeling for months, if not years.

There are good reasons why Samsung put one of its biggest fabs near Austin, and is currently expanding to double its capacity.  There's effective transportation (air, rail, and highways) nearby; the weather isn't subject to whims and vagaries like hurricanes every year (occasional tornadoes not included); no foreign despots are hanging around to invade us (we home-grow our own here, thank you);  our limestone karst geology means we have earthquakes only once every million years; no active volcanoes nearby since 5 million years ago; an ample population of cheap, well-educated workers in the area -- and probably a few more strategic reasons I can't remember right now.

And the remark about pointy-headed bosses focusing on quarterly profit growth at the expense of all else was exactly correct.  Ever wonder what happened to Motorola? (think: spin off the most profitable bread-and-butter sectors to raise quarterly executive bonuses)  Ever wonder why nobody buys IBM nowadays except for hide-bound curmudgeonly Luddites?  (think: offshore customer support because 10 non-English speaking support techs getting paid USD$4 an hour are 10 times more productive than one support tech making USD$40 an hour).  

I'll stop now.  We know that here in the US, we're following the Russian corporate oligarchy model down the toilet, and only massive government payoffs can motivate our corporate status quo to do the right thing -- which is to JUST MAKE STUFF.  Hans, sitting in his home in Turkey, has the right idea and company model.  3M, who gave us sandpaper, PostIt notes, and scotch tape, has the right idea -- invent something, make a little, sell a little, invent something else brilliant and world-changing.   Michael Dell, who invented white-box computer manufacturing in his college dorm, had the right idea at first.  Too bad he dropped out of college before he got his degree.

Me?  The only really smart idea I ever had was to start adopting rescue bunnies.  

73

Jim N6OTQ

On Wed, Jun 29, 2022 at 1:12 PM George Korper <georgekorper@...> wrote:

The Global nature of the Semiconductor business is for for sure, and the bill is required to assist  companies to build their plants in US. The subsidies are a competitive lure. I don't get into politics but if democracies are to compete they need to be quick on their feet.